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Common Writing Errors That Will Probably Result In Rejection of

I have read a lot of erotica, both good and horrible, and the difference is not always content.  It’s the formatting of the story and the punctuation used along with an excessive number of typos.  Here are some tips that will help make sure your efforts at writing result in publication on any discerning erotic story site like Noveltrove.

The number one killer is the thousand-word paragraph, and believe it or not, stories like this are out there.  There is no real grammatical reason or requirement for paragraphs, but they are usually used to group sentences that relate to a common subject, such as a description of a scene or to describe the actions of a character.  Dialogue is usually written as a paragraph so it stands out from the rest of the text.

Since there are no “rules” for paragraphs, there is no formal definition for the size, but there are several schools of thought ranging from one sentence to three to five sentences as being the appropriate length.  A look at any novel will tell you that most authors write paragraphs as long as they think they need to be but most will be relatively short.

The practical reason for paragraphs is for ease of reading, and this is especially important for text intended to be read on a computer screen or on a cell phone.

My computer screen can display twenty-seven lines of a Noveltrove story.  My cell phone can display fourteen lines in “landscape” mode.  In “portrait” mode it can display twenty-three, but these are only about half as long, so it’s the equivalent of about eleven lines of text.  Tablets are somewhere in between depending upon the size and the size font selected.  

What this means is that on a computer screen, once a paragraph runs past twenty-seven lines, the reader has to cursor down to see the rest, and it’s very easy to go too far if there’s not some “white space” to use as a reference point.  On a cell phone, it’s worse since most have some sort of “inertia” paging that lets the screen continue to roll after you’ve stopped moving your finger.  It is extremely easy to lose your place.

The easiest way to fix this is to group your text into short paragraphs and separate them with the “white space” that results from tapping the enter key twice.  Try to keep the paragraphs to ten or twelve lines each.  If the story needs a longer paragraph, that’s fine as long as they all aren’t really long.  That way, two or more will display on most devices with the white space in between them.  That makes paging up and down much easier for the reader.  If a reader gets lost once or twice, they’ll just stop reading and go on to the next story.  That’s why stories written with huge paragraphs probably won’t get published.

The second most common error I’ve seen is in the use of punctuation.  The errors are both incorrect punctuation and lack of punctuation.  

The worst punctuation error is lack of enough, and I’ve read some stories that have no punctuation whatsoever.  Apparently, the writer started typing the first sentence and didn’t stop until the story was done.  

Sentences that run on and on with multiple subjects and actions are confusing to read and often don’t make sense.  Keep your sentences relatively short and if there are multiple actions or ideas taking place, separate them with a comma.  Be sure to end each sentence with a period so the reader knows that’s the end of that sentence.

Make sure each sentence is a complete sentence, that is, each one has a subject and a verb.  “Fucking like a mad man”, is not a sentence.  If that’s what you were doing, it should read “I was fucking like a mad man”.    The only exception to this rule is dialogue.  Dialogue doesn’t need to be in complete sentences, but it should have proper punctuation.

The other punctuation error is too much punctuation and usually involves commas.  Let’s look at commas first.

There are some grammatical reasons to use commas – to separate items in a list and to separate related but different subjects and actions in the same sentence for example – but the practical reason is to allow the reader to breathe.  I know, people don’t breathe when they read, but in reality, they breathe in much the same way they would if they were reading out loud.  They stop reading and take a breath at most of the commas.  If you start to hyperventilate when proofreading a story, you have used too many commas.

Read this and breathe in and out with every comma, and you’ll see what I mean.

I was, though it may seem strange, as I’m certain it is to many people, a man without a country, though I was born in a country, even though that country no longer exists, thanks to a global conflict, one that most would consider world war, or at least, a serious, devastating conflict, involving multiple, distinct governments.

It’s typical of what I’ve read in the past, and all the commas make the sentence disjointed and hard to read.

Typos won’t usually get a story rejected unless there are a lot of them, but it does happen.  Mostly this is caused by either not proofreading a story before submitting it, or by proofreading it right after writing it.  

Depending upon the auto-correct feature of a spellchecker is not proofreading because sometimes spellcheckers change misspelled words in strange and mysterious ways because some ignore context.  Type this sentence into your document and see what the auto-correct feature changes it to.  All the misspellings are the result of moving a finger one key from the correct letter or dropping a letter, a common way misspellings occur.

I lve when she strpkes my penus with her fonger whule we’re having sdx.

My copy of Word changes the sentence to -

I le when she strakes my peens with her fonder whale we’re having sax.

Perhaps your spellchecker is better, but don’t count on that being the case.  Most also have difficulty with phonetic spelling and with the latest slang words as well as with common misspellings.

Proofreading too soon after writing a story is also a bad idea.  This is because our brains are very adept at changing misspelled words to the correct spelling.  We’ve all seen this example on the Internet.

It deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aepapr, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm.

Now, compound your brain’s ability to do this with the fact that it remembers what you intended to write.  When your brain  comes to an error, it will automatically change what you see to what you meant to write.  You need to give your brain some time to “forget” what you wrote so you’ll see the errors.  I find this takes at least a week.  Some authors might be able to get away with less and some may require more.

You don’t need a degree in journalism to write good erotica.  All you need to do is follow some simple, common sense rules you probably learned by the eighth grade.  In fact, most newspaper and magazine articles are written at an eighth grade reading comprehension level.  Technical articles will be more advanced, but the eighth grade level makes for easy and enjoyable reading.  Stories that are easy and enjoyable to read will probably be published.