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[Nonlethal Force]

Excellent post, el-remmen. Mind if I add a few comments?

Originally Posted by el-remmen

Also, while some people swear by it, I say avoid using different color fonts for the text. I think this is too jarring. Again, there are exceptions: I used this effect for the voice of a weird creature in my “Out of the Frying Pan” story hour (putting all its dialogue in yellow font), but it was near the end and for a limited time to delineate a distinction between it and the “normal” people. It is not something I would do regularly.

As an aside ... I found that in my Story Hour I had readers who loved it and readers who hated it. So, I came up with a solution. I personally liked it, so colored speech became the default of my thread. However, for those who don't like the colored speech I created a "Color-free Speech Section" Sblock. Anyone not desiring to read the colored text is welcome to open the Sblock and the whole post is done again in a color-free environment. Here's how you do it. It takes about 15 seconds and I hope some of my readers enjoyed it (Namely Piratecat ... who was the only one to voice their opinion but I am sure there were others).

1. Type the post to include colored speech.

2. Hit the PREVIEW button so that your post somes up.

3. Highlight the text on the screen in the previewed section and do a Control-C

4. Go to the bottom of your actual posts and type the following (substituting "[]" in for the "{}": {Sblock=Color-Free Speech Section}

5. Hit Control-V to paste your post that you copied a second ago. Your entire post should appear exactly as above just without the color tags.

6. Type (Again, substituting "[]" for the "{}"): {/Sblock}

7. Hit the PREVIEW button once more, just to make sure you got all the tags correct.

If you want to see an example, check out my story hour in my sig. Every update has one of these things. You can even hit the "Quote button" to see the actual post itself if you need a more concrete example than my description provides.

Originally Posted by el-remmen

7. Proofread. Proofread. Proofread.
I was not always the best at this myself, as I went through a long lazy phase where I just posted whatever I wrote and went back and fixed it later, but as time went on I stopped doing that and made sure I gave each installment a good read over before I posted it.

AMEN! I have to admit that my story hour was poorly edited at first. Part of it was that my posts were ~ 3,000 words in the beginning. So by the time I got done typing I didn't feel like proofreading. Then (Again, thanks, Piratecat!) I decided to shorten up my post length and I edited before posting. I confess, my earlier posts were much worse than my later posts. Sure, there will always be mistakes. Nobody is perfect. But proofreading is the key!

And, if anyone is curious, I am currently going back and proofreading my entire story hour now that it is complete. I'm still finding mistakes, but it is getting better. I'm hoping now that this is my second, third, fourth, etc time through the various parts of the story hour that it is getting much better.

Originally Posted by el-remmen

If possible get someone else to give it a read and a clean up, and some other authors, like Pirate Cat and Spyscribe swear by reading it aloud to yourself. This is something I do when I get to the afore-mentioned clunky language to help myself work it out, but I never got into the habit of reading the whole thing aloud, even though it seems like a really good idea.

Please add me to the list of people who swear by reading it aloud! I do it all the time and more than anything it helps me control sentence length in addition to story thematics. By reading it aloud my ears can tune in to simple things like when I use a word to often (for example: he/she/it). I find reading aloud to be an excellent stategy. Plus, it helps retain the story. {Ever see that chart on how much you learn by seeing or hearing versus how much you learn by seeing and hearing?}

Originally Posted by el-remmen

11. Pimp Your Story Hour
I am not saying to go into every thread and extol its virtues, but put a link to it in your sig. Make a banner for it. When you get to a point where you have multiple threads for the same story try creating a portal thread where a new reader can easily figure out where to start and what’s what.

Hey, let me do it here!

You can check out my story hour in the link to my sig. And as for pimping the story ... you can read it and know that it actually finishes! This is one story hour that you can start and actually know you will come to a conclusion! {There are others, too.}

For anyone looking for a good story hour to read, please note that at I said earlier I am about 70% done with a re-edit, so there is plenty of good stuff to read before you catch up to my editing. I hope to be done by January 1, anyway. If you are wondering about how long the Story Hour is ... as I edit it currently sits at about 182,000 words. So, it is about the length of a longer Wies/Hickman novel.

Originally Posted by el-remmen

13. Have Fun and Don’t Whine!
When it comes down to it, most people are not going to care about the story of your D&D (or whatever) game. And those that do enjoy it are still not as likely to care as much as you do about it, so make sure that if you are doing this you are doing it because you want to and because you enjoy it.

Bingo. Don't write because you want a big audience. To be honest, I think my Story Hour had somewhere near 30 dedicated readers. I figured this out because I would update every other day and the number of views would go up about that much between posts. Perhaps there were more people who only read weekly, because that'd be cool too! But the honest truth is that when you start out you aren't going to have many readers. When I began I think I had 3-5. When the Story Hour grew in length and some people realized it wasn't going to simply be abandoned I think more people started to read. Now that I have it noted as completed I think there have been some more people to give it a read.

Through it all I cherished every piece of reader feedback. But I would go weeks (if not months!) between reader feedback. If I was writing for the pats on the back, I'd have quite long before it was finished ... especially since the whole thread vanished in the crash of '06! However, I put it back up and kept on going because I wanted to see it through. I got to the point were I craved that hour and a half of writing every other day. I wrote because the story lived inside me and I needed to express it. I wrote for the story's sake. I hope that is a good thing!



Anyway, excellent advice, el-remmen. I hope this post only adds to the excellent foundation already laid down.