Story Q & A

When do I make a title capitalized? Like prince or princess. The reason is because I often say prince, princess, king and queen in my new story, but don't know when they should be capitalized. Is the the same rules as like mom and dad or different?

@ aubs

It's the same as the rules for government officials. For example, if I'm casually talking about the president without saying his name, it's not capitalized, but if I specifically say "President Obama," it's capitalized. If the word's used as part of a person's title (Prince Harry, Princess Di, President Obama, etc), then it should be capitalized. In any other instance, it isn't capitalized.

Just a quick question , I know that there're a lot of stories that contain sex and nudity but are nude pictures allowed to go into story banners?

@ Kitsune Hina

There's nothing in the rules about it, and I've seen my fair share of sexually explicit story banners, so I'd say as long as it coincides with the rating of the story, it should be fine.

@ Kitsune Hina

Quote

Images cannot be pornographic or show illegal content.

Character images cannot be posted (or linked to) within the text of a story. They can be linked to in author's notes or posted in the Characters section of a story.

Relevant images (character outfits, pictures/illustrations of character homes, maps, etc) cannot be posted (or linked to) within the the text of a story. They can be linked to in the author's notes.

Images that can be used within the actual content of story are limited to page breaks or dividers, or story/chapter banners.

Those are the guidelines for images in stories / their layouts.

@ i saw sparks
Thank you. I have too. I've seen a lot of stories with provocative and explicit banners.

@ kitsch
Thanks Rianne. I figured that pornographic material wasn't allowed and I wanted to make sure about explicit banners and such

Hi there! I'm starting to write a sort of anthology of weird made up fairy tales, but they are sort of a "story within a story" as in someone is reading them and occasionally it goes to her POV (like Are You Afraid of the Dark?). My question is, should I post the "fairy tales" as separate stories or should I have them all together in one giant one?

@ Marya Morevna
After asking a couple other story editors (because I'm still relatively new and suck at my job sometimes), I can safely and positively tell you that you should post them as separate stories since the link is going to be occasional.

thanks so much!

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I'll ask anyway...

I'm writing a story that's based off in Japan. Well, I'm not very good with all their customs and that kind of stuff. Like, I know the basics of Japan you could say. I know some things, but I don't know a whole lot. The hard part about research is that most things only come up on wikipedia. It's hard for me to make sense of this place. I've tried researching on other places, but I come up rather short instead. So, my question is... is there anyone who can help me with all of these customs or knows a lot about Japan than me? I just need to talk to someone (in PM would be easier) about these things and help me when I might have a few questions. I also need someone to make sure my story is following at least some of the general customs for Japan.

I have a character who is neither male, nor female. Is there a way to bypass needing to categorize my character as one or the other?

Where should I draw the line with swearing? Like, what I mean is... if my character says the f word every now and then, should it be rated R because of that? Or is it okay to leave it PG-13? He doesn't say it all that often or anything. You could think of it as an occasional slip.

@ Apteryx
I don't think you can, sadly. :/

@ sweeToxic
Darn. Thanks for the info!

Also, while I am by no means an expert on the rating system, I believe keeping it at PG-13 should be fine. If the character only drops the bomb occasionally, that should be within the bounds of PG-13. If your character's throwing it around like it's nobody's business, you should up it to R.

@ Apteryx
Yeah, I figured as much. He does swear a lot, but it's mostly just saying "damn" or "dammit". I just want him to come off as being kind of rude and cold first. So, I was curious to know

@ sweeToxic
Maybe it is coming a bit late, but I can help your questions about Japan, if you still want/need. Feel free to PM me.

Thanks.

Okay, so if I write a story based on a song, but with all original characters, is it a fan fiction because it's based on the song, or?

@ SecretPiggyMafia
It's a songfic, not a fanfic. If it's based in a world you didn't create (for example, Hogwarts) but has all original characters, that's still a fan fiction. But if a story is based off a song, such as writing a story with a character suffering from cancer that was based off of Cancer by My Chemical Romance, but all characters are entirely original, then that's an original fiction.

Characters you don't own/worlds you don't own = fanfiction.
Using a song as a basis or inspiration = original fiction.

@ Mr. Darcy
Thank you

Hi there! So I have a story with quite a bit of chapters that have been scrapped just because they don't flow with the story. My question is, can I create another story called (for example) "Untitled: The Deleted Chapters" and all the chapters posted are the scrapped ones?