Story Submissions

[Slammr (imported)]

I've agreed to help Paolo with validating newly submitted stories, so if your story doesn't appear, you might add me to the list of people to blame. I'm not going to judge the stories on whether I think they are good; I'll follow the guidelines listed here: http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=10515.

I would like to add a couple of things: use a spell checker; use appropriate paragraph breaks.

I trashed one story, and would have trashed another, but released it by mistake, because they had many spelling errors and few paragraph breaks. If you're writing dialog, and the person speaking changes, start a new paragraph. Paragraphs are cheap: just hit the enter button on your computer.

I'd rather see too many than too few paragraphs. One of these stories had the three required paragraphs, but one paragraph in particular should have been broken into several paragraphs. It doesn't hurt to start a new paragraph each time you write a new piece of dialog or start a new thought.

Other than the rule to start a new paragraph when writing dialog each time a new person speaks, I can't give you hard and fast rules on when you should start a new paragraph other than don't lump many different thoughts together into one paragraph. When to start a new paragraph can sometimes be an artistic decision. My advice is, if you're not sure what you're doing, to add a paragraph break whenever the thought or action changes.

If your story doesn't get posted, email or pm me, and I'll let you know if I trashed it and tell you why, if I did. I'll even offer general suggestions on what you can do to correct it, so it can be posted.