Gay Authors -Publisher Perspective and Story Posting Requirements

[Myr]

I'm observing, as of late, a certain amount of pushback from Authors on how they want their stories to look.  I'm certain that this has long been a sticking point between Publishers and Authors.  Authors want one thing and Publishers want another.  When Gay Authors first started, we had custom websites for each author.  Every author had their own look, their own feel, their own navigation.  At the time Gay Authors was just that, a collection of independent authors doing independent things.  Technology steamed along and a software called eFiction came out and we started using that to allow authors to post their own stories.  It quickly grew and allowed Gay Authors to grow because the staff was no longer tied up making custom websites.  This went along for a couple years growing and growing until finally, we needed a new solution.  So, I wrote specifications for software that would fully integrate with our forum software and features and would fix all the problems of eFiction, putting all authors into one place, with a consistent look and feel for Gay Authors.  We called it GA.Stories at the time to fit with Invision Forums naming scheme.  IP.Blog, IP.Forums, etc.  The rollout was... not fun.  A lot of hosted authors threw outright tantrums.  Several left Gay Authors in a high drama huff.  My patience in that timeframe still needed vast improvements.  I've learned since.  

 

I know @C James is one of the authors that was greatly discouraged by the lack of customization available in the original GA.Stories.  The Rich Text Editor of the time, which is actually an early version of what we use now, didn't have the robustness it has today.  C James has a lot of cool pictures that fit his story and the editor simply choked on them.  (BTW, pictures work great now even allowing text to wrap around them properly)

Anyway, the original move to GA.Stories taught us some painful lessons and we used those lessons when we upgraded the site to Forums 4.1 with the new version of Stories.  I'm frustrated with the slow pace of updates from our programmer, but you get what you can afford and the pool of programmers that can integrate with the forums is small.  

 

But that brings me, finally, to my point.  We have set up a story hosting system that purposely segregates different types of data so that we can present the best consistent look to our readers.  Further,  by keeping things separated, when we make a software update for a format change, we can update the entire site in one go, instead of having to worry about how it affects certain stories that our outside the standard.  Another very important aspect of this is the Chapter Text Controls.

Those controls do not work properly when authors mess with formatting a lot.  We've got some code in place to try to mitigate it, but honestly one of the oldest computer sayings out there applies here perfectly:  Garbage In, Garbage Out.  We have not overly restricted the Rich Text Editor yet to allow for the maximum convenience to the Authors.  Some authors have been abusing this on purpose or because we haven't been clear enough.  So, I'm making this post for our authors here and we'll work to make things clear before we post it wider.

 

In the system, we have specific fields for everything.  This allows us to have a consistent feel for everyone.  It allows us to leverage features, like Series.  I saw a story note the other day linking to the next story in the series.  I about hit the roof.  We have a Series feature specifically for that.  There is a blog Tuesday Jan 9th detailing that. 

 

We make these rules clear to authors in the Moderation Queue:

• Any notes for a story belong in the Story Note text field and will be displayed on the Story Detail/Table of Contents Page
• Chapter Text field is for Chapter Text ONLY.  There is to be no notes, no repeating of the chapter number and chapter title.  No repeat of the Table of Contents. Chapter Text ONLY.
• Chapter Note field is for Chapter notes you want to appear before the chapter text.  It shows up in a noticeable box on the chapter page.
• Chapter End Note is for notes that you want to appear at the end of a chapter.  It shows up in a noticeable box at the end of a chapter page.
• Chapter Text should be posted clear of formatting except for:
  • Bold - This can be used sparingly for emphasis.  If it is used for more than a handful of words, then you are using it wrong.  Your writing should provide the required emphasis, not the formatting.
  • Italics.  Same as with bold.  The exception here is that in Fantasy, Sci-Fi and FanFictions, italics often indicates mental communications instead of verbal.
  • Letter format - There is a button in the editor for this so that you can tag a block of text as a letter.  This is used in some fiction to show a written letter format.
  • IM/Texting Format - There is a button in the editor for this so that you can tag a block of text as being IM's or Texting.  This is used in some fiction to show texting, IM's and emails.
  • Rarely, but center and right justified might be used.
• Formatting you should NOT be using and why:
  • Font Style - This does not usually work as intended and sometimes conflicts with the Chapter Text controls.
  • Colors - There are people that are color blind or seeing impaired and the colors mess with the Chapter Text controls.
  • Size - Members are able to set their own preferred size when reading with the Chapter Text Controls and setting a text size, especially a larger one, really messes that up.
  • Nothing else really either because of how it'll look across various devices.
• Pictures can be used in the chapter text, but they need to be uploaded to the site somewhere else first.  Typically in the Gallery.  Pictures should be used to enhance and emphasize your story.  Resizing, and assigning title to the picture are also important.  (just double-click inserted picture)

 

FanFiction.net and Fictionpress.com solve these formatting issues by restricting all formatting to just bold and italic and stripping everything else when you paste.  We can do this as well.  It would solve a lot of our problems from a technical aspect.  I'd prefer allow authors to handle it themselves.  We will be working with software updates to clean this up.  Authors that need to be reminded of these issues may find themselves back into the moderation queue.  We're not making these rules arbitrarily.  They are to accommodate reading on various devices along with support for people with disabilities.

 

Simple advice for posting into the system:

• Write in your program of choice
• Use these settings:

  • Please check your spacing! - Do a search for ^p^p and replace with ^p. After the find/replace, select all and go to paragraph formatting. Your line spacing should be single, and your after spacing should be "auto"

  • Do not indent - Whether it is by tabs or you have it set for a first line indent, please remove all indentation.

  • Use Size 12 Times New Roman Font

• Paste into the chapter text editor
• Verify bold and italics if required.
• Add your image(s) if needed, being sure to double click on the image and naming it. Selecting left or right for alignment will let the text flow around the picture.

 

Let us know here why you're using chapter text for anything other than chapter text.  There might be opportunities to improve existing software structure.

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Myr
Updated posting advice

[Brayon]

Myr, thank you for posting this, and for explaining the tech behind the system. My only concern is this. I've found when you copy/paste from Word to the Editor, and then strip the formatting, that when you publish it ends up as one large block of text. There is no spacing between chapters, no natural breaks between lines. Frankly, it's hard to read and looks ugly.

 

My question is this, what can we do to prevent that? I'm following all the formatting guidelines, and other rules you all have set forth. In my word docs, I use the same standard you all ask for the 2018 Summer Contest. They are as follow:
 

Quote

 

Formatting

• Please check your spacing! - Do a search for ^p^p and replace with ^p. After the find/replace, select all and go to paragraph formatting. Your line spacing should be single, and your after spacing should be "auto"
• Do not indent - Whether it is by tabs or you have it set for a first line indent, please remove all indentation.
• Use Size 12 Times New Roman Font: If you do not write using Times New Roman font, prior to sending your story to Renee, change your font to Times New Roman and set the size to 12.
• Chapter Separation – Please ensure each chapter is separated by a page break to ensure they are easily found

 

 

 

Even after doing this, Copy/Paste and stripping, it ends up being a wall of text.

 

What am I doing wrong?

 

The computer is using Windows 10, with Microsoft Office 2007 with Service Pack 3 and the Grammarly Extension. I use Firefox for my Browser, again with the Grammarly Extension, and all adblockers and other extensions turned off for the Gay Authors website.

[Myr]

7 minutes ago, BHopper2 said:

Even after doing this, Copy/Paste and stripping, it ends up being a wall of text.

Let me check more into this.

[Myr]

@BHopper2 I've got my word set up with Renee's requirements and I can paste directly into the editor with no changes and everything works as intended.

I've updated the original post to cover that.

[Brayon]

6 minutes ago, Myr said:

Let me check more into this.

Thank you, Myr. Sorry to be a pain in the backside.

As an Example: https://www.gayauthors.org/story/comicfan/blue-brownie-and-wedding-white/1

If I recall correctly, Comicfan mentioned the formatting of the story, was because of the stripping.

 

1 minute ago, Myr said:

@BHopper2 I've got my word set up with Renee's requirements and I can paste directly into the editor with no changes and everything works as intended.

I've updated the original post to cover that.

Awesome. Thank you.

[Myr]

6 minutes ago, BHopper2 said:

If I recall correctly, Comicfan mentioned the formatting of the story, was because of the stripping.

The formatting can be put in using the editor too.

 

Software is all a pain in the backside.  Trying to get everyone marching in the same direction at least reduces the variability of issues a bit.

[Timothy M.]

4 hours ago, Myr said:

• Please check your spacing! - Do a search for ^p^p and replace with ^p. After the find/replace, select all and go to paragraph formatting. Your line spacing should be single, and your after spacing should be "auto"

• Use Size 12 Times New Roman Font

 

Hmm, interesting with the spacing and the font. I use a word template which has the Normal Setting as Font = Calibri 11, line spacing = 1,15 and after spacing = 10 pkt. No indents. When I paste into the editor box I get the correct result, as far as I can see, even though I don't clear the format. Maybe I'm just lucky.  

[Daddydavek]

Thanks for the update and reminder.  If I ever get my shit together and get something written I think is worth sharing, I will need to remember this as its been a while since I posted a story......

So I've decided to follow this topic and hope I see it often enough to keep the rules in mind.

[Brayon]

@Myr I can't find it now, but did you once post that BBC code could be used to do Bold and Italics? Are they still available to us?

 

Example:

Bold = [/b ]

Italic = [/i ] (without the space in both cases in the second bracket)

Edited January 13, 2018 by BHopper2
I see that it worked, but with a bit of an issue.