Racier anthro fiction
Submitted by Chibiabos on Fri, 10/20/2006 - 3:13am.
I seem to recall, some time back (don't remember when) an idea to allow for racier fiction in a section of the site, or perhaps a different site to allow content that doesn't fit under PG rating.
Mind you, I'm not talking about the (pardon the crude expression) "whack material" like for yiffstar, but stories that happen to have some graphic detail that would not fit under a PG-13 limit. Several of my stories in progress contain raw imagery to help establish a gritty feel for the characters ... they are short scenes of longer works that serve to establish flavor, depth and changes in characters that, from a creator's standpoint, could not be told in other ways.
I'm curious if anything came of those efforts.
Keep on writing!
One site you could try is
One site you could try is http://afterdark.planetfurry.com
That is, if you can get an answer out of the admins as to how to post new stuff...
(IF so, please PM me. I need to upload a few bits... )
The crux of the matter
You've hit on the real issue that I've always had, that being making it easy for people to post material to the site without a lot of interference from me or having to wait for me to do it for them.
I'm looking at using a rating system that authors can then use to rate their story. Then users can use the ratings as a gauge to decide if they want to read a story.
At least that's the plan. :)
Restricted sections for the site
I'm looking at how I can make certain sections of the site restricted while allowing others to be publicly viewable.
This has come up in a discussion I had with someone regarding first publication of material and trying to get it published. It was stated, and I don't have any reference source for this so don't take it as gospel from me, that publishers aren't interested in stories that have been made publicly available on the Internet. But if the story is behind a password/login restricted area then it won't show up on search engines and isn't considered to be released to the general public.
In any event, when I figure something out I'll post an update.
Restricted Content
From a logical point of view you need access rights on the content and on the visitors. For the sake of simplicity let's say you have only a ratings number. We could base it on the MPAA movie rating system. Since there are five ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 we could use a number from 1 through 5. It's pretty easy to see how you could put a number on a bit of content (the story). To make this work we also need to put a number, from 1 to 5, on the site visitor.
When the site visitor creates their account they would set their number. Let's say the default is 3, which corresponds to PG-13. If they prefer not to read swearing, etc, they simply set their number lower. Or if they'll take your entertainment any way it comes, they could set their number higher. The system would compare the visitor's number to the content's number. For site visitors who aren't logged in they would get a 3. The visitor's number must be equal too or higher than the content's number to be able to view the content.
Likewise with restricting access because the author feels they might want to submit their story to professional publication at some point. Except the visitor's rating would be if they were a member of the site or not. Restricting access is important too. In almost every case a professional publisher wants to buy first publication rights and posting your story to a website means you've already used first publication rights. That is, they won't buy the story. I suspect a sample chapter from a novel would not be a too much of a problem, unless it's the final chapter.
That's all well and good for a logical solution, but unless the website's code will support this, or can be modified to support this, it won't do much good.
I'm not quite sure how that impacts the Anthrofiction Stories Web Site. While there is an element of feedback, a specialized website such as Critique Circle is far better--because the members there are focused almost exclusively on giving and receiving feedback. A similar site is Fan Story, although the quality of feedback seems to be lower than that on Critique Circle--and the stories seem to be unprotected, anyone can read them. You don't need to be a member. In other words, no wanna-be pros should use Fan Story.
Steve, I think you need to decide if the Anthrofiction Stories Web Site is a place for writers to publish their stories on the Internet. Or a place for writers, possibly professional writers, to give and receive feedback.
My goal for Anthrofiction Network is to build it into an author support site. In fact I was working on a login system today (until I decided to take a break), which I hope to have functional by the end of this month. The contest is only the first step. I want to build a critique system too, and organize some sort of author resources. I don't ever see Anthrofiction Network as being a site for authors to publish their works online.
Scotty