New member seeking input/advice

[SynSlave]

Hello!

Long time reader (10+ years) but still a rookie. I've been scouring the forums and resource links for the last week trying assimilate as much as possible but there's so much information that I feel the need to try a more acticve route. Besides, I could use some social interaction to help calm my "first time" nerves.

I've been writing for a while on an amateur level, making it as far as receiving multiple rejections off shorts submitted to webzines (that sent me back into hiding for a couple years).

But here I am, throwing myself at your collective feet. (Strange place for a nervous wreck like me to open up, if you ask me- but who asked?)

I began writing a sci-fi serial and got distracted with the notion that submitting for the Halloween contest would be fun and appropriate for a literary coming out announcement.

So some beginner's questions:

1. With the timing of the contest (specifically) would it be reasonable or advisable to seek some volunteer editor assistance?

2. Is there some unwritten ettiquette for asking multiple volunteers simultaneously in whatever capacities they're willing to negotiate? - I saw this asked a couple times but it appeared as the final answers were communicated outside the forum.

3. And I reread quite a bit around here but couldnt find an estimate word count per lit page? Probably not as important, but it might help me break up future chapters and stories.

I have a gazillion more questions but I'm trying to go as fast as I can without missing important road signs, not to mention the beautiful story-scenery here.

Additional info relating to my first prepared submission:

- Just over 10k words.

- Feel it would best be categorized as erotic horror - No gore. Little violence. Mostly psychological terror and supernatural/fantasy. Mild alcohol/drug references. And of course, graphic sex.

- I'm using my pda because I too often find an excuse not to even boot up a pc or laptop - yet I'm always on my phone so I figured switching platforms for convenience is a good strategy. It means I'm mainly using google docs. I work(ed) in IT so I'm proficient at finding work around(s) involving exporting, formatting, software, etc.

Thank you for your time!

 

[SynSlave]

Short extraction from the story if it helps:

The interior exceeded expectations. The heavy bass vibrating the ground changed pitch as she flowed with her small party, frigid air mixing with tendrils of heat intertwined with sweat and sex. It could have been a typically dark, club-like atmosphere if the ceiling wasn't a few stories high. All the usual elements were present even if they looked haphazardly installed within a poorly designed floor plan. Island make-shift bars, partitioned walls, hanging strobe lights; and there had to be multiple fog machines running on intervals, obscuring her line of sight at times.

Probably because it's that time of year, she speculated. She noticed the walls weren't decorated when they were splashed with light, at least. And there were plenty of people moving around and dancing, as much as they were congregating in clusters.

There were a few interesting 'outfits' that would work for Halloween. But it was mostly glowing body paint, whimsical accessories and skin, mixed in with a variety of dress styles you'd otherwise see anywhere else. A tall, well proportioned woman wearing a fishnet body stocking under black panties and bra, walking under a beam of light from an overhead lamp made her second guess the assessment.

Guessing the white cat ears qualify it as a costume, she humored.

 

[SimonDoom]

My thoughts:

1. At this point, it is not reasonable to expect that you will receive significant, helpful editing or advice prior to the deadline. There are editors, but people often complain about being unable to get helpful editing advice promptly. Nobody knows you and nobody is going to jump at the chance to edit your story. Nobody is getting paid.

2. A Literotica page is about 3750 words. A 10K word story therefore will be a bit less than three Lit pages.

3. My advice: do the best you can, submit it, and see how things go. That's what I did. That's what most people here did. Take the plunge.

4. Like you, I read stories here for about 10 years before publishing my first story. It was exciting and scary. It's supposed to be exciting and scary. Just do it. I did it, and it was great fun and I've never looked back. And that's true despite the fact that my first story got a much more tepid reception than I expected. I just kept going.

Good luck!

 

[SynSlave]

Thanks for the quick and honest reply!

While I hope to read other input as well, yours is appreciated. I will likely submit today or tomorrow, as I agree that patience can be as much a hindrance, as a virtue.

Additional follow up:

I've read some info on dos and don'ts of editing a published submission. Often when reading stories around here I wonder why people don't correct even basic typos on published work. (I'm forever editing)

Aside from the category-change conundrum, is editing a published story for a couple punctuation typos or misspelled words a hassle for the author or site editors? I ask because I know that if I should be fortunate to have a submission published it'll only be hours before I want to change something small.

I also realize large edits could be potentially abused via sneaking in additional and/or inappropriate content.

I'm more interested in the small things.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Short extraction from the story if it helps:

Hi Syn

Welcome to the AH. Sit back, have a coffee or tea, and scroll through the forum. I reckon most of your questions have been asked before. It takes a bit of digging, but I had most of mine answered.

Flick me a PM about editing. I use GD and I should be able to get through your story fairly soon. I'm taking a short break from writing, so I see editing as enforced reading.

One thing I did notice - if a character is thinking to themselves, they're still having a conversation. Use "quotes". Others may disagree...

Cheers

 

[ElectricBlue]

What Simon says. Just do it. Too late for an editor, though, I reckon.

Here's a suggestion (only because I've just done it for my latest chapter) - drop your text into

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create

to see your most commonly used words. If weak words stand out (your snippet has several tentative words like 'could' 'mostly' 'few' which can sound apologetic) go through and tighten your text up.

I found I'd used 'just' far too much, so I've just (sigh) done a word search to either delete, change, or keep the word - which is a commonly used but lazy adverb. Running the word-cloud again, it now doesn't stand out at all.

It's useful being able to quickly see which "word tics" you get into, without noticing. For example, I always go through looking for 'and then' which I use(d) far too often - now and then you need both, but not often.

 

[ElectricBlue]

One thing I did notice - if a character is thinking to themselves, they're still having a conversation. Use "quotes". Others may disagree...

Disagree. Sometimes context is enough - it needs to be clear and consistent, obviously. It depends, I think, on your narrative voice and how you're using it. I use a mixture of quotes and contextual clarity to show a thought.

What I don't suggest, though, is italics as used by the OP - for the simple reason that not all reader devices can see italics, and html is easy to cock up. I used html in half a dozen stories thinking, wow, this is easy, this is clever, only to have several stories/chapters in a row go spectacularly wrong, to the extent I had to submit edits. My solution, now, is plain text, always. I don't trust myself with html, and it's too easy to glitch - it's not worth the hassle.

 

[SimonDoom]

One thing I did notice - if a character is thinking to themselves, they're still having a conversation. Use "quotes". Others may disagree...

Cheers

I think the only real rule on this topic is to be consistent, and to be clear.

I have done this different ways, but my preferred method now is not to use quote marks for unspoken thoughts. I think it's usually clear enough.

I never use italics because I'm lazy and don't want to deal with the formatting, and I like keeping things really simple.

 

[KeithD]

I've seen the "is it OK to have more than one editor editing your work simultaneously?" question a couple of times in recent weeks. Aside from the fact that it's nearly impossible to find one editor on Literotica, let alone two--and then to find one who actually knows editing any better than you do--the etiquette in the mainstream world is NO. Pitting editors against each other is a great way for none to be willing to do work for you ever again. Sometimes a publisher will have more than one round of editing (usually for something they're putting up for best-seller status), but for authors to engage multiple editors on the same work? Not considered good form. If there are differences, it would then be up to the author to choose, and if it's a decent editor you are engaging, they will resent a nontrained author pitting them up against another editor.

 

[SynSlave]

Thanks for the replies.

On text formatting - I've decided to use mostly italics for thoughts and key words. From what I've read here and my experience in general writing is that single quotes are reserved for quoting within a quote. I do make occasional exceptions and try to limit - but also use parenthesis.

I have a propensity to over-use em dash (and considering I have to utilize a workaround on this virtual keyboard to include them; its doubly aggrevating at times) - also why I cheat and just slap in a hyphen on my forum posts instead. I really can't help myself on that one. For me, em dash is the single greatest all-purpose punctuation mark.

*

I'll have to check out that link. My usual method is using find/replace when I personally notice redundant words. That in turn often leads me to spending hours of editing to the point I start plugging the word in question back in - after I realized I not only brought it to the brink of extinction but that I've created ripples in the flow. (Literally reread my post before submitting and changed one instance of 'usually' to 'often' - lol)

Thanks for all the feedback so far. It's encouraging and will likely lead to additional rewriting on what I've completed. I promise to try and not let it trap me in re-write hell. Try being the operative word.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Syn-
I'll give a shout out to Rusty as an editor. He edited my Halloween story and it seemed like just a few days for him to get it back with thoughtful and useful comments. That would still give you plenty of time for readers.

I'll third, or fourth, or whichever ordinal number it is now, the suggestion to go ahead and take the plunge. I only have 10 stories, and I submitted my first one about six months ago. I've already learned a bunch. The regulars here are helpful, especially with some of the technical aspects of writing and editing.

Welcome to the fray!

 

[SynSlave]

Thanks some more. I apologize if I seem like an overload already but you're all partially at fault. If you all simply ignored me I would have shut up and quietly faded away for at least a day or two.

But I really am eager to submit and I know enough to know I lack knowledge and experience.

I fired a pm to the user referenced above as suggested.

Except now I have a pressing concern with formatting after reading your gracious replies. I've read several threads that reference technical html tags but assumed - that if I exported to a word doc and sent the story as an attachment that basic formatting like bold, italics wouldn't be a concern. I assumed html tags were necessary for submissions that aren't attachments. I've read plenty of Lit here and recognized italics were pretty common. Am i way off already with regards to format of a submission?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Aside from the category-change conundrum, is editing a published story for a couple punctuation typos or misspelled words a hassle for the author or site editors? I ask because I know that if I should be fortunate to have a submission published it'll only be hours before I want to change something small.

All of us have stupid typos creep through, no matter how careful we are in edit, no matter how many words we've written. 100% perfect copy is just about impossible. Don't bother trying.

To edit here, though, you need to resubmit the whole text with the word EDIT in the exact same story title, and add a note to the site editor. Edits are low priority, and usually take much longer to get processed.

Get it right first time as best you can, using whatever techniques you use, and live with the minor typos like the rest of us, is my advice. Also, be aware that html glitches around Lit page breaks - often spectacularly. I'd get out of that habit, right from the start. Other than one edit for content (based on absolutely valid reader feedback) I've only ever needed edits to fix html cock-ups (both mine and the site's).

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Thanks some more. I apologize if I seem like an overload already but you're all partially at fault. If you all simply ignored me I would have shut up and quietly faded away for at least a day or two.

But I really am eager to submit and I know enough to know I lack knowledge and experience.

I fired a pm to the user referenced above as suggested.

Except now I have a pressing concern with formatting after reading your gracious replies. I've read several threads that reference technical html tags but assumed - that if I exported to a word doc and sent the story as an attachment that basic formatting like bold, italics wouldn't be a concern. I assumed html tags were necessary for submissions that aren't attachments. I've read plenty of Lit here and recognized italics were pretty common. Am i way off already with regards to format of a submission?

All of my stories have been uploaded/attached Word documents. Several have used italics and/or bold, and I haven't had any problem with it coming out correctly. My sense of things is that a few years ago, maybe even more recently than that, there were problems with the formatting showing up correctly with uploaded stories. But that hasn't been my experience at all.

So, I write my stories on a Samsung tablet (with a keyboard) in the stripped down mobile version of Word, and upload/attach the finished product through the story submission page. The only quirk I've found is to enter all the other information first, and add the story last.
For some reason, the first few times I submitted a story, the tags wouldn't show up or froze, if I'd already attached the story. But adding it in last has solved that problem.

I do keep "special" fomatting minimal, and have only used italic or bold. But I've seen stories with underlining.

And yeah, it seems that html tags are only needed if you're pasting into the text box. But some folks seem to prefer that. Me? I don't speak html.

 

[KeithD]

I only submit via Word copy/paste, so I don't know if that matches other ways of submitting--but in that way of submitting, you have to manually put in the italics and bolding coding yourself, e.g., <I>this and not that</I>. (Note that the treatment is different in the story file than here on the discussion board, where square brackets are used.)

On another of your issues, you can certainly put thoughts in italics here if you want, but be aware that, if you are using American style, mainstream publishing (the Chicago Manual of Style) does not support use of italics for that purpose. Double quotes or plain roman font, but, in both cases, using dialogue slugs that identify it as thought in most instances.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

My thoughts:

1. At this point, it is not reasonable to expect that you will receive significant, helpful editing or advice prior to the deadline. There are editors, but people often complain about being unable to get helpful editing advice promptly. Nobody knows you and nobody is going to jump at the chance to edit your story. Nobody is getting paid.

2. A Literotica page is about 3750 words. A 10K word story therefore will be a bit less than three Lit pages.

3. My advice: do the best you can, submit it, and see how things go. That's what I did. That's what most people here did. Take the plunge.

4. Like you, I read stories here for about 10 years before publishing my first story. It was exciting and scary. It's supposed to be exciting and scary. Just do it. I did it, and it was great fun and I've never looked back. And that's true despite the fact that my first story got a much more tepid reception than I expected. I just kept going.

Good luck!

Welcome and good luck!!

I'm a new-ish writer, too, and am coming up on my first year anniversary of writing and publishing. If I had the opportunity to advise myself a year ago, it would be to 1) take my time to edit, review and revise, and 2) be prepared for a tepid reception.

If perchance you miss this year's Halloween contest, it just means that you have plenty of time for the 2020 Halloween contest (and, for the Winter Holidays contest and many other contests and open writing challenges in between).

I write in Google Docs on my iPhone and cut/paste to Lit. As Keith and Belle pointed out, doing this requires adding HTML tags.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've seen the "is it OK to have more than one editor editing your work simultaneously?" question a couple of times in recent weeks. Aside from the fact that it's nearly impossible to find one editor on Literotica, let alone two--and then to find one who actually knows editing any better than you do--the etiquette in the mainstream world is NO. Pitting editors against each other is a great way for none to be willing to do work for you ever again. Sometimes a publisher will have more than one round of editing (usually for something they're putting up for best-seller status), but for authors to engage multiple editors on the same work? Not considered good form. If there are differences, it would then be up to the author to choose, and if it's a decent editor you are engaging, they will resent a nontrained author pitting them up against another editor.

One case where this can be reasonable is where you have specialised editors who are responsible for different aspects of the work. This comes up a lot in my editing work (technical non-fiction) where technical editing and general English jobs are two separate jobs, usually assigned to two different people. But that's a collaboration between editors, rather than a competition.

 

[SynSlave]

All of my stories have been uploaded/attached Word documents [...]

Thanks. The techie in me loves playing/breaking all types of stylistic formats for art and emphasis. Inintially tried to make my username §yn§lave but understand there are reasons why username characters need to limit special characters.

But the fiction writer in me (more important) is less anxious having read your entire post. I stick to mainly italics in content.

I also took note of the other poster's reply on multiple editors. I suppose it was expected. I just think from my POV that it wouldn't bother me if someone wanted multiple sources of input - the way this and virtually all forums are used. But I acquiesce knowing that the professional world doesn't work that way, and many volunteers may wish to be granted the same respect as their professional mirrors.

Can't thank everyone enough for all the feedback without sounding more redundant so I'll try to peel it back after this.

 

[KeithD]

Thanks. The techie in me loves playing/breaking all types of stylistic formats for art and emphasis. Inintially tried to make my username §yn§lave but understand there are reasons why username characters need to limit special characters.

OK, what we have here essentially with the story file is a rolling anthology. Anthologies are all about simplicity and unified standards across the collection to give readers a uniform, unobtrusive read. It's the publisher's call on file design, not the author's. Like all professional Web publishers, Literotica exercises this control and has provided a very basic across-the-file format look to give the reader a uniform look. So, don't be surprised if your love to screw around with formats on your own goes over like a lead balloon here with those who control the file formatting.

And, speaking for the reader world, it should. This is one of an author's "it's all abut me" input activities in the process that publisher really, really hate.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Syn-
I'll give a shout out to Rusty as an editor. He edited my Halloween story and it seemed like just a few days for him to get it back with thoughtful and useful comments. That would still give you plenty of time for readers.

Awww, shucks...

You know know I’m elozable.

I’d like to thank Heyall for editing my first couple of stories, and pointing me to some good references here. I figure that if I want to read more, then reading and reviewing other works is a good way to do it.

 

[8letters]

One thing I did notice - if a character is thinking to themselves, they're still having a conversation. Use "quotes". Others may disagree...

When I'm reading and re-reading my own stories while I'm editing them, I find using quotes for thoughts to be confusing. My mind related quotes to dialog. I've gone to using italics for immediate reactions (e.g. Shit!) and not using italics or quotes for long musings.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Awww, shucks...

You know know I’m elozable.

Pretty much everyone is elozable.

 

[SimonDoom]

You know know I’m elozable.

That's good to know, but I'm not going to eloze you, or anyone else, until I know what the hell that means.

Call me a diction Nazi, but until I'm edified that's my position, and I'm sticking with it.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

That's good to know, but I'm not going to eloze you, or anyone else, until I know what the hell that means.

Call me a diction Nazi, but until I'm edified that's my position, and I'm sticking with it.

Diction? It's [elozable] not a mispronunciation [of another word]. It's its own word. I'm sure your internet search engine of choice will help you out.

edited for a little clarity.

 

[NotWise]

Diction? It's not a mispronunciation, it's its own word. I'm sure your internet search engine of choice will help you out.

As near as I can tell, eloze is not a word, but elozable is -- an archaic word, but a word just the same -- and it isn't pronounced the way I thought it might be.