Rejection again

[uksnowy]

A new piece of mine not accepted :-

1/ Under age - or words to that effect.
There is a two year old toddler visiting his grand parents and hardly mentioned after the first para.
The are ABSOLUTELY NO SEXUAL REFERENCES TO OR ABOUT HIM

2/ Spelling errors.
Maybe the isolated ones and I try my best to correct those, but I use UK spellings and vernacular in some cases where appropriate, so that's not wrong - IS IT?

3/ Use of spaces before or after " ' in speech.


Also how can I view my current accepted list of stories?

 

[Handley_Page]

A new piece of mine not accepted :-

1/ Under age - or words to that effect.
There is a two year old toddler visiting his grand parents and hardly mentioned after the first para.
The are ABSOLUTELY NO SEXUAL REFERENCES TO OR ABOUT HIM

2/ Spelling errors.
Maybe the isolated ones and I try my best to correct those, but I use UK spellings and vernacular in some cases where appropriate, so that's not wrong - IS IT?

3/ Use of spaces before or after " ' in speech.


Also how can I view my current accepted list of stories?

It sounds to me like you need a good editor.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You can write young children but there must be zero sexual reference to them. I have two childbirth scenes and a young child in a key plot scene, but they are thousands of words away from any sexual content in those particular chapters. In each case, I put in a note to the editor pointing to the written existence of children. No problems, but no sexual or erotic language anywhere close by.

If in doubt, don't write children, just don't mention them.

UK vernacular should be ok, UK spelling fine - I write Australian vernacular and Oz/UK spelling and have never had problems. Run spell check and grammar check, and write speech like this, "with no spaces between the speech marks and the spoken words," and don't have two different speakers in the same paragraph.

My guess is that text bots are picking up mostly on the gaps within your speech marks - random typos and minor spelling mistakes always creep through, but unnecessary spacing and consistently bad spelling seem to be a fairly regular rejection reasons. Don't use double space anywhere, write speech correctly, and two returns at the end of every paragraph. If you load a .txt file, you will get a preview in the submit box, which makes it easier to spot bad layout.

To check your story file, go to your Member home page, click on Submissions, then View Current Submissions. That will list all stories "published", "pending" and "rejected". If something is "pending" DON'T click on it - that will put it to the end of the queue.

It's the same place you see your " rejected" submissions....

Hope this helps.

 

[uksnowy]

text added

Thank you both, will see what I can do, but the child thing above does not warrant a mention in the rejection.
I also aim to use a spell and grammar checker throughout

 

[Bray123]

I've included the presence of children in a 'Milf' story, it would be difficult to write one otherwise, but they were not present in any scene of hanky-panky. No problem...

(I did include a note about it).

 

[Hypoxia]

I have an incident at a nude beach with Randy, his wife Ruth, her mother Rachel who Randy has been fucking for years, Rachel's new husband Franz, and Rachel's toddling twins who Randy sired but Franz thinks are his. Everyone is naked. Tubby Franz chases the laughing toddlers running down the beach while Ruth and Rachel argue, standing adjacent to sitting Randy with their pussies in to his face, within licking range. It's a sexual situation but the kids clearly are not in the frame.

A scenario I'll probably write (when I get back to writing): A couple are having a nice loud afternoon fuck in a cheap mobile home. Kids in the scuzzy trailer park are throwing stuff against their doors and walls, yelling at them to shut up -- again. It's not the first time. The kids' involvement is external -- they're out of the frame, sexually.

 

[sr71plt]

Laurel doesn't actually read the stories; she scans them. Where this goes off the rails is that she makes suppositions and uses the word "rejection" for something that sometimes isn't there. If the wording was a "query" of what might be there, it would raise fewer legitimate hackles. For that part of the rejection, when you resubmit, you could just state in the Note box that there is no underage sexual situation in the story and please to point it out if she thinks there is. Over the years she's occasionally rejected stories of mine for what she thinks is in them and isn't, and when I've asked her to point out what she thinks is there, the story has been posted as written.

The other problems are ones that someone is going to have to look at and let you know why it doesn't fly--although I could see that she might have trouble with Briticisms. This is an American Web site, and British usage just may not be familiar to her in that specific instance.

 

[uksnowy]

Cheers sr71plt. I have some very explicit stories from way back involving minors, but I don't offer them in here and if I want to use them I edit them drastically.

As regards UK terms etc, I have difficulty with US terms also. We all manage to get along

 

[HandsInTheDark]

A new piece of mine not accepted :-

1/ Under age - or words to that effect.
There is a two year old toddler visiting his grand parents and hardly mentioned after the first para.
The are ABSOLUTELY NO SEXUAL REFERENCES TO OR ABOUT HIM

2/ Spelling errors.
Maybe the isolated ones and I try my best to correct those, but I use UK spellings and vernacular in some cases where appropriate, so that's not wrong - IS IT?

3/ Use of spaces before or after " ' in speech.


Also how can I view my current accepted list of stories?

I use vernacular in (rare) cases, especially in stories set in the future. It's not a problem. If you're writing on WIndows, use pretty much anything but Notepad and you'll get spelling nags. Deal with them; Laurel should never see a misspelled word.

Yes, fix your punctuation. No one wants to see sloppy typing.

I don't see why the two year old is a problem, but I also don't see why it needs to be there at all. If Laurel thought the child could conceivably be exposed to sexuality, including overhearing it, she gets out the red pen. Turn the 2 year old into an 8 year old that plays outside all day and maybe it gets easier. What's worked for me is never to have a character under 18 and never refer to anything they did before 16, and if it's something sexual to confine it to one non-descriptive sentence. And I still got rejected once for a 6,000 old character that changed form to a young woman of unspecified age. If Laurel can find a way to make age an issue, she does. This is presumably because if she doesn't, the readership will. Simply don't waste her time by risking any reference to children and the problem is gone.

Finding your stories can be done by going to any story you know was accepted. At the start of it, your writing name appears as a link. Click it and select the Stories tab. Alternatively, in the main menu, click Submissions and then View. I can't fault you for this - Lit is a nightmare to navigate.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I use vernacular in (rare) cases, especially in stories set in the future. It's not a problem. If you're writing on WIndows, use pretty much anything but Notepad and you'll get spelling nags. Deal with them; Laurel should never see a misspelled word.

Yes, fix your punctuation. No one wants to see sloppy typing.

I don't see why the two year old is a problem, but I also don't see why it needs to be there at all. If Laurel thought the child could conceivably be exposed to sexuality, including overhearing it, she gets out the red pen. Turn the 2 year old into an 8 year old that plays outside all day and maybe it gets easier. What's worked for me is never to have a character under 18 and never refer to anything they did before 16, and if it's something sexual to confine it to one non-descriptive sentence. And I still got rejected once for a 6,000 old character that changed form to a young woman of unspecified age. If Laurel can find a way to make age an issue, she does. This is presumably because if she doesn't, the readership will. Simply don't waste her time by risking any reference to children and the problem is gone.

Finding your stories can be done by going to any story you know was accepted. At the start of it, your writing name appears as a link. Click it and select the Stories tab. Alternatively, in the main menu, click Submissions and then View. I can't fault you for this - Lit is a nightmare to navigate.

Or better yet, turn the two year old into a dog, LOL! I mean if the child isn't a key part of the story, well then...eliminate them.

 

[uksnowy]

The 2 yrs old will stay, it's ridiculous. Thanks to all and all the breast for 2017

 

[RejectReality]

Just a quick note: The last story I posted was rejected because I had a brain fart and mentioned my website in the closing note. It came back with that rejection as well as underage. When I contacted Laurel, she was confuzzled, as she didn't remember clicking the underage button.

So, that could be nothing more than a flamboyant mouse maneuver, or perhaps a bug in the back end that's appending the underage rejection to others when it's not been purposely selected.

If you know you don't have underage, and there are other reasons for the rejection, correct those reasons and resubmit, but note that underage was attached as a rejection reason and there was none in the piece.

Alternately, contact Laurel directly through PM and ask about it before resubmitting.

If it's a bug, the more people who are bringing it to her attention, the better.

 

[Handley_Page]

Thank you both, will see what I can do, but the child thing above does not warrant a mention in the rejection.
I also aim to use a spell and grammar checker throughout

You might realise that the spelling & grammar checkers are not always accurate enough.
The spell-check will pass "YOUR" when perhaps you meant "YOU'RE", for example.
I have trouble with Grammar checkers. Word used to have quite a good one in v97, but it all got too formal and business-like in later versions.

 

[uksnowy]

Thanks will keep a careful watch