~ Obey Gaia TOS and the Guild RaG.
~Plagiarism will result in an immediate ban.
~If you are sharing your favorite poem by someone else post who has written the poem so that everyone will know who wrote it.
~Keep everything PG-13 and under.
~Remember copyright laws.
~If putting up a story, keep something in mind: You are opening yourself up to criticism. Yes, some will stroke your ego, but you gotta take the good with the bad. Use the bad to improve on what you have.
~Alternately: Constructive critique, only. Flaming will be punished. Not in an immediate ban, but it'll only take three warnings.
~Finally, just like in the fanfic sub-forum: try to construct the title to give an idea of what we'll be reading (a general rating, a genre, something like that)
Here I quoted The Admin who made the original fanfiction forum rules as well as the Original Stories/Prose rules and guidelines. I think these would help everyone when creating and posting. And there's a section for critiques as well.
Formatting Your Piece for Readers
The Formatting Basics
* Proofread to catch glaring errors. If you can't make at least a token effort to make your work readable, then it's not likely people are going to make the effort needed to read through your mistakes. If you're not good at doing this to your own work, get a friend or family member to help you do it before you post.
* Spellcheck. This goes right along with proofreading. If your word processor doesn't have spellcheck, you can use SpellCheck.net. But remember, spellcheck won't catch words that are spelled right but still wrong (ex. there, their, and their, a instead of an, etc.).
* Put an extra space between paragraphs. Tabs and indents won't transfer from your word processor to Gaia, so it's necessary to put an extra space between paragraphs instead. And remember to break your piece into paragraphs properly, instead of having a huge wall of text. As a general rule, when the subject changes or a new person speaks, a new paragraph should start.
* Leave the font the default size. Small font on a computer screen is hard on the eyes, and not everybody can read it. Likewise, huge font is overly annoying.
* Leave the font the default color. Bright fonts or pale fonts are hard to read and hard on the eyes.
How to Get People to Read
* Format your work in an easy-to-read manner. Follow the section above for maximum reader ease. The more pleasing your work is to the eye, the easier it will be to get people to start reading. A little bit of spice is okay to liven things up, but don't go overboard with the graphics and fonts.
* Include the fandom and pairings (if applicable) in your thread title or first post. This lets people know with just a quick look what to expect so they can figure out if it's something they want to read.
* Avoid excessive bumping. Besides being against the forum rules, filling your topic with posts might deter people who think either your story is super-long, or you've got enough other commenters that they don't need to take the time to try and help.
* Post all chapters in the same thread. Making a separate threads for each chapter/part of your story makes it harder for readers to find things, and clutters the forum. If you want a nicer-looking thread you can reserve posts first, or you can put a table of contents at the beginning with links to each post as you add new chapters.
* Leave the text the default left-aligned. Not only is centered or right-aligned font annoying to read, it's not the norm for prose. For scripts and screenplays, centered text is okay.
* Don't horizontally stretch the page. If you're putting in breaks between scenes, or have a banner code for people to link your thread, make sure that they don't stretch the page. People aren't going to read your work if they have to side-scroll to see everything.
How to Give Constructive Criticism
Constructive criticism, often shortened to concrit, is a form of criticism that, in addition to pointing out the flaws of a work, offers advice for improvement. Here is a simple three-part formula for giving concrit:
* One part praise
Find something they did well and comment on it first.
* One part pain
Identify a few of the major flaws and briefly describe them--there is no need to extensively hammer on minor issues, especially if others have already made note of them.
* One part prescription
Give a suggestion or two for how to fix the flaws you pointed out, and/or ideas for future development.
How to Tell the Difference Between Harsh Criticism and Flaming
* Criticism, however harsh, should never attack the author themselves. It is not the author being critiqued, but the writing.
* Authors must be able to set aside their pride when looking for critique. While harsh, something like the example below is a critique and not an attack on you, the author. While it's not constructive criticism, it's still criticism of the flaws of the piece itself.
The premise of this story is tired and overdone, your OC is a blatant Mary-Sue, and the grammar errors make my eyes bleed.
* It's understood that as an author your work is a part of you and you want to protect it, but if you do nothing but defend your errors then your writing will not improve. You will need to separate yourself from your writing.
* Critiquers, please exercise your best judgment when selecting what language to use for your criticism. Try to be as polite as you can and leave out things which might be construed as sarcasm. Over the internet this is hard, but it is possible to give a critique without hurting the author's feelings.
* Non-constructive criticism can also be flaming. The following are a few examples of what is not tolerated in this forum:
Your story sucks. Go back to elementary school and learn some grammar, idiot.
This is the worst pile of crap I've ever read. My eyeballs, they burn. burning_eyes
You fail. GTFO.
~Plagiarism will result in an immediate ban.
~If you are sharing your favorite poem by someone else post who has written the poem so that everyone will know who wrote it.
~Keep everything PG-13 and under.
~Remember copyright laws.
~If putting up a story, keep something in mind: You are opening yourself up to criticism. Yes, some will stroke your ego, but you gotta take the good with the bad. Use the bad to improve on what you have.
~Alternately: Constructive critique, only. Flaming will be punished. Not in an immediate ban, but it'll only take three warnings.
~Finally, just like in the fanfic sub-forum: try to construct the title to give an idea of what we'll be reading (a general rating, a genre, something like that)
Here I quoted The Admin who made the original fanfiction forum rules as well as the Original Stories/Prose rules and guidelines. I think these would help everyone when creating and posting. And there's a section for critiques as well.
The Admin
Formatting Your Piece for Readers
The Formatting Basics
* Proofread to catch glaring errors. If you can't make at least a token effort to make your work readable, then it's not likely people are going to make the effort needed to read through your mistakes. If you're not good at doing this to your own work, get a friend or family member to help you do it before you post.
* Spellcheck. This goes right along with proofreading. If your word processor doesn't have spellcheck, you can use SpellCheck.net. But remember, spellcheck won't catch words that are spelled right but still wrong (ex. there, their, and their, a instead of an, etc.).
* Put an extra space between paragraphs. Tabs and indents won't transfer from your word processor to Gaia, so it's necessary to put an extra space between paragraphs instead. And remember to break your piece into paragraphs properly, instead of having a huge wall of text. As a general rule, when the subject changes or a new person speaks, a new paragraph should start.
* Leave the font the default size. Small font on a computer screen is hard on the eyes, and not everybody can read it. Likewise, huge font is overly annoying.
* Leave the font the default color. Bright fonts or pale fonts are hard to read and hard on the eyes.
How to Get People to Read
* Format your work in an easy-to-read manner. Follow the section above for maximum reader ease. The more pleasing your work is to the eye, the easier it will be to get people to start reading. A little bit of spice is okay to liven things up, but don't go overboard with the graphics and fonts.
* Include the fandom and pairings (if applicable) in your thread title or first post. This lets people know with just a quick look what to expect so they can figure out if it's something they want to read.
* Avoid excessive bumping. Besides being against the forum rules, filling your topic with posts might deter people who think either your story is super-long, or you've got enough other commenters that they don't need to take the time to try and help.
* Post all chapters in the same thread. Making a separate threads for each chapter/part of your story makes it harder for readers to find things, and clutters the forum. If you want a nicer-looking thread you can reserve posts first, or you can put a table of contents at the beginning with links to each post as you add new chapters.
* Leave the text the default left-aligned. Not only is centered or right-aligned font annoying to read, it's not the norm for prose. For scripts and screenplays, centered text is okay.
* Don't horizontally stretch the page. If you're putting in breaks between scenes, or have a banner code for people to link your thread, make sure that they don't stretch the page. People aren't going to read your work if they have to side-scroll to see everything.
How to Give Constructive Criticism
Constructive criticism, often shortened to concrit, is a form of criticism that, in addition to pointing out the flaws of a work, offers advice for improvement. Here is a simple three-part formula for giving concrit:
* One part praise
Find something they did well and comment on it first.
* One part pain
Identify a few of the major flaws and briefly describe them--there is no need to extensively hammer on minor issues, especially if others have already made note of them.
* One part prescription
Give a suggestion or two for how to fix the flaws you pointed out, and/or ideas for future development.
How to Tell the Difference Between Harsh Criticism and Flaming
* Criticism, however harsh, should never attack the author themselves. It is not the author being critiqued, but the writing.
* Authors must be able to set aside their pride when looking for critique. While harsh, something like the example below is a critique and not an attack on you, the author. While it's not constructive criticism, it's still criticism of the flaws of the piece itself.
The premise of this story is tired and overdone, your OC is a blatant Mary-Sue, and the grammar errors make my eyes bleed.
* It's understood that as an author your work is a part of you and you want to protect it, but if you do nothing but defend your errors then your writing will not improve. You will need to separate yourself from your writing.
* Critiquers, please exercise your best judgment when selecting what language to use for your criticism. Try to be as polite as you can and leave out things which might be construed as sarcasm. Over the internet this is hard, but it is possible to give a critique without hurting the author's feelings.
* Non-constructive criticism can also be flaming. The following are a few examples of what is not tolerated in this forum:
Your story sucks. Go back to elementary school and learn some grammar, idiot.
This is the worst pile of crap I've ever read. My eyeballs, they burn. burning_eyes
You fail. GTFO.
