OK, It's Gripe Time Again...
Now that I'm back in the so-called saddle, albeit with IE's help when he has time to look into the holding bin for stories, I want to reiterate some things that will cause me to trash a submission.
1. Grammatical nightmares. When so many words are spelled wrong that I have a hard time reading it. Capitalization is also important. Continued errors like "i was there," or "dr smith came in," or "tommy and i said 'no'." Also, things like "I Said We Were Going To Go." It also goes without saying that a story in ALL CAPS will be trashed. The rare typo is fine; no spell check is perfect.
2. Tags - use them. That's why they're there. Fill out the form and tags fully when you submit the story. Use the WARNING tag if it gets gross. If there's things like bestiality or scat in it, add that with the "other" tag box. If I puke when I read it, it gets trashed. It's also annoying to find a story with no tag, then open it, then see the "S" or "G" tag in the header.
3. Don't even THINK about flashy HTML. If my script blocker goes off when I open a story, or I find links in it outside of EA, it's gone.
4. A reminder about snuff - a story revolving solely around murder. Put that in the warning, please. In fact, I'd rather you put that story on another site...
5. Paragraph breaks. I can't stress enough to use them. One huge block of text is a nightmare to fix, since the format editor is hit/and/miss on this, bigtime.
6. Foreign languages - fine with me, so long as Google can give me something. I could use a French helper, though. Hint hint hint...
7. And finally, the main theme - genital amputation/abuse/etc. We all know the theme of the Eunuch Archive, right? I don't wanna see stories about happy fluffy bunnies in the tank. Someone needs to get something cut off, or at least, threatened with it for the next chapter, OK?
Now, if these rules are too much to ask, go over to Nifty and see what a b*tch they can be about submissions. I did it once, I'll never do it again.
Thank you.
Paolo
