story layout

[KeithD]

The Literotica story file is an anthology. The standard of anthology is to standardize formats to give the reader uniformity across the anthology. The publisher, not the author, has control over the format of its published works. (Ask any publisher about this.) Any authors who want to also be the book designer have the option of becoming their own publisher.

 

[SimonDoom]

It's really easy to use HTML tags to get the exact look I want in a story. As far as I can tell, there are no downsides to using HTML tags in a story. Why not do it?

There's no reason not to, if you can. My comment was more properly addressed to the OP. I didn't really get the importance of the issue. But if you have the means to make it look the way you want to, by all means, do so.

 

[KeithD]

If the Web site is happy to accommodate it. Again, the author isn't the book designer here and the story file belongs to the Web site.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't understand what the problem is. On this site, paragraphs are separated by line breaks. It's just the standard format. Once you start reading stories here, you get used to it and you don't notice it. What's the big deal? Your story looks like everyone else's here.

The only reason I would want only a break and not another line space is when using song lyrics - and also a poetry quote but I haven't done one of those yet.

I don't need your war machines
I don't need your ghetto scenes

I just used a shift-enter here to see what happens (after the word "machines"), but the message boards use vB coding, not HTML. I probably would have to put a <br> tag in the story input window to get the same effect.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I copy pasted from a file with shift breaks and paragraph breaks.

If that is irrelevant it is impossible to write decent dialogue en to structure the story in paragraphs.

Okay, I finally got to test this by having some extra lines (a poetry quotation) at the end of a story.

https://www.literotica.com/s/charlottes-sexy-web-ch-01

You can't rely on the preview page by the way.

Only the <br> tag will break a line where you want it without adding a line space. See the first group of lines. If you use shift-enter it will break the line but also add a line space - see the second group. Somehow shift-enter gets changed to a paragraph break - it always seems to happen that way.

For the third group I used shift-enter and also the <blockquote> tag at the beginning and end of the group. I got an indent plus the extra line spaces.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Okay, I finally got to test this by having some extra lines (a poetry quotation) at the end of a story.

https://www.literotica.com/s/charlottes-sexy-web-ch-01

You can't rely on the preview page by the way.

Only the <br> tag will break a line where you want it without adding a line space. See the first group of lines. If you use shift-enter it will break the line but also add a line space - see the second group. Somehow shift-enter gets changed to a paragraph break - it always seems to happen that way.

For the third group I used shift-enter and also the <blockquote> tag at the beginning and end of the group. I got an indent plus the extra line spaces.

Laurel allows extra formatting for poetry, and also relaxes the 750 word rule. Whether she'd do the same for normal prose story content is another question entirely.

Concentrate on the quality of the words, not their prettiness, is probably a better use of a writer's time.

Also, not all html which is allowed works properly on all devices. I've just discovered that <center> and </center> completely stuffs up a kindle "page" reader, for example, so I won't be using it again.