Story authors

As (you being) the superior writer, i yield to your choice of “questionable”. I would have gone with “reprehensible”.



May i hug you instead? Or at least smile and wave, or bow respectfully, or something? Your words delight the eye and mind’s eye with the nuanced panache of those eclairs no-E Clair has been consuming. Sarah with an H might use her H to Harumpf! mightily at the thought of any of your effervescent words, so tasty and buttery on the palate, being jettisoned on account of anyone’s artificial character limitation!



I’d never. I always Duck it instead. Vestiges of privacy and being less of a product.



I have entire epic novels of 400,000+ words originally intended for publication on FF that will be released elsewhere (quite possibly on actual bound dead bleached tree shavings). 10 to 20 (approximately) significant characters + 30-50 (approx) total named characters, fattening and loving it.

As a person seemingly undaunted by vast veins of verbiage, please consider reviewing my circa June 2020 post fatlovesex story online publishing on ff and other sites: a comparative study, wherein i slag through FF post character limits + system glitches to document posting options in our community. It is sad how little has (so far) changed on FF since that post: it is now possible to delete the auto-filled “chapter x”, as i did with my recently-posted novelette Quality Without Compromise® (trademark belongs to See’s Candy Shops, Incorporated). Soon (i read), we authors might even get italics in stories—WooHOO!—we’re almost out of the 1990s and earlier plain text era, into the start of the 2000s!

Since you’re on a Mac and no one including you asked, here’s what i do:

1) Master manuscript written, edited, corrected, beaten to death in TextEdit (TE), with simple custom markup like:
***** Provocative Chapter Title *****
Ian Cooke had a way of annoying the crap outta nearly anyone, but he did bake exceptional brownies […]

* *
“I think there’s a section break within a chapter directly above my head.”
“Shut up, would you please?! I’d rather read 1000 of the worst of EmilyW’s latest words than hear one of your best!”

Only after she finished speaking did Etiwanda realize that finding subpar verbiage in any of EmilyW’s published works would be difficult to the point of high tedium.


2) Convert to HTML in TE. Validates, but not semantic.

3) Convert HTML TE in BBEdit to proper semantic markup. Split into individual chapter HTML documents (i am currently automating these processes).

4) Upload to my personal story site jigglejunkie.com’s stories section. Test. Thrill at the beauty of it all, sharing high-hooves with unicorns under rainbows with a parrot eating a carrot and drinking claret.

5) Copy rendered web pages (each page = 1 chapter) from my site into new story message form on Curvage. Thrill at how much of my formatting is preserved—even attributes not part of the Curvage interface!

6) Run automated Text Factory in BBEdit on my HTML master pages, stripping HTML and making dumbed-down BBCode equivalent chapter pages. Manually split chapters to

less than 10k characters (’cause Dimensions is character-limited too). Copy/paste into Dimensions’ story message form, over and over and over and over due to the 10k limit. But at least i can properly capitalize the story name and chapter titles, and the formatting options are relatively rich!

*****
Interesting how FF said i had 49 characters left on the post just above then brick-walled my typing any more.

Brick wall on typing: Feature

Incorrect characters remaining count: Bug

Even better bug: the less-than character apparently makes this form blow up. I’d try and demonstrate, but i’d be unable to post this message. It’s amazing and scary, how it seems to auto-truncate the rest of my message.
*****

7) Take the already dumbed-down BBCode page files used to post to Dimensions and run them through another Text Factory to make them completely plain-text stupid for FF. The character limit split was already dealt with in step 6. Copy/paste into the FF story form, over and over and over and over, blanking out the auto-filled chapter x each time and manually adding in the real chapter numbering/naming as and when appropriate.

*****
I didn’t get a chance to mention in the earlier post that i do the 10k limit splitting manually to allow for proper cliffhangers rather than brain-dead automated:

[Envision story text:]
“This is not proper fun
[end story text]

Fun? Funnel feeding? Not a proper way to force-end a section. There’s usually an obvious/convenient section break within the chapter, else a point in very long ongoing dialog which makes for a more dramatic split.
*****

8) Post on DeviantArt
It’s complicated… all too complicated. Like Curvage, whatever character limit may exist is so high, i’ve not hit it yet.


This workflow leaves me with:
* TE master manuscript file
* Pre-split HTML master file
* Final HTML split pages files (jigglejunkie.com + copy/paste rendered for Curvage and DA)
* Dumbed-down Dimensions BBCode files (manually 10k split)
* Dumbed-stupid Fantasy Feeder plain text files (derived from the Dimensions BBCode files)

Editing these is not as bad as it seems: BBEdit handles all but the master manuscript and does multi-file find/replace very well, so i can quickly correct the last 4 and swiftly enough correct the master. I don’t consider the master ready to process until the story is thoroughly finished and it’s been spell-checked, error checked (lower-case i first person where i don’t want it, and sometimes i want it; option-spaces, etc.), and ideally re-read after sitting awhile (fresh view: did i omit anything that was obvious to me as the writer when i was in the throes of feverishly writing, that is in no way obvious and is important?).


However you do it, i sincerely hope you find a way to keep the joy in your story releasing process, and keep writing and releasing!

On Chapter 13 of Adephi, impressed and looking forward to reading more in a few hours,

))Jiggle((

Actually it’s not bad, and getting better as i automate things further. For perfectly conceived self-torture i usually go with attempting to repair small switching power supplies (after cracking the ultrasonically-welded-together case apart like a nut… arguably both me and the case are nuts in this scenario) or attempting to repair anything made by Apple in about the last decade.



Don’t you find tree-somes splinter apart too readily?



Or all thre–… oh never mind, no threesomes.



With my tippy typing i’m all “You covered that in your last 3 stories!” and “Draggy! Readers you don’t have would be falling asleep! Ya better learn how to move ahead in time rather than going linearly.” and especially (shaking my head, calm inner voice) “This is total garbage—further proof that you are worthless as a human being.”.

But hey, it all started as an anti-suicide measure (working so far) in 2010 that no one else was supposed to ever see. I kept doing it and gradually ever-more-coherent sentences started coming out. And Mal (who doesn’t remember his FF account name) likes my stories and keeps encouraging me, and he’s quite a decent fatlovesex author (i think). He posts as MrWrong1 on DeviantArt. I told him about you and sent him links to your brilliant pink funnel-filled FF profile and Adephi. He likes your style. He also won’t post here because of the formatting and character limitations.

I like both your styles (and some other authors’ too).

Please keep writing and posting somewhere, when the mood strikes you—no, moods should not be so physically violent! Next time the mood for writing comes calling with fresh eclairs, tea, and gentle affection. Your word work warms the edible, burrowing bivalve mollusks with strong ribbed shells of genus Cardium, family Cardiidae of my heart (and others’ who’ve posted in this thread, it seems clear).

Cordially, from 1132nd. in FF author likes, (Woohooo! On track to crack the 1000th. ranking by the end of the decade!)

))((

I've now doubled the character limit for story chapters to 20,000 characters.

Hopefully, this will make it a lot easier for you to upload your chapters and arrange the chapters in a way that more suits your story plot.

Also for short stories, it may be possible to upload the whole story in one go without having to mess around with chapters.

I can't really increase the character limit beyond this with the way the story section is currently configured, because it will make the pages too large a download for mobiles. Currently, each web page displays a whole chapter at once so we can't increase the character limit too much.

Thank you! Wish that was words, but any significant increase is good news.



Ah—this might be a learning experience for me. What happens on mobile devices when they receive a long/large page?

I ask because on my personal story site i’m doing one chapter per HTML page, no matter how long that chapter is—and some of mine are very long. My testing was limited to an old iPhone 4S over Wi-Fi. It had no issue whatsoever with my (long) story pages.

Just noticed this today, huge improvement! Appreciate the extra space. I’ve had to rip chapters in half in the past because of the 10k limit and label them in parts so this is much appreciated upgrade.

thnak god now i have to go re edit my stuff but thank you for raising the limit noe i dont have to hopefully split chapters as much

Esteemed Emily,

I unequivocally acquiesce to your very yellow rapturous Florida knitting, plump with flaxen fibers to the point of being semi-erected.

Or as you might prefer:
I *** *** to your *** *** *** *** *** ***, *** with flaxen fibers to the point of being ***.

(Since last i checked, no matter the number of characters in the particular word which must not be seen, the asterisk filler arrives thrice.)

I must, however, take issue with Florida (as many have, and many more likely will), as it would preclude any mention of the title of one of my favorite Butthole Surfers songs.

Very well. I shall go back to sitting on my ***, willing it to widen soft-sensual-curvaceously (which so far has been wholly ineffective).