Not only is it in the rules, its beneficial to the community. Also, if you post on other peoples works, they are more likely to critique something you have posted. You’ll often times see that the people who post several stories in one day, but critique nothing, tend to get little to no comments.

2. Have you read over your story two to five times to look for any typos or grammar/spelling mistakes?

People are less likely to comment if your story is over abundant in typos. Looking over your work at least twice is recommended, for those of us who are more obsessive about perfection, do it as many times as you want  A good way to look for typos is to read your paper backwards; that way, you are reading the words, and not the story. Also, make sure everything is spelled right, to your best ability. At the least, run it through a spell check, because even I screw up you’re/your when I’m not thinking. If your word processor, or what ever you use to write, doesn’t have a spell check, here’s an online one: Spellcheck.net

3. Have you correctly spaced out your work?

Notice how may paragraphs all have spaces between them? This is considered proper spacing, and makes it easier for the reader. Otherwise, your work looks like one long block of text, and will shy people away. This isn’t too hard to do: in between your paragraphs hit the enter/return key so that there is a space, and it should be good.

4. Is your story length too short/long?

Posting something too long also can keep people from reading your work. I’d say the most you should post at one time is something around the length of 1,500 words, which is about two pages Times New Roman 12pt, though using a word counter to make sure is best. Here is an online word counter you can use if your word processor does not have one: Cut-and-Paste Word Counter. You can go over this, there is no rule about how long something should be, but the longer it is the less likely someone will look at it.

Conversely, if something is too short, there isn’t enough for us to comment on! There is such a thing as flash fiction though, which is perfectly fine, but if you take three paragraphs from your current story and say, “tell me what you think,” we really can’t say much, can we? So try to post a reasonable amount.

5. If posting a novel…

There are two ways to go about this: one, post everything in one thread with the title of the novel as the title of your thread and two, post each chapter separately still with the title of the novel, but with numbers. You can say “My novel part 2”, “My novel chapter 2”, “My novel 2”, or be like Brad, “My novel #2”. Doesn’t really matter, it’s up to you. In fact how you go about posting your novel is also up to, there are goods and bads to each one. Do it how ever you think your novel works best, if you like keeping everything in one place like me, keep it to one thread. Or if it’s easier you to focus with everything apart, post in chapters. NOTE: Before you proceed to post chapter one to five of your recently typed novel, think about it. Don’t post your chapters back to back, post one at a time, giving it time to grow an audience, and critiques/comments. If people see you have all your chapters posted one after another, it’s going to make you look like you don’t pay attention to number one on this list, even if you do abide by that. You’ll get better responses if you give a week or so in between each chapter.

6. Don’t post your stories too often.

This is practically a continuation of what I said above, although, in reference to everything. Don’t post one story after another, post one, perhaps two, and give those some time to settle in, then when you like, post something else by you. Just don’t flood the sections with your work—it doesn’t look good, even if you are critiquing up a storm to make up for it.

7. Have you stated your format?

Also, don't forget to tell us what format your story is in- is it a novel, or a short story? This makes it easier for the critiquers when they want to help you out with an ending or with pacing.

8. Have you rated your story?

Rating a story will put it on the front page, if it's PG-13 or below, and it will get more people looking at your work. If it deserves an R rating (by containing the f-word or extreme sex or violence) rating is mandatory.

This is locked, so if you have any questions about something said above, or any questions about posting in the fiction section in general you can PM Jennafina or me, and we'll do our best to help you out.

Your Friendly Fiction Moderators,

Claudette and Jennafina

Edit by Sam, May 26

Edit by Snoink August 11