Both excellent stories. In fact, the whole of the Little Bird series is captivating so if anyone hasn't read from the start, it's well worth the time.

Congratulations on a richly deserved pair of awards.

Fab story. A delicious tease. Well deserved award. ❤️

Quote by bojacauthor
different programs have different counts. You'd think we'd have that figured out by now

Yeah. Even word processors disagree among themselves. Some count hyphenated or em-dashed words as one, others count them as two. Some ignore hyphens and ellipses and dividers, some don't. Some (like our public-facing counter here currently) seem to take headings and, maybe, the tagline and perhaps tags, and maybe some hidden markup too, and then rounds up. Who knows.

We haven't identified why there's a difference just that there is. Moderators use the counter in the story Edit window as the stake in the ground, not whatever is displayed on the website.

Even when that's "fixed" it'll likely still disagree with other systems, and be different to the value in our Story Edit panel. That's the nature of code.

Quote by AvidlyCurious

The cap is part of the challenge

This.

We appreciate there may be a few-word leeway if you've used, say, a story divider or 'space hyphen space' between words, etc, as each of these stylistic elements may rob a "word" off the counter. So an author might get away with 2005 or something in that vicinity. But 200 more? Nope, sorry!

Quote by bojacauthor
story that wound up at 2.2k

See this post for more.

https://www.lushstories.com/forum/welcome-to-lushstoriescom-site-guidelines-help/lush-stories-competition-judging-process?page=1&post=4421087

You did the category justice and then some. In fact, if I ever make it anywhere near Omnium, that's one of the categories I fear would trip me up, but your treatment gave me ideas on how to approach it. So thank you ❤️

Quote by AmuseBouche
I think you will all need to sit down for this one

I concur.

I sympathise, Mr. Wordsmith, it was very difficult to get the balance tipped in the right direction.

It was. And now readers have not one but two stories set in Paris, submitted seconds apart. A double does of French Filth to get those libidos stirring.

Quote by joe71
having a character say, “Ooh, that little black dress looks painted on!” instead of a long paragraph describing what that character was wearing.

Yes. That's a great trick, and a perfect example of how to do it well. I had to use it extensively in my competition story. The hard part, as always with dialogue, is making it sound natural.

"Hi Joe. Wow, your 5' 8" brunette neighbour looks hot with her yellow polka dot bikini on and sculpted ass flexing as she swims in your pool" doesn't cut it 🤪🤣

if it’s in quotes, does internal monologue count?

That seems fine to me. I'd even allow it to count if it's not in quotes or you used single quotes or italics to denote thoughts.

Heck, you could even write a story where the character is essentially talking to themself and psyching themself up for something. That would be different. Difficult, but different.

One more editing pass: 50.55%. That'll do for me, woohoo.

If anyone has yet to read Lips, which is in the BDSM category but is actually quite fetishy, then please give it a spin. It's about a guy who is obsessed with female lips and their shape, as he toys with a woman he deems has the perfect mouth.

It earned a Recommended Read, of which I'm proud, and has had some excellent comments so far, but nobody to date has mentioned the one thing about the story that is very different to almost every other story I've written. Maybe you'll be the one to notice it?

I followed that up with a Microfiction piece called To Come Or Not To Cum, That Is The Question, which is a tongue-in-cheek look at how to spell 'cum' or 'come' in its various forms.

Finally, for now, I've teamed up with the amazingly talented PurdyPeaches again for a look at what happens when the spark is lost in a marriage and how it can turn some people in directions they didn't expect. Try Thirsty and please let us know what you think.

Thank you as ever for reading any of my work.

I tried a "words in quotes counting" macro and it insists that my ratio is 49.55% dialogue. And no matter what I try to make it more dialoguey, it won't change much beyond that.

I'll need to hack some prose out and add a few lines of speech. Or try a different macro that gives a more favourable response 🤣

Oh and in terms of what I'm currently working on, a competition story for the Dirty Talk comp. And another piece set in Hell that I thought was going to become my comp piece but then I decided it needed more space than the imposed word limit so I'm developing the idea further. It has promise so may see the light of day after being on my drive for a couple of years untouched, with only one paragraph written in it until this week.

As joe71 says, a little attachment is good for developing character traits and insight. But if you love them too much you may end up not wanting to harm them or not wanting to put them in morally awkward situations. Then they'll turn into boring shells, devoid of conflict with others or they come across as invincible, always getting into scrapes and coming out unscathed. And nobody wants to read that stuff long-term.

Conflict drives a story so be wary if you find too much emotional attachment developing. It can spell the end for a character. I try to retain some semblance of objectivity in writing to avoid this.

Quote by Georgia_27_8
I just like to do things from start to finish with little to no interruptions

Crikey. If I did this I think I'd have 3 published stories here, not 103. Some of mine take months and I sometimes leave them entirely in draft state for ages without looking at them. Then maybe find one of them and read it and the fresh perspective will either spark an idea and I'll carry on hacking it into shape, or it won't and I'll find another draft until it does.

Some stories I've kept around and deemed totally unsalvageable, but then another story comes along and I'll steal a single good line or thought from a draft piece and fold it into another. As far as I'm concerned, that's worth the untidy overhead of keeping drafts around unfinished.

Quote by Longhair
In the UK, the tendency is to place them outside

Weird. I just straw-polled ten books on my physical and digital bookshelves from a bunch of UK authors and they all use double quotes for speech, and trailing punctuation inside them.

I'm British and don't think I've read a book in the last 40 years that has punctuation outside the quotes, so I'm not sure where this "tendency" comes from. Maybe I'm reading the wrong books.

Either way, we adopt the 'inside' convention here. If you don't want to play, that's a shame but it's up to you.

Quote by MC1982
Would script format be acceptable?

As far as I remember, we don't tend to permit these but we may have published the odd piece. The OP states:

things formatted as chat transcripts are not acceptable

and a script is just a glorified form of back and forth chat with a little scene setting.

So my inclination is no, but wait until the boss weighs in, as she may see things differently.

Quote by KimmiBeGood

Question: do 1K or under need to be Flash only or are you allowing the 600-1K in other categories?

You can put short works in any category you like. Flash isn't a dumping ground for "anything under 1K" lol.

Flash is an art form to tell a complete story (not just a scene or part of a series) in a very short space that appears bigger than its word count. If you can write the hottest story on earth in under 500 words that gets every reader soaked or horny then it can go in Flash or any category. Also, get an agent and make money off it 😎

Quote by Longhair
Aren't American and British styles of dialogue punctuation different?

Not as far as I'm aware. Closing punctuation always goes on the inside of the quotes. That's the standard we mod to here, and have always done since the site launched. The only exception is if you're quoting someone else and the quote itself doesn't have punctuation at its end. See Quotes within quotes.

As for apostrophe Vs double quotes, that's an author's stylistic choice. We don't care as long as it's consistently used throughout the story and it's clear who's saying what (new speaker new paragraph, and all that good stuff).

Quote by Longhair
Does anyone know of a refresher website for those of us of a British persuasion to brush up on our dialogue punctuation

cough cough our Writing Tips area is a good start.

"Fuck yeah," said the Wordsmith.

Very well deserved. AC is a powerhouse. ❤️

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die

Entertaining nonsense, as always in the franchise.

Which one?! I am so heavily influenced by film, every one of my stories is a cinematic experience 🤣

But seriously, there are a few that I feel might work well...

Choices: Between A Cock And A Hard Place

Because I love the noirish setting as the protagonist has to come to terms with her decisions. Robert Rodriguez would direct this one for sure.

Fate Into Doubt Won't Go

Because washed up, cynical PIs put into difficult situations by beautiful women make great screen fodder.

Locke, Cock and Two Smoking Jetboots

Because the comedy antics of the wannabe James Bond character has oodles of scope for spinoffs.

It's a superb story. Congratulations.

Ooh I like this.

Not sure this isn't well-known but Tori Amos taught herself piano by ear as a toddler, and was composing her own songs by age three. She was so fucking good, she became the youngest person to join some hoity toity musical institute where she studied the classics, and was also, I believe, the only person encouraged to leave due to musical differences. By the time she was eleven.

She's an amazing pianist, totally fucking bonkers and, while I don't love everything she's ever done, I can't say how many times I've played the album Under The Pink. In fact, I'm surprised the laser didn't wear out the CD substrate on my copy during my uni years.

She's also much shorter than I expected, when she snuck out of a side door after the show at Sheffield Civic Hall and almost collided with my wife.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that this curiously-titled piece of erotica has been decorated with the coveted Editors' Pick ribbon.

Brimming with sumptuous details and vulnerability, the two main characters discover one another... and themselves, as they spend a scorching time in bed.

The piece is narrated with such honest confidence it's hard not to get swept up in wanting to find out what the hell the title has to do with it all. And, even when it's revealed, you still want to read on to see how it's reconciled.

It's such an original tale, told with incredible panache, and I'm so pleased the panel agreed with me that this is fiiiiine storytelling.

Please read I Only Cum When A Dog Watches by KellyRandom and join me in bestowing congratulations on writing such a fantastic story.

Say what?!

Wowow. I just woke up and found out. Had to double check it wasn't a dream.

I'm stunned. The quality of the stories was insane and I read just about all of them I think. I'm not surprised it was hard to shortlist them. Glad it wasn't my job.

Congratulations to everyone who entered, made the top 13, and my fellow podium sharers. So well deserved. It's an honour to be among such talent on this site. Reading other people's stories here pushes me to work at honing my own writing, so thank you to everyone who publishes here and helps make the site what it is.

Thanks as always to Jen, the judges, mods and the team who keep the site's lights on. You're all awesome. Drinks are on me. 🍻

Yes it's a thing and I haven't nailed down exactly the circumstances it happens. It seems to be if you have multiple tabs open, one of which is the Messages (IM) panel and you're having a convo with someone and then flick away to the other tab. While you're there, if you get another message through, the Allow Notifications From This Website dialogue pops up.

It doesn't seem to do it on all panels (which is why I've not found a convincing pattern yet) but I'm pretty sure it does it if I'm on the forum in one tab and the IM panel in another. Maybe the profile panel, can't remember. It is kinda annoying and doesn't seem to matter if I click Deny. It comes back again next time (that might be a feature of using incognito though).

There is no bulk deletion option at present, sorry.

Superb choices. Your family members and secret vote caster know a good story when they see one. Or three in this case.

Congratulations to the highly deserving podium positions. Loved all three of those, plus a tonne more that piqued my interest.

A really fun and challenging competition, Kimmi. Thank you so much for running it. Incredibly generous of you.