Keep Your Story "Safe" From Editors

Mibba staff, including story editors, will be getting their collective powers shortly. This means stories will be reported and regulated again.

There are guidelines that your story is required to meet before it should be posted to Mibba. These are not insane requests and they are things that will help you to be a better writer.

Rules to keep your story from getting reported

1. Make sure there are not multitudes of typos/spelling errors in your story. There are free online spell checks available now that the built in Mibba one has disappeared. A few errors/typos are acceptable as everyone makes mistakes and spell checks don't always pick up switches like they're/their/there. But you need to make an effort. Stories should look professional in appearance.

2. Make sure you capitalize words that need it.

3. Make sure you use paragraphs appropriately. Stories in block format (no paragraphs) will be reported. A new paragraph should start anytime a new person speaks. Two people should never speak dialogue in the same paragraph.

4. Use correct grammar and punctuation. The two most common mistakes I see made are ellipsises and dialogue.

- Three periods is a pause/ellipsis. For example: "Hello . . . lover." Bad example, but you get it. Don't use: "Hello ..................... lover."

- Dialogue needs ending punctuation and no spaces between quotes.

"I bought a new ball today," Margo said. >> Correct.
" I bought a new ball today " Margo said. >> Incorrect.
"I bought a new ball today". Margo said. >> Incorrect.

5. No character pictures in stories, no pictures unless they're dividers or necessary. (Clothing is not necessary, nor is a car. A picture of a symbol a character sees carved into a tree is necessary.)

6. No links to pictures or websites or songs within the story. The author's note is fine.

7. No chapters that aren't chapters - for example, posting an author's note as a chapter.

8. Unless they are all connected within the same plotline, no posting oneshots as chapters of the same story. If you have a set of oneshots all pertaining to abortion, they still need to be posted individually. Use collections to group them.

Rules to keep your story from getting deleted

There are only a few ways to get your story deleted, most relating to the title. Pay attention. These will get your story deleted, not just reported.

1. It has to be your work. Don't steal someone else's stuff. Not only will it get deleted, but you will be permanently banned from the site.

2. Nothing illegal. No promoting hatred against a particular user or calling everyone to murder a particular singer.

3. Your titles cannot be decorated. No asterisks, extra slash marks, double ampersands (&&), etc. If it's relevant, you can have it. I can certainly see how a title like *Karen could be relevant to a plot.

4. Properly capitalize your title. No all caps, no all lowercase. Unless you can prove it's necessary.

5. No tags in the title. No (slash) after the title. No (A JoBros love story) after the title. No (love story) after the title. No tags at all. Period.

6. Your story must be a story. It can't be a forward or blog post or an article or anything like that.

But, please, if your story does get reported, don't despair. The story editors are there to help you and to answer any story related questions you have. There are betas on the site that will help you fix your errors, in addition to the story editors. Getting reported is not the end of the world or your story. It just means your story needs a little work to meet the simple guidelines Mibba has in place to help us all be the best writers we can be.