Story Rejection Final Notice - July 2017

[Paolo]

OK, folks, this is it. Sadly, it's come to this.

Recently, there have been a few more stories coming in than in the past few months. I really expected winter in the northern hemisphere to result in more stories coming in, but alas, that didn't happen. Anyway, thank you to all those who have submitted new stories!

Now for the problem, as it's become a very big one in recent months. I don't know why, but it has - and it has to stop. I cannot spend up to an hour fixing a story that is a mess. Period. There are several reasons, and while this might be a rehash of some of the things in the story guidelines, well...here we go again.

The main problem is failure to understand punctuation and use of quotation marks. There are plenty of books in print, and stories posted here, there, and yonder with plenty of dialog in them to give you examples of how dialog should look when written. The last story with this problem that came in required a FIND AND REPLACE of the closing " mark with a ," over 150 times. And that's just one example. Never mind the "fishing" for the end of the quote, when the closing " is left off.

I guess I need to state, again, that stories that are unreadable are going to be rejected. Sloppy dialog is a huge problem in reading a story. If you are unsure, please check out a story by Nathan, Slammr, me, Atreyu, Cainanite, or any other prolific writer who has it down.

A few weeks ago, I had to reject a story that appeared really interesting. It was, however, impossible to read and know who was talking to whom. The punctuation/quotation marks were just such a mess that I couldn't follow it.

I don't mind a few missed words in spell check. No spell check is 100% accurate. That's fine. Sometimes typos even get past me in my stories. And past Jesus A. And past Kristoff...you get the idea!

Spacing isn't an issue either. That's easy to fix. It would help if your document is set for .2" or so in the "after paragraph" option. But it's OK if it's not.

I can deal with the body of the story being in the text of the email, and not in an attached file, but I'd rather not, thanks.

If English is not your first language, then send the story to me in whatever your native language is: French, German, Chinese, hell, we can even take Klingon! I don't mind. If readers can't use an online translator to get the general idea, to make it easier for the writer in this case, then fuck 'em.

For the record, it takes me about 20 minutes to read a 10k word story and fix paragraph spacing, if needed. That's fine. I realize that different word-eaters out there handle the break differently, and the EA story format system does its own thing with them. Sometimes they argue. That's fine.

It's not my job, however, to have to reinterpret your story and sometimes end up doing so much editing, that I might as well be retyping it.

Honestly, I hate to have to say "no." While it's a whole different topic, so many of the old writers have quit that we're happy to see anything come in these days.

[Eunuchorn (imported)]

As a science fiction fan, I do have to ask, How many stories of Klingons gelding or being gelded do we have? gives a new meaning to Far Out Space Nuts I am sure...

[Paolo]

Talula thought that a Klingon language marker was a good idea. I don't think there are any.