Postive or Negative Comments?

The key issue isn't realism. It's whether a story makes sense in the context of the universe it's set in. Complaining about a spanking story being set in a universe where spanking is viewed as a completely acceptable form of discipline is like complaining about a science fiction story being set in a universe with warp drive, or complaining about a fantasy story being set in a universe with elves and trolls. But when a story is unrealistic in ways that can't be accounted for by the nature of the universe it is set in, it hurts the story in spite of the fact that the story is set in a universe where the rules are a bit different. (Exception: in some cases, the entire point of a story is to be a bit outrageous, so the story needs to be judged on that basis.)

Coming soon. Should be in the queue this week.

Foster Forest by Storm

An important exception, which some people forget to make in the prescriptive statements.

Very true. I remember an incident in high school where the Industrial Arts (shop) teacher, who was also the track coach, sent me to the principal's office on some trumped up excuse. Amazingly, it happened the day after I quit as manager of the track team to work for the elementary school by designing an attendance program for their computer system. When the principal asked me why I'd been sent up to him, I replied, "Because I quit track." Oh, no, I was assured. Teachers in that school never allowed personal feelings to override their fairness. Yeah, right.

There should be a corner, where an author could park his manuscript for a month, readers could then comment on things, where the author is in doubt, or lacks sufficient historical knowledge, or geographical ditto or whatever.Then the author could finish the manuscript.

I absolutely agree with kov and njrick, otherwise what kind of stories will we end up with? I always thought that the stories on this site were about getting away from reality to a degree. If all the authors applied present day moral values to their stories then no-one would get spanked unless they were wearing a six inch thick trench coat.

I would love to take on board yenz's suggestion because it would have prevented me from entering some glaring mistakes in my stories. If it was somehow practical for authors to submit their stories to other authors for proof-reading, then no doubt some of them would be improved.

I think we've strayed a little from the original comments on this forum. There are so many genres here - m/m, m/f, f/f, f/m (and others we'll call science fiction) that I'd be surprised if any author could satisfy such a wide disparity of interests. I hope authors will stick to what they know best. I'm worried that if they spend too much time absorbing comments (good or bad) they'll lose their own style and end up with stories that might satisfy nobody. I'd never written a story in my life before I submitted one to this site. I'm well aware that maybe as many as 75% of readers won't even open my stories because they're not interested in the particular genre I specialise in. But it only takes one favourable comment on one story to make an author want to continue. Just write because you enjoy writing.

Oh hell, it only takes one comment favourable or otherwise to make any author sit up and think "wow, I got a reaction."

I do not think anyone is going to quit writing stories, this is just been great discussing comments and their affects on different writers. It is my hope that some non-commenters who have been following along will see that their comments could fit in with everyone else comments.

I know I have learned things by reading all the responses here, number 1 is that I will continue to comment just like I did in the past because I am stubborn but maybe might change a word or two every tenth comment...LOL.

For proof-reading, authors could use the Storyboard part of the site which will allow their pre-published stories to be viewed by either anyone on the site or a limited list of other authors determined by the original author.