Diana the Valkyrie's writing guide for authors

On the site http://www.TheValkyrie.com I want only good stories. It's hard to pin
down what makes a good story, but here are some guidelines.

Make it at least 1000 words (6kb of plain ascii). Anything less than that is
unlikely to tell a story.

I offer the stories as plain ascii text files, with 72 characters per line 
maximum. The closer you can submit to that standard, the easier my life is.
But if you write well, I'll take it carved into granite, if that's the only
way you can handle it.

Could the first line of the file be the story title, the second line be "By 
Jim Jones" or whatever name you want to use, and the third line be a one line 
summary of what the story is about - I'll use that in the link that people 
click on. If you don't do that third line, I'll have to, and you'll probably 
do it better than I would.

I won't change your story, but I will reformat the text to make it look OK on
a screen, and I might also spell check it, and correct typos.

Subject matter - don't bother sending me a story that isn't in any way related
to the theme of my web site. I wish you every success in finding a home for it, 
but my web site isn't the right place.

Don't use the second person (you) in telling the story. I find it very grating.

Spell check (but that isn't a substitute for proof reading). Ecstacy is very
frequently mis-spelled. it should be "ecstasy", of course.

Grammar - I'm not too fussy about grammar, but please do try to have a subject
and a verb in each sentence, otherwise it's harder to read. A gerund is not
a verb, by the way.

Punctuation. Again, I'm not too fussy, and I'll tell you if you have any really
bad punctuation habits. Ellipses ... are hardly ever useful. When you do use them,
they only have three dots.

Crude or obscene language - I have no idea what that means. Some cultures have
taboo words; if that bothers you, find synonyms.



Emailing me

I get a lot of email. A *lot*. You wouldn't believe how much.
And I try to respond to all of it (and that makes it worse, of
course).

I have no way of filing emails. I can save significant ones, and 
maybe even find them later, but if someone sends me an email saying just

"Yes, I would."

Then I have no idea what he's referring to. So, when you email me (this
applies to other people, too) you should quote the previous email (or emails).

> Would you like some butter with your bread ?

Yes, I would.



Then I can see what we were talking about. Sometimes you might need to
quote further back to understand the context, as in:

>> Dry bread is not very edible.

> Would you like some butter with your bread ?

Yes, I would.



Replies

I'll normally reply back to the address you wrote from. If you want anything else,
then please tell me so, on every email, because I won't remember.


If my reply to you is very short, that isn't meant to be rude, it means
I have a lot of email stacked up and I'm trying to work through it quickly.
Brevity isn't rudeness, it's just brevity.



If you email me and I don't reply, and it was plainly something
that needed a reply, then your email to me, or my reply to you, might
have gotten lost in cyberspace. Internet email isn't as reliable as
a politician's promise.

My primary email address is Valkyrie@thevalkyrie.com

If for some reason that doesn't work, I can be reached at DValkyrie@AOL.COM,
but please don't use that unless you have to, the AOL email system
could be better than it is.





Subject matter and censorship

I'm not going to tell you what to write (although I'll help with suggestions). 
But I do have the right to decide what goes on my web site.

Sex and violence - no problem. It's only a story, and the audience is adult.

Bestiality and some of the other unusual themes I see floating around the 
internet - these simply aren't in tune with the theme of my site, so I'm not 
interested.

Children - that's a difficult one. No real children are involved in making a 
story, of course, so one could argue that sex scenes with children ought to be 
OK. But I'm going to take a practical line here. I take a very high profile
with this web site, and I don't want to give ammunition to anyone who doesn't like
it for whatever reason.

Everyone hates paedophiles and child abusers. I don't want any kind of association 
with those, of course. Nor do I want the kind of hassle I might get by allowing 
stories involving child sex.

What is a child, in this context? I used to take the UK definitions (that's 
where I live). You can get married at 16, so the law believes that 16 is old 
enough. But now I prefer to make the limit 18.

That isn't to say you can't have children in a story. It's a question of what 
the children do, of course. Just send them out of the room for any sex scenes,
or anything at all like that.



Advanced writing guide  

You might as well improve your technical writing skills, but don't get hung up on 
any of this, it isn't as important as good writing.

Find out the difference between its and it's. Don't mix up due to and owing to. 
There are no words that pluralise with 's. Get a Roget's thesaurus (or use the one 
in your word processor).

Read your sentences out loud to yourself, to see what they sound like. In chains
of dialogue, he said and she said gets tedious, but make sure that the reader 
doesn't have to spend time working out who said what.

You should run a spell checker over anything that is likely to be around for
a long time, like a story (I'm not fussed whether you use Australian, British, 
Canadian or US spelling). But don't make the mistake of thinking that a spell 
checker will find all your mistakes. Look at the three sentences below; obvious
mistakes, but a spell checker will pass them as OK.

They went two bed. This is what I thing. I know wear you are.


Slang

Your English teacher told you not to use slang. I'm here to tell you that
if it livens up your writing, and if it feels natural, then go right
ahead and use it. Our language is so delightfully rich, it's a sin to
try to limit it. Remember that your reader might live 10,000 miles away, though.
So if you tell him to have a butchers at her boat race (cockney rhyming slang), 
he might not immediately twig that you're telling him to have a gander at her 
phizzog (flapper slang).


Punctuating dialogue

Punctuating dialogue is a problem for a lot of people. Here's how to do it.

I love you.

That's a sentence, so it gets a full stop at the end (Americans call that a period,
to English people a period is what a woman has each month). So you might think that 
when you report the speech, it would be:

"I love you.", he said.

A lot of people think that, and they're wrong. Or maybe:

"I love you." he said.

Well, it isn't. It's:

"I love you," she said. "Do you love me?" he said.

Note where the comma and question mark appear.

or (but for some reason this sounds clumsier):

She said "I love you."

I'm not going to explain why, that gets complicated. But that's the way it is. 
Have a look at some books, you'll see.

Some people like to have each dialogue line in a new paragraph. Personally, I prefer
not to. That's a matter of taste, both ways work.

Full stops are followed by a space, and commas are too. Some people seem to think
that if you have a punctuation mark, you don't need a space. Well, you do. 
And the space goes after the mark, not before it.

If you think I'm being a bit particular here, you're right. But there's no reason
why you shouldn't simultaneously have fun writing, *and* improve your writing
skills (most office jobs need you to be able to write).

The best way to send me material, is to ftp it to ftp.TheValkyrie.com/incoming.
If you don't know what that means, I have Diana the Valkyrie's guide to ftp.
If you send it any other way, I can handle it, so don't worry too much about it.

Have a look at http://www.TheValkyrie.com/members/upload.htm for other ways to 
upload. I wrote a file uploader that you might find easy to use.




-- 
Diana the Valkyrie, email me at Valkyrie@TheValkyrie.com
http://www.TheValkyrie.com   ftp: ftp.TheValkyrie.com/incoming 
A hard man is good to beat