Copy Editing / Readability Guide For Authors

[teanndaorsa]

So it has been almost 9 months since I took over from Gromet to run the Plaza, and generally I think it's going fairly well. However what is very clear to me is that, thanks to the wonderful contributors to the site, the queue of submitted stories waiting for editing and publishing is pretty much never going to go away. In the last month alone the submissions have averaged more than 10,000 words per day, and those are just the recent ones; I've also a backlog of older stories from authors wanting to put up their previous work here.

That is great, no doubt, but servicing the queue of stories isn't the only thing that needs done; I want to tackle style issues across the sites so things are more readable, more consistent, and more easily maintained; I want the site to work even better on mobile and tablet devices; I want to clean up the affiliate banners and refresh them; I want to work on the links page so that readers can find other great kinky sites out there; and I want to work on the site structure itself so that we're in a position that, if something happens to me, the site can continue on and not evaporate as so many good story sites have done.

None of that stuff can reasonably be tackled right now, my time is sadly limited, and the backlog of stories is starting to creep up; the 3 weeks between submission and publishing is already longer than I would like it to be. As I've mentioned elsewhere on the forums, editing the stories to bring them up to a quality bar I'm happy with is the biggest time cost. Folks have suggested that a) I should simply refuse the stories that take the most work, b) I should lower the quality bar I set and just publish them as is. Neither of those are acceptable to me, for a variety of long complicated reasons that are not on topic here. The only reasonable option I have is to call upon the wonderful community we have for assistance, to help make the site all the things we'd like it to be.

That's a long way round of saying this: I'm looking for one or two people to be copy editors for the Plaza.

You may have something in your mind about what an editor does; collaborating with authors to make their stories better, a back and forth on ideas, polishing their work. That's not what this is. Would some of our authors like to work with editors like that? Yes, but that's a separate conversation. What I need are copy editors. People to sort out the readability of the stories, to correct obvious writing mistakes, and prepare them for publishing on the site. The goal is to alter the story as little as possible, whether it's written the way you would write it or not. It is not about critiquing their work, it is simply about taking away the simple errors that all of us writers make as we work, so that the readers can enjoy the story, and not get distracted or confused by easily corrected mistakes.

Personally, I find it to be satisfying, simple work, and often quite rewarding; as someone whose day job often involves fuzzy tasks which are hard to satisfactorily complete, copy editing gives me something I can do for 30-60m in an evening and see tangible progress and know I've done a good job. With a good command of written English, it's relatively easy to do. But it is unavoidably time consuming.

What would you need to have:

• A Google account: I use Google Sheets and Google Docs to manage and edit the submissions.
• A good command of English. Either a native speaker or fluency.
• At least 1 or 2 hours free most weeks to devote to this. The more the better, but no more than 4 hours.
• Respect for other authors and their work.

That's it. There is a simple spreadsheet with all the un-edited stories listed on it, and links to each story in Google Docs. All you have to do is edit the story, and note at the top of it:

• Your name
• How long you spent editing
• The story codes you think are appropriate
• Any notes or concerns you have about the story (e.g. if it breaches submission guidelines

I'll follow on from this post with a more detailed set of points about how I go about the editing that I'd expect potential editors to work to. If you're interested in giving it a shot, please email me at teann@grometsplaza.net.

I'd want to try out prospective editors on a few stories to begin with, reviewing your work and feeding back on how well it's going. I may have to say no to people if they're not getting things to the same quality bar I need; otherwise I'm simply trading time spent copy-editing for time spent reviewing copy-editing I can't rely on. Please don't be offended if that turns out to be the case, this work isn't for everyone. But I'm hopeful that some of the great folks out there will be in a position to help, and that they may find it rewarding. If things work out really well it may even be feasible to arrange some sort of compensation for the effort, direct monetary compensation will not be possible but there may be other ways we can reward copy-editors for their work.

[teanndaorsa]

Editing Guide

Use search and replace across the entire file to:

• Replace double space with single (repeat until only single spaces are left)
• Replace ", with ," and do the same for ". "? and "! (closing quotes should always come after the punctuation)
  
• Replace .... (four periods) with ... (three periods) (repeat until only standard ellipses are left)
• Replace !! with !, same with ?? (repeat until only single marks are left)

As you go, you must:

• Take notes when story elements come up that are described by story codes, e.g.:
• A scene with a female dominating a male character comes up, note 'F/m'
• The male is tied up with rope, note 'bond' and 'rope'
• Pay attention to the consensuality of the action:
• consensual: all the characters want things to continue or asked for this
• reluct: one or more characters didn't ask for this or doesn't want things to continue; but before the end suggests they enjoy it anyway or are persuaded
• nc: one or more characters didn't ask for this or doesn't want things to continue and they never relent
• If story codes are trivial or throw-away then they can be omitted from the final set (e.g. one mention of latex panties does not make a story you'd tag with 'latex')


• Fix spelling and grammar issues that Google Docs highlights for you:
• If in doubt, or you could argue it both ways, leave it as the author wrote it.
• If it's dialogue, ask yourself if the character might speak like that, e.g.:
• because they have an accent
• because they're confused, or speaking hurriedly
• If it's a stylistic thing, because the story is being told first-person, treat the prose as being spoken by the narrator and give the same leniency
• Otherwise, if it's just plain wrong, or it would confuse an average reader, fix it so it reads properly to you


• Capitalise properly
• Names (of people or organisations)
• Titles (e.g. Sir, Madam, Mistress) but not descriptions (the madam who ran the brothel; his mistress stood behind him; etc.)
• Names of things (e.g. the GruntMaster 3000) but not simple nouns (the rack, the stable)
• Any other Random Capitals should be fixed to be lower case; unless it is clearly a stylistic choice for emphasis when speaking ("I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.")


• Fix dialogue punctuation according to the standard rules, including:
  
  • Proper capitalisation, and commas not periods
  • e.g.: "I'm done." She said.
  • should be: "I'm done," she said.
  • and: "Are you ready?" She said.
  • should be: "Are you ready?" she said.
  • New paragraph if a different person is speaking
  • Double quotes for someone speaking, single quotes for 'euphemism' phrases
  • Add whatever dialogue tags (Jane said, John replied) are needed to eliminate confusion about who is speaking (see the later note about redundant dialogue tags)
  • Use italics, not speech quotes, to denote character's thoughts; though also use dialogue tags.
    
    • Distinguish between direct thought (e.g. I need to get out of here, John thought) and indirect thoughts in the narration (e.g. This was going to get ugly, John realised)
      
    • Direct thoughts tend to be present tense

• Make section breaks consistent and distinct from normal paragraph spacing:
• Paragraphs should have zero or one newlines separating them
• If paragraphs have two or more lines between them, it should be because it's a section break, i.e.:
• Time has passed (a 'short' break)
• We are changing scene / situation / narrator (a 'long' break)
• Authors often use *** or -------- to indicate a 'line' section break
  
  • If the author uses an extra newline to denote a 'short' section break, and a line to denote a 'long' section break, be consistent with their style if you're making changes
• Make sure that section breaks are done consistently throughout
• Add new section breaks if needed, in the same style they've used (or *** if they haven't used any yet)
• Remove section breaks when the scene has not stopped
• I.e. none of the above conditions are true
• Remove newlines until the paragraphs are spaced 'normally' (i.e. consistent with all the other paragraphs)

• Check that the story doesn't jump around between past and present tense:
• If it is just an isolated case (e.g. one sentence in the past tense when the rest is all in the present tense), correct to be in the same tense as the rest
• If it is quite a few sentences in the wrong case, stop trying to correct occurrences of it and skim read the rest of the text. It may be that the vast majority of the text is the other tense, and only the very start of the text is in the "wrong" tense.
• In general, it is not 100% clear what tense was intended, and more than a few sentences need fixed, stop editing the story and mark it as problematic so that I can go back to the author to get them to fix it.

You can, if you're confident:

• Eliminate redundant dialogue tags:
• E.g. in a scene with only two characters speaking:

"I do," Jane said.
"Really?" John asked.
"Yes," she replied.

• The first tag is required (so we know it's Jane speaking not John)
• The second is not: there's a question mark, and we can reasonably know it's John responding, so "John asked" adds nothing.
• The third is not, because we can infer it's Jane responding, and it's obviously a reply.

"I do," Jane said.
"Really?"
"Yes."

• Fix overuse of names: if "he" and "she" can be used because it's a man and a woman talking to each other, prefer that to their real names
• Non-redundant tags should be kept, e.g.:
• John asked, smiling. - the fact he's smiling is useful
• Jane muttered. - The way she delivers the speech is useful
• If there are more than two characters speaking and you can't tell who is speaking
• If the conversation has gone on for a long while
• If what they're saying to each other isn't easy to follow so you might confuse who is currently speaking


• Fix paragraphs which are too long or too short:
• Too long: 5-7 lines is a reasonable upper limit on a readable paragraph, any longer and it's hard to follow.
• Look for natural breaks in what the paragraph describes, and separate them into two or more smaller paragraphs
• Try not to break off just one or two lines from a long paragraph, unless the natural break is really obvious and the small paragraph stands well on its own
• E.g. 4 sentences on how someone is being tied up, followed by a couple of sentences on how they struggled once tied; break the paragraph when it changes between the two
• Also temporal changes, e.g.:
• Jane was strapped up. Then she was tied down. While she struggled, she was blindfolded. Eventually she was left on her own to enjoy the sensations.
• The "Eventually" is a shift in time that forms a natural break point that's good to break the paragraph on
• Too short:
• Single line or two-line paragraphs should be avoided
• Except when the paragraph break is because a different person has started speaking
• Stylistically short paragraphs can be left alone (used in moderation) - e.g. "He panicked." - deliberately short and punchy to emphasise the suddenness of it.
• Combine them where sensible:
• Again, look for natural groupings of multiple sentences
• Combine actions one character takes with dialogue that character speaks
• Try not to combine one character's speech with another character's actions


• Fix overly long or run-on sentences (https://www.grammarly.com/blog/run-on-sentence-basics):
• Signs of which are:
• More than one 'and'
• More than one 'but'
• Repeated use of 'then' (e.g., then I stood up, then sat down, then turned around) or other joining words
• You just can't follow who did what to whom, and need to re-read the sentence to figure it out
• Sentences should convey only one main idea
• Asides (e.g. he closed the lock - though I couldn't see him do it - trapping me firmly in place) can be discounted, if used in moderation.
• Fix them by:
• Breaking them up using a semicolon (no more than one per sentence, unless it's genuinely a list of things that happened)
• Add commas and en-dashes to break up the clauses, so there are more clearly several parts to the sentence
• Terminating one sentence with a full-stop and starting a new one

[teanndaorsa]

Thanks for those helpful folks who have volunteered their time and skills. We're already making great inroads into the queue, and once we're a bit more caught up I'll be turning my hand to the other parts of the site that need attention. For now I'm not looking for any additional help, but instead am focusing efforts on getting those who've volunteered already settled into a process and getting on with the work.

[teanndaorsa]

Writer's Guide (how to make your stories readable for the site)
(reposted from a question elsewhere but I want to sticky this topic)

Well, there's certainly a non-trivial amount of work to get stories up on the site, but by and large the format it's delivered in is the least of my problems. I pretty much strip out most formatting and pare it down to simple, clean HTML. Italic and bold is preserved, everything else, indentation, double spacing, etc. gets taken out, deliberately. So you could deliver a plain text file, or raw text in an email, and it ends up looking pretty much the same as someone who's sent a Microsoft Word document. After they're emailed to me, they all end up in Google Docs, but that's the easy part of the process! When the editing is done, I convert them using a capable converter that generates most of the final HTML, but that part takes only a minute or so to copy/paste around.

The overwhelming proportion of the time spent on a story is the editing. The biggest time saving would be if the submitted work already adhered to some basic rules. Some authors submit really clean, well-formatted text, and all it takes is a quick skim through to a) check it's not breaching a submission guideline, b) get a sense of the story so I can put the right codes on it. Those sorts of submissions can send me a 10,000 word story chapter and I can get it converted to nice clean HTML with story codes in 5-10 minutes.

Other authors send me text which is all over the place, missing or broken punctuation, weirdly formatted, big wall of text paragraphs that need to be broken up to be readable, sentences that run on for line after line, random capitalisation, parentheses everywhere, and many other issue. If I were to publish it verbatim, the readers would be left scratching their heads, or re-reading the same paragraph over and over again trying to figure out who did what to whom and what got stuck into where. Those can make a 2,000 word story take 30-45 minutes to edit, and are the main reason why publishing moves at the pace it does. Some are bad enough I'm forced to send them back to the authors and ask them to try and tackle the worst things, but most I simply take on the work myself. Because the ideas behind the stories are fun, and interesting, and technical issues really shouldn't get in the way of these things finding their way to the readers. I really love that you all submit your work here, I do appreciate it, and I'm not trying to hold people to professional writer standards, but there's a middle ground.

In the absence of a more complete guide though, the following would be a great start:

• Put it in Google Docs or a similar modern editor. Don't fuss about the formatting, just make sure the text is all in there in proper paragraphs.
• Turn on both spelling and grammar check. Fix every single one of the things that get underlined, or if you really, really know what you're doing, mark the things it complains about as ignored.
• Make sure your story adheres to the rules of dialogue punctuation. All of them. There's only eight, they're really simple, and all of them are there for a reason. They are not a style choice, they are how English is written.
• Split your paragraphs sensibly. Not just a new paragraph for each speaker, but no 50 line paragraphs, and no 1 line paragraphs. Both extremes are a sign that something has gone wrong.
• Don't Just capitalise Random words. Capitalise names like Sheila, China, RubberTech Incorporated, and the DildoMaster 3000 fucking machine. Don't capitalise words just because you think they're Important. That's what bold is for.

Exceptions to the above apply, of course, if you know what you're doing. Be sure you do.

Do all those things, and you've cut out like 90% of the effort I'll have to put in to edit your story. Submitting in a sensible format saves me like 2%. Unless you save it in WordPerfect format. Seriously. The 90s called and they want their word processor back. Don't use WordPerfect.

[teanndaorsa]

I realised this post had dropped well off the front page of the topic list, so I've brought it back and made it sticky, so that I can point authors at it for the guidance on what constitutes "good copy".

For what it's worth, most of the volunteers from last year are no longer helping. I can't really blame them, copy-editing is one of those thankless sorts of jobs where if you're doing it well no-one even really notices, and some of the stories needed a lot of work to get them readable. That, combined with pressures on my own time, means that instead I've had to go the other way, which is to start refusing the works which require the most amount of effort, to keep the backlog down to a few weeks long. Please note that I'm not updating this post to solicit more volunteers; it was quite time consuming to try to on-board the last group, and while over the long term it has saved me time (in the main thanks to Zephyr who's been a star over the last eighteen months), in the short term it definitely took more time than it gave back.

If you're an author and I've directed you to this topic, please appreciate that it's likely not any sort of judgment on the ideas or kinks in your work. This is purely a pragmatic approach to being able to continue to provide the Plaza as a library for all to enjoy, readers and authors alike.

[jakbird]

You left out a dialog rule I use quite often:

Dialogue may stretch across paragraphs without pause. To punctuate, put a terminal punctuation—period, question mark, or exclamation point— at the end of the first paragraph. There is no closing quotation mark at the end of this paragraph. Begin the next paragraph with an opening quotation mark.

Hope I didn't get demerits for using this.
  Jack Peacock

[teanndaorsa]

You left out a dialog rule I use quite often:

Dialogue may stretch across paragraphs without pause. To punctuate, put a terminal punctuation—period, question mark, or exclamation point— at the end of the first paragraph. There is no closing quotation mark at the end of this paragraph. Begin the next paragraph with an opening quotation mark.

Hope I didn't get demerits for using this.
  Jack Peacock

No demerits , I do the same when characters are monologuing (as happens quite often when the other person in the scene is gagged). The list above isn't supposed to be a comprehensive list of applicable rules, it's a bare minimum to get things readable. But that case comes up relatively rarely; the authors who write lots of dialogue that might need broken up into paragraphs tend to also already write relatively readable text. It's probably relevant for copy editors though, who need to have it available as in their arsenal to break up a big wall of text monologue paragraph without resorting to clunky constructs like:

"You what?" Jane continued...

in the subsequent paragraphs.

[PaganWriter]

This thread has been most interesting. I have submitted the first part of my story so there is nothing I can do about any problems that might become apparent on reading, but I shall take the information given here and run through the second and third parts before submission to ensure they require as little editing as possible --  especially with regard to paragraph length as I have been known to rattle on a bit.

Good 'sticky' and well worth a read.

[bentbliss]

This thread has been most interesting. I have submitted the first part of my story so there is nothing I can do about any problems that might become apparent on reading, but I shall take the information given here and run through the second and third parts before submission to ensure they require as little editing as possible --  especially with regard to paragraph length as I have been known to rattle on a bit.

Good 'sticky' and well worth a read.

Pretty sure you can make changes to your first part and resubmit it. Especially if you do it before Teann gets to it in the queue but even after. It is your work and you can make changes if you want whether submitted or not. So if you feel you can make it better and want to, nothing stopping you

[PaganWriter]

No. I'm going to let it go now. One can read and re-read until one is blue in the face and still not be happy with it. Sometimes you just have to see if it'll float.

[teanndaorsa]

This thread has been most interesting. I have submitted the first part of my story so there is nothing I can do about any problems that might become apparent on reading, but I shall take the information given here and run through the second and third parts before submission to ensure they require as little editing as possible --  especially with regard to paragraph length as I have been known to rattle on a bit.

Good 'sticky' and well worth a read.

Pretty sure you can make changes to your first part and resubmit it. Especially if you do it before Teann gets to it in the queue but even after. It is your work and you can make changes if you want whether submitted or not. So if you feel you can make it better and want to, nothing stopping you

Authors are welcome to submit revisions, certainly, and in your case @ThePaganWriter, because of the big backlog, there's almost 100 stories ahead of yours in the queue (albeit 30-40 of those are all from the same two authors who dropped a huge batch all at once), so you've got plenty of time to make edits and resubmit without losing your place in the queue. But I think that there's probably merit in drawing a line under it and not fussing, not everything has to be perfect.

And certainly, I'd make a plea for not resubmitting work after it's been edited already. As @bentbliss notes, it's your own work and you're welcome to submit revisions, but they do take time and effort to process. If any of the authors do want to do that, I'm more than happy to provide back the edited version to use as a starting point for their own changes which would make it much easier. In the past I've put a bunch of time into fixing extensive grammar and other copy issues, only to have the author submit a completely new version having altered the story some, with all those same mistakes back in, meaning that the only way to take the update is to put all that effort in again.

If it's just a grammatical mistake or a punctuation issue that you missed in the original submission, better to just leave it to the copy-editing pass to catch, trying to fix it yourself and resubmit takes me more time than it would take to just fix it as I go. But if you want to change the way the story goes, then yeah, there's a window after submission where a revised draft is easy to drop over the one I already have, but best to assume it's only a couple of weeks.

[teanndaorsa]

After being nudged by a new author about some out of date information on the writer's guide page about Gromet's old anti-spam system, I've made some updates to that page to reflect policies that have been in place for a while, but I think are worth calling out here in summary:

• the guidelines on spelling and grammar checking now link to this post.
• the submissions need to be in English (US or UK spellings both equally acceptable as long as you pick just one.)
• if the submissions suffer from the sort of readability issues described in this post, they go into a different queue, and it will take longer before they go up. Right now this will likely mean the difference between it taking a few weeks before they go up, and a few months. You will know if you are in the slow queue because I will have explicitly fed back to you that this or a previous submission required extra work to get ready; otherwise your particular delay is probably just down to my limited time and the number of submissions!
• if the number of weak submissions is high, I may refuse further stories at that level of quality. Similarly if an author submits a large or continual amount of stories of low quality, I may decline to consider future submissions from them. This has happened a few times now, where authors 'hog the queue' due to sheer volume of submissions. A 2,000 word story of low readability might only take 10-15 minutes to fix, but when there are 20 of them in the queue, that's a lot of fixing taking away time from other authors' work.
• images are now more strongly discouraged, have a size limit, and require authors to assert copyright. In practice this should limit images to only self-drawn or commissioned pieces; AI-generated or images grabbed from elsewhere on the web won't be allowed.
• submissions should be the author's own work or a collaboration with the author; submitting works from other authors, even if you think they are public domain because of where they were originally published, won't be allowed.
• there is a soft minimum length on works of around 1,000 words, anything smaller and it just looks daft on the site, these small fragments are better placed on the forum.
• the 10K word upper limit on length is now just a guideline, and the suggestion that stories be broken up into chapters is left to the author's discretion.
• although I will forward email feedback from reader to author, I will not forward your reply back to the reader; it is up to you whether to reveal your email address to the reader and enter into a conversation with them, I do not want to be the relay in what may be a protracted discussion!
• when authors want to submit changes, I ask that they use the site version as their base to make the edits to, and tell me that they have done so. Otherwise it is assumed to be a full fresh submission and subject to another copy-editing pass (and the time in the queue that comes with it).

[jakbird]

In general, I agree with nearly all your points.  However...

Ten thousand words for an upper limit, even if only a suggestion?  I have trouble entering the title in under 10K words.  Perhaps the novelette or full-length novel isn't a popular format but it does have a place.  I think a 10K per chapter guideline would be more practical...

Streaming TV has conditioned me to binge watching.  I don't want to wait for next week's episode to continue the story.  I admit there are times I stray from self-contained stories but as a guideline I would urge writers to show some consideration for the audience.  After all, we're not trying to boost magazine subscriptions here.

Regarding images, please not in our backyard.  here are plenty of websites for that type of content.  Let's leave some space where the Theater of the Mind provides the video.

And again, please note when the copyright is public domain.  I embed this in the MS Word document metadata, so that it doesn't have to be edited out of the story text.
  Jack Peacock

[teanndaorsa]

Ten thousand words for an upper limit, even if only a suggestion?  I have trouble entering the title in under 10K words.  Perhaps the novelette or full-length novel isn't a popular format but it does have a place.  I think a 10K per chapter guideline would be more practical...

Yeah, that's pretty much what I've said on the page, I maybe just mangled the summary:

If your story is longer you may want to break it down into more manageable chapters for easier downloading and readability. 10,000 words is a good guideline for a readable chapter/part when reading on the website.

Basically I don't want authors to feel like they should be submitting lots of short chapters for the sake of readability. If they want to break it up for that reason, it should only be because the story is well over 15K words.