Hookers Guide To The Galaxy.

Quote by Seeker4
It is the same ownership and software, basically Lush's sister site for publishing non-erotic, mostly SFW fiction.
Oh! Kinda like how FFN has FictionPress. I just might make an account on there. I've been wanting a place that isn't Wattpad for my non-erotic work. FictionPress doesn't work with my phone or Firefox, SOL is annoying as shit, and Writingdotcom only gives you ten free slots, and Quotev doesn't seem to have a large active userbase.
Quote by Seeker4
Just like literary magazines, the Lush team sets whatever standards they feel necessary to create the site they are aiming for. If you don't like those standards then, yeah, submit elsewhere. As you apparently have done.
That's why I'm on more than one site. I ain't new to this game. I've been writing on Lit, since 2011, and have a FFN account, I know how to write within guidlines. FFN doesn't even allow sex. I'm on, like ten sites.
Quote by Just_A_Guy_You_Know
If they don't adhere to our standards, then it's unlikely that they'll be missed here. I also know that many publishers frown on dual submissions or 'double-dipping.' It's essentially self-plagiarism. All content should be 'exclusive.'
Yeah, that's usually traditional publishers, not sites like this one. I have seen, maybe two sites that want exclusive content. But every site I publish on, doesn't care. They're concern is actual plagiarism. I'm on several. Fanfic sites, for example, do not. I read submission guidelines, tos, and the faq of every writing site before I join. If I recall; even KDP and Smash doesn't mind it.
I'm not really concerned if they'd be missed or not. I don't get snide comments like this. I'm not complaining that I can't post them here, or about the site specifically. It was a general grievance about censorship one has to deal with, in general. With the number of sites that employ socially left thought police, like TikTok, YouTube, NextDoor, and especially Facebook, one would think sites like these would be the last bastion of freedom of expression, at least to a reasonable point. Especially with the way people attack books. I've been seeing the Demolition Man landscape creeping up for years now, and one day we won't have a place to outwardly express ourselves. It'll be a digital Ferenheit 451, where we'll have to risk even the most vanilla of erotica on the dark web, and possibly incure some sort of punishment and social demerits.
It's not like the two stories are something heinous, like snuff, or . They'll find a home, and one that isn't like buying a Jay-Z CD at Walmart. That's why I'm on more than one erotica site.
Quote by Just_A_Guy_You_Know
Depends how you handle it. If your story is about Jews finding love with each other while being persecuted during world war 2, for example, that's one thing. If you're writing about Jews discovering their submissive sexuality in a Nazi concentration camp, I would think that crosses a very obvious line. Acknowledging that racism, prejudice and oppression exist is not a problem in most stories. Centering and glorifying it is. So, use some good sense and try not to be an 'edge-lord' intentionally being provocative and controversial for the shock value (it often comes off as desperate for attention rather than challenging the status quo). Also, if you use any racial epithets like the "N-word" etc., you'll probably see your story returned by the mods with at least a strong warning not to do it again, so try to avoid those. If that all sounds challenging and restrictive, then yeah, maybe write about bad teeth instead.
...well that's two of my stories that'll be exclusive to Lit. One would think writing sites would be warriors of expression and anti censorship, at least context depending. I found RoyalRoad to be the worst.
Quote by Seeker4
As a writer, I'm kind of leaning to 100% story these days and focussing on material that will end up on SS (or maybe other markets). But for here, I'd say somewhere between the 50-50 option and the 25-75 option lies my sweet spot. Where a given story lands depends on the story.
As a reader, probably around the 50-50 mark. If I'm reading smut, I generally there for the sex, not just a story.
That looks like a carbon copy of here, sans erotica.
At some point, if you're writing so much backstory, it may as well be a story in itself. There's ways to do it. I have an old novel where the mc has flashbacks. Currently working on a short story where it opens with a past scene of the mc's father dying, to help set why she's the way she is. I don't even think it's a whole page.
Quote by WannabeWordsmith
Absolutely. Novels was invented when the site was first created. Before we could link chapters together.
I get that a series isn't the same as a novel but we have good reason for the 10k limit.
Firstly, the volunteer moderators won't necessarily have time to read 150000 words.
Secondly, page speed, although less of an issue with larger bandwidths available, is still a concern on mobile devices and those out and about or in poor coverage areas.
And thirdly, a wall of text - even if it's broken up with formatting (which we don't offer much availability) into "chapters" isn't very helpful, especially if a reader wants to come back to a piece later. They have to scroll and scroll and scroll to reach the part they were at. That could of course be mitigated to some degree by an automatic ToC if they happened to be at a suitable chapter break, but if they were mid-chapter it's not going to help much. This is not a kindle experience.
Also, if one part had some sort of familial relationship, the entire piece would need to be moved to that category. And people can hide that category from their stories list so they'd never find it.
We used to put tags at the top of the story but since they're shown in the list, you know what you're getting before you click through sonthe actual tags are relegated to the bottom when viewing the story itself. Less to skip over.
Edit: site search and tag browsing are an ongoing annoyance. Hopefully will be fixed one day.
The 10k limit makes absolute sense to me. I honestly don't know how Laurel handles 750+ word submissions, and nearly hundreds a day, by herself. I don't remember the max count per page on lit, but it auto populates another page for anything longer than a single page. But really, and I may have explained it poorly; that's not what I think Lush should do, it was more so an example of a site that functions similar, but has that option. The issue is novel chapters are seperate submissions, instead of actual pages added, like Wattpad or Quotev does. I don't know how much restructuring that would be, though.
Have a few irons in the fire. Have had writers block for a long while, started rewriting some story layouts, that seemed to get things going. Two of them are erotica; a satirical generic high school story, and a transgender story. The others are for elsewhere. I just might publish them here first, and then to Literotica.
Quote by Kee
Having read all this thread my first thought was to axe Novels, but giving it more thought I suggest something of a compromise: leave it for those few people that really want to write what would legitimately fall into a Novel. In other words a multi chapter story with a connecting arc of characters and plot that has a real beginning, middle, and conclusion, where no chapters can stand alone. To me the difference between a novel and a series is the novel is as I just stated and a series is a group of stories that can stand alone but do have characters that may move in and out and there is no over arching story line that connects them all with a clear beginning, middle, and ending as modern fiction novels do.
That's what the difference is. A novel can be a series(Full series by Charlotte Huges), but a series isn't always a novel. It's like the difference between my Trigun graphic novels, and my Calvin and Hobbes books. One is a series of novels telling one story, while just one C&H book is a series of stories, that have no connections or order.
Quote by dronette56
My first thought was to keep the category because a novel is not (necessarily) the same thing as a series, but then I realized that the point was "Novel" as a category. I agree that we don't need the category, but there should be a way to flag the series as a novel, a longer, disciplined work with a beginning, middle, and end, and not a never-ending series. Using tags can help (e.g., Novel-in-progress and Novel), but perhaps we can add a Novel icon (like we do for comp entries, RRs, etc.). Perhaps an author gets a Novelist badge when they ask for one ("Hey, mods, my novel is done!").
The thing about this site, and those like it, like Literotica(despite it's page auto population, once word limits reached per page), is they aren't conclusive to novels. and one has to be submitted as multiple submissions. A novel and a series is not the same thing. A novel can be a series, but a series isn't a novel.
It seems the issue is more with site design, than the section itself. If I'm writing a novel, I'm wanting to get paid for it. It doesn't matter what the character limit is, the site seems to be designed more for short standalone style works, or at least not very intuitive of chaptered stories, like, say Wattpad, or AO3. Which is another reason I haven't done anything over 10k words here. With those sites, it's essentially like sub pages.
As far as the novels themselves, not knowing what they are goes back to site design, and is really an issue with every section, even if they are more catered to something specific; you don't know what it is, until you read it. The bylines are awesome and it's the only site I know that uses them. But they don't help much in determining what the story is. Tags should help. But what would really help is if there was a synopsis, and/or story information, especially in the list, instead of the first few lines of a story. Something like:
Sex Story
"Byline"
Man/woman, Outside, Mature, Novel, Interracial, Young Adult, Monogamous
A 50 something black man and 30 something irish woman, like to add spice to their relationship by having sex outside.
I believe StoriesOnline does something like that. The only reason I see a section like Novels stand out so much with this issue is because of how broad it is. Given site design, even more focused catagories come off just as broad, and honestly they are within the catagory they are. Like Transgender, for example; you don't know what you're exactly getting into, unless it's in the byline, until you read it. They only given is at least one trans person will be in the story. I could be looking for a typical My Trans Roommate story, and have to literally wade through everything not that, blind, until I see a story that eludes to that.
Breaking up novels to scatter the chapters across the catagorical winds, just doesn't seem like a good idea. I know I always don't have sex in every chapter. Mine are also in some way consistant in theme, which might be offputting to some readers seeing something where the main theme of a story is somewhere it shouldn't be, just because of a secondary theme a chapter is wrapped around, like a chapter of an story, because of an anal sex scene.
Quote by joe71
Then the whole world is lazy. NO ONE ON EARTH has the time to get done everything that they want in life. We all have to pick and choose how we spend our time. To not do this is to lack executive functioning skills.
For I, one author out of thousands on this site, to demand that people read every one of my precious nine thousand words would be the height of self-importance. Not only is it not going to happen, it would be arrogant to insist on it. I'm not that important. Neither are you.
Lemme clarify before you keep thinking I think I'm anywhere near a god my namesake may lend one to falsely believe. Because I know my station, sir, and it's the rundown bus station on the bad side of town.
[quote]...or has too much going on in their lives[/quote]
Because that's a perfectly good reason for one to limit what they wanna read, especially if they're in the mood for a complete story. How you managed to miss that part, yet still made the same point, while trying to chastise me for self-importance that I don't have, is a quandary. No it isn't. You were just too hyped up on the first part and wanting to put me in my place. There's an or there for a reason, and the first part was facetious at best, even if there's an ounce of truth.
I'm not arrogant, but I can be "lazy" when it comes to reading something longer than a novelette. Or I may read a novel length story and see a ten paragragh forum comment and say; "nah, not reading that".
Quote by colin123
The cover maker here is so much worse than it used to be, seems they are forever making changes that make things far more difficult for members. As a platinum member i expect a lot more from this site.
The only saving grace is they aren't required, like [removed]. It's the only thing keeping me from writing there, and the funny thing is; I used the app they suggest to use, and the cover wouldn't meet the requirments. As far as here, my problem comes with adding words--it doesn't. Won't even activate the keyboard. Even with assist mode, or desktop mode.
Quote by colin123
Also, is it better to have a picture to go with your story or not ?
Yeah, but I find it quite the bitch to use the cover maker here, so I make one elsewhere, that fucking works right. My current submission doesn't have one, and I think another might not. Call it showmanship or whatever, but for stories I'm not getting paid for; it's just extra work I really don't wanna do, anyway. Besides... ya shouldn't be judging books by them, anyway--that's what the summeries are for.
Quote by joe71
I will add that I’ve found this to be true from an author’s perspective and not just as a reader. My “Dick Job” story, for example, absolutely crackles with action, with not a boring paragraph, and it is my only submittal to have placed in the top ten of a competition. Yet despite that recognition, it has only received 3300 views and 32 votes. That places it in the bottom half of my stories for attention. Because at 9000 words, it is just too goddamned long to attract many eyeballs.
Those are lazy folks, or got too much going in their lives.
I met Muhammed Ali as a kid. He was going to see somebody that lived in the apartment building both my granny's lived in.
Somehow we were invited to the birthday of the woman who played the wife on the show Roc.
I met Funk Master Flex at his car show, and met DJ Unk there.
I met Jesse Combs at a car show where she was spectating. She actually waved me over to touch the big afro I had at the time.
I think it was Dave Atell I used to talk to on Myspace, before he got real famous.
One of Nappy Roots used to cut my hair when I was in Middle school.
My nephew claims we used to hang out with Jack Harlow when we were kids, but I don't believe it. Supposedly a few times when I was in middle school.