Stories: works with over 300 words and no more than 2 parts.

Serials: works consisting of 3 or more parts that represent a continuous narrative much like the chapters in a book. While there are no hard and fast rules on length, please don't submit parts that are very short on word count. Aiming for around 2,500 to 3,000 words and upwards for each part is generally recommended.

Snippets: short works consisting of 300 words or less.

Letters: these refer to transcriptions of reader's letters from spanking magazines rather than narrative in the form of a letter.

Poems: items written in verse.

Songs: lyrics, typically to existing songs, in the form of parody.

Books: transcriptions of existing books which are no longer copyrighted.

Articles: non-fictional works. Some are loaded from our electronic journal, Wellred Weekly.

Plays: works featuring scripted dialogue between characters.

In addition, the library features:

Ordered series: individual stories which can be read standalone but which typically feature a recurring theme or characters and are intended to be read in a particular order.

Unordered series: individual stories which can be read standalone but which typically feature a recurring theme or characters but are not intended to be read in any particular order.

Collaborative serials: serials in which the various parts have been written by different authors.

We try to ensure a degree of uniformity in terms of the layout and formatting of library submissions. In addition to the actual layout of the text there are a number of items which may be included in a submission:

Author's Note
An item of information that provides essential extra detail for the reader, typically placed at the start. Not intended for general acknowledgments in regards to help from editors or proof-readers which can be placed on the forum.

Ordered series reference
Lists in intended order of viewing all the items that comprise the series. Placed at start.

Divider
We use an ornamental image as a divider. When submitting items to the library authors should clearly indicate where they would like to place a divider. Do not simply leave a blank line as it will not be obvious what is intended.

Copyright statement
Submissions have by default the following copyright text displayed at the end:

Line between paragraphs
There should be a blank line between each paragraph. If using a word processor do not simply use styling to generate space after a paragraph as this will be lost when the item is loaded to the library as plain text.

Dialogue
Please place dialogue from different characters on a separate line each time.

Speech marks
Please use double quotation marks for speech.

Bold & italic
The LSF story viewing software allows the reader to change font size and colour scheme and certain combinations of browser and operating system may not display bold items correctly. Consequently, we only use bold text for headings rather than to indicate emphasis which is best indicated using italics. If submitting an item in plain text please surround the text you wish to have in italics with the standard HTML tags, i.e. <i> and </i> or <em> and </em>.

Blockquote
Occasionally we will mark blocks of text using a blockquote (indented left and right margins) and add a white background. This is something we will make a decision on at the time of loading.

Ellipses
Our standard for ellipses is a row of three periods or full stops (...), any more are likely to be automatically stripped out at the time of loading.

Exclamation marks
Our standard is to allow a maximum of three exclamation marks together, any more are likely to be automatically stripped out at the time of loading.

Indenting
Leading spaces at the start of paragraphs are stripped out at the time of loading.

Spaces
Multiple spaces between elements are not supported and are removed at the time of loading.

Grammar and punctuation may be a bit boring but if you get them right, your story submission will get through our assessment net and end up being loaded in the library where it will be read and (hopefully!) enjoyed. We don't expect perfect prose but we do expect would-be authors to adhere to basic standards, such as proper sentence construction where each sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop/period. Here are some examples.

Punctuating dialogue

Quotation marks are a form of punctuation which help readers know where dialogue begins and ends. They differentiate the words your characters are uttering from those that you are simply using to describe the events in the story. Always use double quotes for direct speech.

1. Put the speech marks " " around anything that the characters in your story are saying.
   
   "I work in a bank," said Mollie.
   Mollie said, "I work in a bank."
   "I work," Mollie said, "in a bank."
   "I work," said Mollie. "I have three part-time jobs."
2. Always put some form of punctuation (, ? !) between the speaker and the speech.
   
   "Will you whack me with the big slipper?" asked Mollie.
   Mollie asked, "Will you whack me with the big slipper?"
   "Will you whack me," Mollie asked, "with the big slipper?"
   "Of course!" replied Phil.
   
3. The first thing a character says always starts with a capital letter, even though it may come after a comma.
   
   Jane whispered, "Did you hear about Paul, Mary?" She was not sure if Mary had already heard.
   David shouted, "Why are you whispering about Paul?" He was sure that the girls were going to give away their secret.
4. Always start a new line when another character speaks or you start to describe what another character is doing.
   
   "We have some unfinished business to settle," said Jack as he flexed the cane.
   "Oh I don't think so," gulped Mollie. "I've been good all week - haven't I Jane?"
   "You big fibber," said Jane. "You cheated in the history test, you stole a pack of cigarettes from the staff room, and you smoked most of them behind the bike sheds."
   Jack glared at Mollie. "I see. You have just earned yourself six extra. Go and bend over the desk."
   "You rotten snitch, Jane," hissed Mollie.
   "I'm going to enjoy watching this," grinned Jane.
   "No you're not," said Jack. "You also cheated in the test. Go and bend over the desk next to Mollie."
5. Mark only the words the characters are speaking with quotation marks. Do not put your quotation marks around words which tell which character is speaking, such as "Mollie said".
6. Place sentence-ending punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.

The Apostrophe

The apostrophe has two main uses: contractions and ownerships

1. Contractions
   

   When contractions are used, the apostrophe replaces the letter or letters that were removed to make a shorter word:

   do not becomes - don't.

   The apostrophe replaces the missing letter, in this case the o. Further examples are:

   I will becomes - I'll

   you are becomes - you're

   they are becomes - they're

2. Ownership
   

   Apostrophes are also used to show ownership - they make a word possessive. To make a word possessive follow the three simple rules given below.

   1. If the word is singular add 's

      the student's books - meaning the books belonging to the student.

      Further examples are:

      the boss's armchair; the government's regulations.

   2. If the word is a plural but does not end in s add 's

      women's rights - meaning the rights of women.

      Further examples are:

      children's playground - meaning the playground for children;

      men's changing rooms - meaning the changing rooms for men.

   3. If the word is plural and ends in s just add an apostrophe

      the students' library books - meaning the books belonging to the students.
3. Common problems in using apostrophes
   

   The apostrophe is frequently misused. Words that cause particular problems are: its / it's and whose / who's.

   1. Its / it's

      Use its when you want to show possession:

      the government abandoned its policy.

      Its belongs to a group of words that are already possessive. Other examples are: it is hers; it is yours. These words are already possessive; they do not need apostrophes to indicate possession.

      Use it's when you want to shorten it is:

      it's a nice day.

      It's is a contraction of it is. The apostrophe replaces the missing i.

   2. Whose / who's

      Use whose when you want to show possession:

      the student whose notes I borrowed.

      Whose belongs to the same group of possessive words as its. It does not need an apostrophe to denote possession.

      Use who's when you want to shorten who is:

      the student who's coming to visit.

      Who's is a contraction of who is. The apostrophe replaces the missing i.

      Remember: just because a word ends in s, it does not mean it needs an apostrophe! An apostrophe is added to show possession or to replace a missing letter or letters in contractions. If you are unsure when to use an apostrophe, check your use of the apostrophe falls under one of the rules outlined in this guide.

The Colon

A colon is used to separate a list of items from the main part of a sentence but the separated section of the sentence must be able to stand on its own. Colons are also used to separate a sentence from a quotation, a phrase that provides introduction or after the opening salutation in a letter. Advice on the correct use of the colon can be found here.

The Semicolon

A semi-colon is used to separate two related and complete sentences from each other but can also be used to separate items in a list to give the list better readability. Advice on the correct use of the semicolon can be found here.

Hyphen

A hyphen is most commonly used to separate two words that can stand on their own but it does have a few other uses. Advice on the correct use of the semicolon can be found here.

Consistency of Tense

A common mistake is to change tense in the middle of a sentence or paragraph. Further information can be found here.

No underage sexual contact

We do not publish anything that involves sex between an adult and a minor, nor anything which sexualizes a minor. This includes nudity and descriptions of a child's body.

Focus

The main focus of stories should be on spanking as opposed to sex or some other fetish (bed wetting, enemas, rectal examinations, foot worship, age-play, diapering etc). We are not a BDSM site, though we'll accept light BDSM content but not heavy duty stuff involving blood, severe harm, or whipping breasts or genitalia. We do accept stories that can be classified within the Romance genre, but these must be spanking-oriented as opposed to a love story with a few token swats thrown in.

Offensive material

If the content of material is likely to cause offence to a significant number of people, we won't publish it. Obviously this represents a subjective judgement on our part but we reserve the right to use our discretion to filter out unsuitable material. The LSF is not a porn site, and although sex in spanking stories is fine (providing the age rule is met) scenes of a sexual nature must be well written and should relate to the story. Stories which feature incest, rape and descriptive anal sex/anal play will not be loaded.

Real Life Accounts

We have a policy of not publishing real life accounts. Please send in fictional stories only.

Images

We do not include any images in library submissions with the exception of articles that are loaded from our electronic journal, the Wellred Weekly.

Things to avoid

In the interests of creating well-written fiction we would recommend the following be avoided:

• Please avoid referring to real people and organisations.
• concatenated speech, e.g. "Ididntdoithonest!"
• Meaningless repetition of letters, e.g. "Pleeeeeeeeease don't doooooo that, honnneyyyyyy. I don't liiiiiike it."
• When describing the sounds of a spanking, avoid merely repeating the same descriptive term, i.e. if someone is whacked 24 times don't simply repeat the word 'WHACK' 24 times. Also descriptive sounds such as 'Whack' and 'Smack' should not be enclosed within speech marks because they are actual sounds, not words being spoken.
• 'Baby talk' is to be avoided. If you have young children who are speaking, please use clear and simple language, not sentences full of incomprehensible words

Fan Fiction

Unfortunately, we can no longer accept fan fiction owing to the litigious nature of many publishers and film/media companies.

Submissions can be sent either via email or by using the Contact Us facility and copy-pasting the text into the textbox. Those wishing to submit items via email should first use the Contact Us facility to get in touch and we will respond providing our email address.

title as subject

When submitting items via email please place the title of the submission in the subject field. Simply leaving the subject field blank or entering 'new story' is likely to mean that gmail attaches your message to a previous one with the same subject, increasing the possibility that your submission might go unnoticed.

serials

When submitting an item with more than one part please let us know whether it's intended to be a 2 part story or a multi-part serial so we can load it accordingly. If submitting parts of a serial which you're aware will have 10 parts or more do let us know from the outset so that we can label the first nine parts with a leading zero, e.g. Part 01, Part 02 etc.

complete serials

Please let us know when a serial you have been submitting is completed so we can mark it as such on the site.

acceptable formats

All items are ultimately loaded as plain text but in terms of making submissions they can also be sent as attachments in Open Office (.odt), Rich text Format (.rtf) or Microsoft Word (.doc). Note, if using more recent versions of Microsoft Word please use the Save As facility and save in .doc NOT .docx format.

Typically, submissions are initially reviewed by the Head Librarian, flopsybunny, who assesses the items for suitability. They are then passed to Februs for pre-formatting (see here) and loading onto the site. Once loaded, items are assigned to be validated. The process of validation consists of the following:

• correcting any mis-spellings as well as errors in grammar and punctuation.
• writing a brief synopsis
• assigning 'content icons' to indicate the age and gender of the spanker and spankee, whether there is any sexual content, the sub-genre of the item and an indicator of whether any actual spanking is described.

Items are loaded in a batch when a total of 30 submissions have been acquired. Individual submissions which have issues go to the back of the queue so it's worth making sure our submission guidelines have been followed. It's not possible to provide a fixed timescale for loading as that depends on a number of factors including when we are otherwise disposed for a while watching football, eating chocolate or drinking to excess.

When your first item is loaded an 'author page' will automatically be created for you (see below). Prior to loading your first item we ask that you decide on the following and provide the necessary information where applicable:

Authors who are also members of the site have an additional menu item (My Author Page) located within the MyLSF sub-menu, which when clicked will take them directly to their own author page.

The Author Page

Sub-genres: In addition it is possible to view the number of sub-genres featured in the author's submissions.

Awards: Up to 5 different awards, each with 3 levels of attainment, may be displayed based on the following criteria:

Submissions		Words		Favourites		Comments		Views
	500 or more		1,000,000 or more		250 or more		250 or more		50,000 or more
	250 or more		500,000 or more		100 or more		100 or more		25,000 or more
	100 or more		250,000 or more		50 or more		50 or more		10,000 or more

Challenge rosettes

If you have entered one of the library's challenges and finished in the top 3 one or more of the following rosettes will be displayed.

First	Second	Third

Responding to comments

The site allows readers to comment on submissions. When responding to commenters please do so by sending them a popup message rather than commenting on your own submission as the commenter will not get to see your response unless they return to the comments page for the submission. Clicking on the commenter's name will bring up a popup message text box ...

Announcement

New authors are announced via a post on the library Noticeboard forum. Please make a point of exploring the forum as it provides an excellent way to interact with other site users, many of whom may be commenting on your submissions.