Welcome to the Prose Subforum!
The purpose of this forum is to share your prose works, giving and getting feedback from other Gaia users. The guidelines for posting here are pretty simple: as long as it's prose, this is where it goes!
exclaim What the heck is prose? Is this some kind of fancy writing?
Actually, it's just the opposite! Prose is basically everyday speech. In other words, everything that isn't poetry.
Actually, it's just the opposite! Prose is basically everyday speech. In other words, everything that isn't poetry.
* Fictional stories of all lengths and genres
* Non-fiction works like journals and essays
* Scripts and screenplays
:!; What sort of works can you find in this forum?
* Poetry & song lyrics - post these in the Original Poetry/Lyrics subforum
* Fanfiction works - post these in the Fanfiction subforum
* Collaborative stories/RPs - post these in the Collaborative Works subforum
* Writing contests - post these in the Writing Contests subforum
* General writing discussion - post this in the main Writers forum
* "Post your stories here!" and hangout threads - These are spam and should only be posted in the Chatterbox.
* A topic containing nothing but a link off-site - This is spam; if you would like to post a story that is already up on another site or in your journal, please include at least a short excerpt so that your thread is relevant to the forum.
:!; What doesn't belong in this forum?
Gaia is more or less a PG-13 website. Use that as a guide, along with your own common sense before posting a story. Swearing, violence, sex--as long as you don't go TOO X-TREEM with your story and include a warning for more graphic content, you'll probably be fine. If the entire story is extremely graphic (think porn), you may want to find a more adult-themed forum to post it on.
:!;What kind of Aaah! My story is full of weird symbols! What do I do? content can I have in my story?
When copying and pasting directly out of a word processing program like Word and into a new post on Gaia, sometimes the punctuation doesn't transfer well. Instead of quotation marks and apostrophes, you end up with a series of other symbols.
A suggested solution that could help:
1. Go to view.
2. Go down to something that mentions encoding
3. Switch around from Unicode to the Western Encodings. One of these has a good chance of properly displaying the story.
It might also help to save your story in plain text format before you copy and paste it.
:!; Why are all these people saying bad stuff about my story?!
By posting in this forum, the assumption is that you want criticism. Not everyone is nice about it, so you may get comments that don't consist of candy and roses. If you'd rather not have anyone point out the flaws in your story, please note this clearly in the title or first post of your thread.
:!; What is criticism and what is a flame?
Despite popular opinion, criticism =/= flaming. Something to always keep in mind when commenting on someone's work is to keep your tone professional and polite, and to focus on the writing, not the writer. "You couldn't write your way out of a wet paper bag--go suck somewhere else, n00b" is a flame, not constructive criticism. "The premise of this story is tired and overdone, the main character is a blatant Mary-Sue, and the grammar errors make my eyes bleed" is harsh, but is still a critique.
Quote:
One formula for a successful critique:
-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
:!; Tips for getting more readers
* Format for online viewing. This means skip a line between every paragraph, so that you don't end up with a block of text. If you copy and paste out of Word or some other word processing program, your indents will not transfer (nor will any text formatting). You'll have to redo it all by hand.
Leave the size and color of the text set to default. No one wants to strain their eyes to read pink text, or squint to read a tiny font. It will detract from the actual reading of the story. Don't center or align the text.
* Proofread! No one likes to decipher netspeak or a story laden with spelling and grammar errors. You may be posting a rough draft, but if you can't spend a little time and effort cleaning it up, why should anyone spend any time and effort reading and commenting on it? Use spellcheck. If your word processor doesn't have one, there are online versions available, such as: http://www.spellcheck.net
* Include the length and genre in your title. This allows people who are interested in that sort of story to find yours right away.
* Avoid excessive bumping. Besides being a big no-no (bumping is spam and should be kept to a minimum), if you fill your topic with replies people may avoid it to focus on topics that haven't had replies yet.
* Read and reply on other stories!Networking is the best way to get more comments on your own work. Read other people's topics and give them helpful replies ("Great story! Read mine!" is spam and is NOT a helpful reply, btw), and they will be more likely to return the favor.
Remember that the TOS applies to all forums on Gaia, including this one! If you find a post that doesn't belong or something that needs moderator action, be sure to report it with the "Report this Topic" or "Report this Post" buttons!
