What the hell does it take to get a story posted?

[KeithD]

Just stop it. The thread question posed was why the story was rejected on the basis of incorrect punctuation. The examples given showed what the incorrect punctuation was. The issue was answered and then a bunch of armchair Hemingways zipped off into how the OP could write like they do instead of in the OP's own voice.

 

[KeithD]

I directly (and correctly, I believe) answered the one question being asked (and asked with a chip on the OP's shoulder)--why was the story being repeatedly rejected for incorrect punctuation? The examples given showed why it would be rejected, and I directly answered that problem. The OP claimed it had been through an editor. Anyone with any editing ability would have known what was wrong. I pointed to the inadequacy of the claimed editor. I reject your inference that my responses have not been useful (and correct) to the only question asked by the OP.

Posts by you and others pointed to issues the OP wasn't asking about and that messed around with the OP's voice irrelevantly. There wasn't anything wrong with how the OP phrased the examples given--it was just the punctuation that was off and that was hindering posting of the story. And that's all the OP asked about.

 

[Charrla]

Everyone telling the OP that he and his editor have made a horrible faux pas by not including commas after dialogue tags should know that there are very experienced editors out there who consider it a choice, not a rule.

"If the dialogue tag comes after the dialogue, then yes, you still always need that comma," the editor said. (Like so.)

But what if the dialogue tag comes before the dialogue? Recalling comma conversations she's seen between some of the top editors in North America, she said "it's becoming optional to use that comma." If there clearly needs to be a pause before the speech, obviously use it.

I'm not going to trot out my qualifications, so believe me or don't. But if you pro editors hang out on real editor forums and groups such as "EAE Backroom," you will see this comma debate come up. These are not newbies saying it. These are people involved in changing the rules.

That said, I don't expect Literotica to be on the cutting edge of punctuation rule changes. But I think the OP is getting hosed here.

 

[KeithD]

Everyone telling the OP that he and his editor have made a horrible faux pas by not including commas after dialogue tags should know that there are very experienced editors out there who consider it a choice, not a rule.

No, there aren't--not for the comma use in the examples given. Trained editors ALL follow basic punctuation use that the examples here don't follow. I might point out the ludicrousness of your comment to this thread too by noting that we're talking about a story the Web site has rejected for misuse of punctuation. And the issue here is getting the story accepted by this Web site.

Are you a trained editor or just pretending to know what you're talking about?

(And, yes, I'm an advance-degreed book editor and vetted as such to the Mod of this board. Are you?)

 

[SimonDoom]

But what if the dialogue tag comes before the dialogue? Recalling comma conversations she's seen between some of the top editors in North America, she said "it's becoming optional to use that comma." If there clearly needs to be a pause before the speech, obviously use it.

.

I don't pretend to be a professional editor, but I haven't seen this. My understanding has always been that you always put a comma before the quotation. You also need to capitalize "It's" at the beginning of the quotation in this case, because the quote is a sentence. The style guides I've seen all say it should be done this way.

If the quote is just part of a sentence, neither the comma nor the capital letter is needed.

So it would be like this:

She said, "I'm going to dinner."

But:

She said that she was "going to dinner."

Is there a source for doing it differently?

 

[MetaBob]

I've had a story rejected 3x now. According to the rejection notice it's because of punctuation or formatting the dialogue.
...
Here is a small snippet of how my story is formatted...

She sat down across from him and in a husky Lauren Bacall voice asked "Why is it that you're the only guy in here who isn't trying to put the make on me."
He hesitated for a moment before replying "Maybe because I've never paid for it before and don't plan to start now."
Fire flared in her eyes as she said "Maybe not in cash, but trust me honey, you've paid for 'it' before!"

So tell me, what's wrong with this?

I think the only thing inarguably ungrammatical with these three sentences is the missing question mark. Everything else is arguable if done in moderation, but your consistent lack of punctuation before quoted sentences is immoderate, IMO. Keeping in mind that some people can't keep themselves from nitpicking grammar, so asking for help about it here might be like putting your head into the toilet and flushing, here's what I mean by "immoderate":

She sat down across from him and in a husky Lauren Bacall voice asked "Why is it that you're the only guy in here who isn't trying to put the make on me?" That's one occurrence of missing punctuation, after "asked".
He hesitated for a moment before replying. "Maybe because I've never paid for it before and don't plan to start now." I would add the period/full stop. I would also remove "for a moment" because it's redundant and I would think about removing "before replying" because it's an unnecessary dialog tag.
Fire flared in her eyes as she said "Maybe not in cash, but trust me honey, you've paid for 'it' before!" I would remove "as she said" because it's an unnecessary dialog tag and put a period after "eyes". I would also think about replacing the exclamation point with a period.
-->
She sat down across from him and in a husky Lauren Bacall voice asked "Why is it that you're the only guy in here who isn't trying to put the make on me?"
He hesitated. "Maybe because I've never paid for it before and don't plan to start now."
Fire flared in her eyes. "Maybe not in cash, but trust me honey, you've paid for 'it' before."

I suspect that this passage is not fully indicative of the reason your story is getting rejected for reasons of "punctuation or formatting the dialogue."

Please provide the actual rejection notice you're getting rather than paraphrasing. How long is your piece? It seems like it's written in a "Private Eye" style, and if so it's even more important to pay close attention to the brief article you'll find after doing a browser search for "Elmore Leonard ten rules Barry Lopez".

 

[_Lynn_]

I've had a story rejected 3x now. According to the rejection notice it's because of punctuation or formatting the dialogue. Well, I had it reviewed by an editor who caught very few mistakes that I corrected and looking at the dozens of stories I've read here the vast majority of them had far more errors than my first draft did.
There are posts where the characters get mixed up, words are misspelled, or used incorrectly.
Here is a small snippet of how my story is formatted...

She sat down across from him and in a husky Lauren Bacall voice asked "Why is it that you're the only guy in here who isn't trying to put the make on me."
He hesitated for a moment before replying "Maybe because I've never paid for it before and don't plan to start now."
Fire flared in her eyes as she said "Maybe not in cash, but trust me honey, you've paid for 'it' before!"

So tell me, what's wrong with this?

You're allowed to post up to three paragraphs here on the forum. You gave us a small example but if you show us a little more we might be able to spot other issues causing the rejections besides those already pointed out.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I think it's all moot as the OP has buggered off.

 

[MimiRay]

Funny thing is I DID have the punctuation "correct" (for the most part) before I changed it on the advice of an editor.
Regardless, for a site that seems to be more about the story, the pickiness over the punctuation is petty considering some of the atrocious pieces of work I've seen posted.
Lit is worried about a comma left out when I can't count the number of times I've seen Lose/Loosing used incorrectly on multiple postings and numerous other words that make me think some 8th grader wrote the piece.

You know, my short story was something I wrote many years ago just as a lark to stir things up with a lady friend. LONG before I even knew of Literotica and had never thought to share it with anyone else. No need to bother publishing it or the sequel(s). Even though they did lead to some fun times

While I sympathize to a certain extent, and agree that I have seen some horrifically poor writing here on Literotica (some of which got high scores and admiring comments), those travesties are not something you should be trying to emulate.

Your attitude should not be "They got away with it, why can't I?", it should be "I'm going to do my best not to write sludge like this!"

Speaking as someone's lady friend, had he written a story for me with the intent of "stirring things up," I would have expected him to actually want to impress me. I would want a story that is imaginative, erotic, stimulating, sympathetic, and well crafted, because I know he's capable of it. If he doesn't care enough about me to give me his best, I'm not going to be "stirred up" in the way he hopes.

You should give your readers the same courtesy. Each of them is someone you hope to stir things up with. Give them your best. Don't complain that less than your best doesn't get accepted. It should not be acceptable to you, either.

 

[MimiRay]

I have no issue with trying to write well. The funny thing is I have been complimented numerous times on how well I express myself verbally and via the written word. The piece I tried to post was written almost 20 years ago, dashed off, and given to a lady friend to have a chuckle over (and get an idea!), and then forgotten until recently when I stumbled on Literotica.
Had I known that the comma police were on duty I would have availed myself of the various spell/grammar check programs, but that was not why I was here.
Again, the STORIES were what interested me, not the English lesson some are so intent on giving me. And yes, it irks me to read drivel that can't even use the correct word or tense, hell, can't even spell sometimes, and people are upset over a comma.
Regardless, (oh, Webster's now says IRREGARDLESS is now acceptable also) I think I'll just keep the couple of scenarios I wrote years ago to share with a certain person and no one else.

I also have stories I wrote years ago that I plan to publish here. Before I do, though, I'm going to go over them with a fine-toothed comb. I'll still miss some things, I'm sure. I already see things I missed on stories I have recently published. But seriously, you don't want to treat this site like a mere drop box. It might take longer to polish up a story than it does to write it.

I don't understand why, if you want hundreds of thousands of people to read your words, you would think it's ok for them to come away thinking your words weren't really worth the effort of reading, because you didn't put the effort into making them worth reading.

 

[Lady2020]

It takes work. And knowing how to find a good VE, and what a good VE is.

 

[Charrla]

TTL;DR: it's not fair to say the editor did a terrible job because there are 'missing' commas.

I found a resource. This is a blog from Dick Margulis, one of the most highly regarded editors in America. He has published training material for other editors and is the kind of guy who is asked to lead sessions at editorial society conventions. He's also one of the people in my editing forums who has said you don't always necessarily need a comma between "said" and dialogue, and he finally gave a reason why, in his blog. (It comes up as the top post today, but later on it will be the post from January 21, 2021.)

In case I'm not allowed to share a link here, just look up the website of Dick Margulis, then find the blog and the 1/21/21 entry. http://www.ampersandvirgule.com/

 

[KeithD]

What part of the OP's story got rejected here because it didn't meet the site's punctuation requirements are you failing to understand?

 

[SimonDoom]

TTL;DR: it's not fair to say the editor did a terrible job because there are 'missing' commas.

I found a resource. This is a blog from Dick Margulis, one of the most highly regarded editors in America. He has published training material for other editors and is the kind of guy who is asked to lead sessions at editorial society conventions. He's also one of the people in my editing forums who has said you don't always necessarily need a comma between "said" and dialogue, and he finally gave a reason why, in his blog. (It comes up as the top post today, but later on it will be the post from January 21, 2021.)

In case I'm not allowed to share a link here, just look up the website of Dick Margulis, then find the blog and the 1/21/21 entry. http://www.ampersandvirgule.com/

I looked up the link you cited (thanks!) and read his blog post. He makes a sound argument from the standpoint of grammatical logic. In the sentence "He said, 'There's a fox.'" the quotation is in effect the direct object of the sentence. We don't usually put a comma between the verb and the direct object. So why do it here?

But with writing, convention matters as much as grammatical logic. Maybe more so. It's more important for purposes of people communicating with one another that we have a shared understanding of the rules of writing -- whatever they are -- than that those rules conform to objectively logical standards.

The blogger you cited observed that he thought the rule about using the comma in this case started after 1900. I did a little digging through some of my 19th century novels, and I was somewhat surprised to find NO examples of

He said,"There's a fox." OR He said "There's a fox."

Instead, what I found was that in every case the tag followed the quote, like this:

"There's a fox," he said.

I personally think that as a general guideline it is much better to put the quote before the tag and avoid

He said "there's a fox."

Whether you have a comma after "said" or not.

And this seems to be the overwhelmingly more common way for it to be done. The quote is more interesting than the tag, in almost every case, so it should come first.

In any case it doesn't seem like something to reject a story about.