Fiction Posting Information

[Dave]

Welcome to the SFReader Member Fiction Forum!

There are a few things you need to know before you post:

New members can't post here, only members that have actively participated in the forum and have a certain number of posts have posting permission.

In contrast, ANYONE can read this forum. That means if you post an unpublished story here, you might not be able to sell First Rights on it anymore because it's been posted in a public forum. Some editors won't care, and some will, so make sure you know your market.

Only post complete stories/chapters. This is not a critique forum. That doesn't mean other members can't offer feedback (I hope they will), but it does mean you shouldn't post fragements, incomplete work, or works in progress.

For those members who do decide to offer feedback, comment on the work, not the author. I don't need to say it since SFReader has a great and friendly community, but friendly is a key word around here!

Posting format, please follow!

• Thread title: please use the title of the story as the title of the thread. Include general genre of your story
• At the top of your story, before enything else, state the word count and an estimated reading time. An 'average' reader reads between 250 - 300 words per minute, so please calculate your average reading time by dividing your word count by 250 (required).
  
• Publication history, if there is any (optional).
  
• How you came up with the story idea. Where writers get their ideas is almost always of interest to readers and other writers (optional).
  
• After this, post the title of your story (required)
  
• Byline (optional)

So when you post a story:

Thread title: Story Title (broad genre)

Starting at the of the post:

Words: X,XXX (required)
Est. Reading Time: (X,XXX/250) minutes (required)

Publishing history (optional)

I got the idea for this story when I was kidnapped and probed by aliens. (optional)


Story Title (required)
Byline (optional)

[story]


Thanks and enjoy!

[Jaqhama]

Good stuff, Dave.

I posted a story myself an hour ago...but then deleted it because the automatic forum formatting won't allow me to copy and paste and keep the original formatting.

My stories are all indented, justified, 1.5 line spaced and have scene breaks as * in the middle of the page...none of which worked when I pasted the story into the SF Reader page.

It was just a tight mass of sentences without the 1.5 or double line spacing.
Extremely hard to read after a few minutes.

Is there a way we can keep our own formatting when we copy and paste a story?

Maybe enabling the HTML code in our settings options?

I'm not going to space out 1.5 lines manually, too much trouble.

Cheers: Jaq.

[Dave]

Hi Jaq,

I pasted my story from Word and it kept line spacing. Not sure if I did anything different. I did paste it into the 'code view' editing block, not the WYSIWYG block, if that makes any sense. You can switch back and forth between code view and WYSIWYG view by clicking the A/A in the upper right of the reply box.

[John M. Whalen]

I'm having the same formatting problems. I tried Word and rtf. Comes out the same. Single spaced, erratic paragraphing indents. Not readable. I don't have time to mess with it right now. I'll try again later.

[Jaqhama]

I don't know how I did it, but on about my fifth attempt the page format decided to copy and paste exactly the same as it was in the original document.

Left me scratching my head, wondering what button I'd pushed to make it work correctly.

I then went back to edit and bolded a few words, changed the font on a few words and just generally tried to make the document look a little more appealing.

[Dave]

Hey Jaq,

I went into your story and edited it at code level to clean it up.....

[Jaqhama]

Dave...I thought you might have had a hand in fixing the formatting problem.

We must have been online at the same time.

Is there a way that we can all do the formatting as you did for me?

I tried changing from A to A but that didn't make any diffeence, made the page post box bigger is all.

I didn't try swapping from the WYSIWYG view to the standard editing view...should I have?

Le Carcajou looks great on the page...the sentences are supposed to be short, in case anyone thinks the formatting is still off. It's the narrator processing info as the situation unfolds around him.

Cheers: Jaq

[Dave]

Hey Jaq,

Switching the A/A button might not look as though nothing is chaninging, but it is chainging your view.

In code view, you'll see the bbcode markup, like around a word that is bolded, while in WYSIWYG, all you see is the bolded word.

I just went to code view, copied all, pasted into Notepad, and cleaned it up. Took a minute or two....