Why must this happen to my poor story?

[Lying Eyes]

Saw my story posted today and as I looked through it I grimaced in horror. I submited it via email and somehow that email account screwed up the formating. That is my third story, I spent a bit more time and effort with it then my other two. I wanted it to be as nice as I could with my limited writing skills so it depreses me to see my work up with some glaring formating problems. Now many readers will pass it by before giving it any chance at all. I just sent in a edited version from another email account which will hopefully correct the problem. But by the time it is replaced the damage will have already been done

 

[Guest]

Saw my story posted today and as I looked through it I grimaced in horror. I submited it via email and somehow that email account screwed up the formating. That is my third story, I spent a bit more time and effort with it then my other two. I wanted it to be as nice as I could with my limited writing skills so it depreses me to see my work up with some glaring formating problems. Now many readers will pass it by before giving it any chance at all. I just sent in a edited version from another email account which will hopefully correct the problem. But by the time it is replaced the damage will have already been done

*Hugs*

That sucks.

Can I ask? Why do you submit stories by sending them in via email? Why not use the upload function on your Story Submission page? You could have technical issues, but I have found that way rarely fails.

Lou

 

[snooper]

Do it the hard way. Save the story as .txt, insert the extra line feeds and the bolding and italics by hand.

It's a bit like digging a post hole with a spoon. It's slow, but you have total control over where the dirt goes.

 

[Lying Eyes]

Re: Re: Why must this happen to my poor story?

*Hugs*

That sucks.

Can I ask? Why do you submit stories by sending them in via email? Why not use the upload function on your Story Submission page? You could have technical issues, but I have found that way rarely fails.

Lou

I'm using webtv, which isnt a real computer. I can not "cut and paste". I have to deal with some peculiar problems sometimes.

Seeing my average votes plummet I know the formating is a problem for some readers. But at least I know from two emails from readers that it wasnt an issue at all for some and I managed to reach those two at a much deeper level then I thought I could with my writing.

Thanks for the virtual hug, though I prefer a real one.

 

[SlickTony]

Do your own html code. Ever since I started doing that I never had any problems with formatting.

If it's that fucked up you can tell Laurel about it. Other people can also inform the administration if there's a serious problem with it.

 

[cantdog]

Formatting is done without taking into account what you yourself did.

I too have a crippled story.

They strip out all tabs.

Indentations? forget it.

I set parts of it off with indents and an extra hard return.

The site stripped out the extra blank line as well as the indents.

But it gets an H.

So I'm not going to edit it until it falls off the H status; but what you do, I'm told, is re-submit with the title "Old Title-- EDITED," which I suppose resets the story to zero once it goes through.

It would be nice if the "guidelines" spent less time on "No one under 18" and more time telling you that no matter what you do, they will strip tabs.

Paragraphs are to the margin and separated by one, count it, one, blank line. Now we know.

cantdog

 

[KarenAM]

I had a story get centered, which made it harder to read. People still seemed to like it, though.

And what does the red H mean, anyway?

 

[cantdog]

Centered??? You poor thing!

The H is Hot, they tell me. It means the voting (minimum 10 votes) averages 4.5 out of a possible 5.0, or better.

cantdog

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I had a story get centered, which made it harder to read. People still seemed to like it, though.

And what does the red H mean, anyway?

The red H means your story is HOT! This is achieved when the average voting score (after the first ten votes, mind you) is above a 4.50.

The green E means a story is an EDITOR'S CHOICE! It was chosen as a favorite among the Lit Editors that approve stories for posting.

The blue W means the story is a WINNER of a contest or award the site offers.

~lucky

 

[cheeryorchid]

Suggestions from the Computer Challenged

Hi.
Funny that I should post a reply here. I have no skill in computers. I don't know what an html is, I don't know how to upload anything, but if I think about it with my head turned sideways....sounds kinky. Of course I can make anything sound kinky, that's why I write stories here.
Anyways, before I drift into perversion this is what I do.

I just copy and paste. I write my stories on a works page, copy it, paste it then check it for indents and stuff. I really should edit better than I do. I have a hard time reading through my stuff after I write it, always been that way. But anywhoo, Just copy and paste, it's the easiest way.

What's the name of your story? I'd like to read it, I checked out all the messages and didn't see the name of said story once.

And hey, maybe formatting does cause problems. My latest story has dudded out, I've been curious to why and maybe that's something to look into....hmmm. That story is Meet Quinn Rigley if anyone wants to tell me why.

Good luck with the format.

the CheeryOrchid

 

[Boxlicker101]

I recently edited some stories and resubmitted them. They did not start at zero and they weren't treated as NEW stories. When the edited versions were eventually accepted, they took over the number of views and votes and submission date of the original version. Even when I switched one from E/C to anal, the category was the only change made.

I copy and paste. I used to write my stories on my email site but that is too much of a hassle and now I write on my HD. The emailed stories took weeks to be accepted and often got lost in transmission. I think there were size limitation problems too.

After I paste, I look over the submission to see if the paragraphs are properly divided and to make sure I have included a request for votes and PC.

 

[Weird Harold]

They strip out all tabs.

Indentations? forget it.

That 's a characteristic of HTML, and not necessarily a preference of the site managers. HTML doesn't actually strip out tab characters, it just ignores them the same way it does multiple spaces anywhere in your text.

It is possible to create indents in HTML but it's a pain and would require a lot of extra time in formatting your story before it gets posted.

 

[cantdog]

Dear Weird,

Yeah, I gave up the idea. What I intend doing is to add lines like so:

* * *

between the "frame" timeline and the "story" timeline, instead of the indents and extra blank line.

That doesn't bother me much.

I was very very glad to find out how to edit a published story (thank you, damppanties) and now I am very glad to hear I can just go ahead and do the edit without disturbing the H (thanks boxlicker 101).

The way it lays, even I am confused when the girl in the "frame" comments on the "story," because the signals that the switch has been made are missing.

Thanks, weird.

cantdog

 

[raphy]

Damn, Harold got there before.

There's a very good reason you won't see tabs or indentations of any web pages, lit included, save for a very few exceptions.

Welcome to the web.

 

[neonlyte]

cantdog

The easiest way to insert an extra line is to type

& # 1 0 ;
where you want the line


DO NOT leave a space between the characters and the semi-colon is essential.


          You can ident the first line of text with & n b s p ; same rules, no spaces and include semi-colon.




          just type the same number of & n b s p ; that you require as 'blank letters' which is what they are, to indent.
          All of the line spaces here are made with & # 1 0 ;
         These codes will works across all platforms and form part of the ISO Character set standard.

If you hit 'Quote' below this post, you can see the coding.
NL

 

[raphy]

Stuff posted on the web with indents just looks wrong

 

[Randi Grail]

Stuff posted on the web with indents just looks wrong

Definitely. I think the idea of how Literotica formats it's stories is very good. Here it's only good if the stories look the same in layout and formatting. It's not the font choice, intendation and tabs that makes a story what it is, but the plot and the words we choose to tell it with. Keep it simple and basic, and everyone will be better off. Yeah, I'm a bleedin' commie.

Doulble line breaks for paragraphs... regular quotation for speech...bold or italics for emphasis (or caps - "I'M CUUUMMMINNNGGGGGG"). If that is not enough to tell the story right, then I wonder if it's not the story that needs to be thought over.

 

[Randi Grail]

cantdog

The easiest way to insert an extra line is to type

& # 1 0 ;
where you want the line


DO NOT leave a space between the characters and the semi-colon is essential.


          You can ident the first line of text with & n b s p ; same rules, no spaces and include semi-colon.




          just type the same number of & n b s p ; that you require as 'blank letters' which is what they are, to indent.
          All of the line spaces here are made with & # 1 0 ;
         These codes will works across all platforms and form part of the ISO Character set standard.

If you hit 'Quote' below this post, you can see the coding.
NL

For an extra line break, what's wrong with just hitting Enter twice or more? Won't that work? I was under the impression that Lit just converted the ASCII character 13 to a BR tag like most other sites do.

 

[neonlyte]

Raphy and R Grail

I'm not advocating change but offering advice.

I can see where more than a single line break can be useful in a story, sometimes you need a pause in the action, along the lines Cantdog was indicating to switch between 'parts' of a story.

Also, if you are writing poetry, it can be that the visual layout has significance, I've had to learn to do this to set some semantic poetry by Stefan Themerson for a web site, the poem is read horizontally AND vertically, word alignment is crucial.

Personally, I like the Lit layout, but can see why some would wish to be 'creative', however, if you are going to do it, do it right otherwise the mess will be awesum.

NL

 

[Lying Eyes]

My oddly formated story was pulled and I believe I now fixed the problem. I probably have to wait another week before it is posted again. Crossing my fingers tightly so that no other problem appears in my work.

 

[Boxlicker101]

cantdog

The easiest way to insert an extra line is to type

& # 1 0 ;
where you want the line


DO NOT leave a space between the characters and the semi-colon is essential.


          You can ident the first line of text with & n b s p ; same rules, no spaces and include semi-colon.




          just type the same number of & n b s p ; that you require as 'blank letters' which is what they are, to indent.
          All of the line spaces here are made with & # 1 0 ;
         These codes will works across all platforms and form part of the ISO Character set standard.

If you hit 'Quote' below this post, you can see the coding.
NL

Randi Grailo asked:
For an extra line break, what's wrong with just hitting Enter twice or more? Won't that work? I was under the impression that Lit just converted the ASCII character 13 to a BR tag like most other sites do.


I have to agree. I always put a blank line between paragraphs. At the end of the paragraph, I hit ENTER twice, and that's it. When I paste the story onto the submissions page, I check to make sure things have come through the way I want, and that's all there is to it.

 

[Lying Eyes]

My story is back up and the irritating formating problem is now gone. What disappoints me now is that it keeps its original date. That means it is no longer considered new despite that it was only displayed for about one day. In my previous two stories I recieved almost all my views when they were listed as new so I fear no one will take a look at my third story

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Lying Eyes New Story that got screwed out of a week of NEW status is here:

The Truth Shall Set You Free

It might help if you put a link into your signature line so that people may access your member page more easily. I've gotta finish a story tonight but if I get it done at a decent hour, I'll head on over and read the new story. Good luck getting some reads.

~lucky

 

[MagicFingers]

Try this guide

Since I've been using this formatting guide, found in the Writer's Resources, I have had no problems. And there seems to be a shorter review time before release. If you use this to format & submit your story, you will know exactly what it will look like in Lit!

Good luck.
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=57781

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Try this guide

Since I've been using this formatting guide, found in the Writer's Resources, I have had no problems.

Thanks for the endorsement of my How To Essay.

Unfortunately it isn't something that can solve Lying Eyes and other WebTV users problems bcause it requires a PC to use.