The Tips & Tricks Page

On this page you will find helpful advice for authors and editors written by those best suited to advise you on a range of issues.  Each month a different topic will be covered, so check back here if you want some tips.

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Writer Tips...What Can The WST Offer Writers?

By now most people in the GA community will have noticed the Writer Support Team (WST), yet many of you, even the writers, may still be wondering just how this team can benefit you. What follows is a brief description of some of the programs offered through the WST and who you should contact for more information. Remember these programs are designed to help all writers at GA from established, hosted authors to those of you who have yet to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), whether you write stories or poetry.

Please note that projects marked with an asterisk (*) are still in development.  Information can be requested about them, but direct assistance from these projects may not be possible at this time.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about WST projects, please either contact the team members as directed under each project description, or leave a comment in our forum.

*Author Promotion Project

What is it? This Project is designed to assist authors in all aspects of promotion, helping them to learn techniques to promote themselves and their stories with an aim to boost readership, increase forum activity (where appropriate) and encourage greater feedback from readers.

How can it help me? The key aim of this project is to help an author get the maximum number of readers for their stories, as well as increasing the amount of feedback they receive. Feedback is essential for growth as a writer. It's also something most writers enjoy receiving. It's very important to know how what you're writing is going over with the readers.

Whom should I contact? For more information about this forthcoming project, please PM C James.

Editor & Beta Reader Project

What is it? The Editor & Beta Reader Project aims to provide writers of all levels and abilities with editorial and beta reader support with a remit to help authors to improve the quality of their writing.  The Project helps writers to find GA endorsed editors and beta readers who are qualified to assist them and who have subscribed to a GA Code of Conduct.

How can it help me? Editors are an invaluable tool for all authors, because they help to point out technical errors in stories (spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc) and holes in plotline or continuity.  Beta Readers assist authors by providing them with feedback, giving them an idea of how readers will perceive their finished story.  Authors who use editors and beta readers before they submit their stories generally find that their work is more "reader friendly" and thus better received once it is released. 

Whom should I contact? To be paired with an editor or beta reader, please PM C James.

The Mentoring Program

What is it? The Mentoring Program has been established to give new and developing writers the opportunity to talk with established, experienced authors about all aspects of their craft, giving them the chance to ask questions, seek useful advice and tips, and learn from veteran writers in a confidential and comfortable environment.

How can it help me? Getting advice and tips from the "experts" will help you hone your craft and provide support and encouragement in times of need. It will help you to learn new techniques, develop your style and find ways to solve problems by enabling you to talk with writers who have faced similar difficulties and developed strategies for dealing with them.

Whom should I contact? To enroll in this program please PM Vance Lista or  AFriendlyFace (Kevin).

*The Poetry Resources Development Project

What is it? This project is an ongoing initiative led by the WST to provide poets with greater facilities to improve and develop their craft. Already this project has aided in the creation of two new forums specifically for poets - the Poetry Announcements Forum and the Poetry Discussion Forum - but in addition there will be new poetry workshops for those interested in expanding on their existing abilities and a poetry anthology to celebrate the work of poets at Gay Authors.

How can they help me? As a poet these resources will provide you much support and help you increase your visibility and readership. These resources will also help you improve your skills.

Whom should I contact? For more information about developing project, please PM C James.

The Story Archive

What is it? The GA Story Archive is a database of links for, and information about, gay stories and poetry. The Archive contains links to stories both at GA and across the net.

How can it help me? The Story Archive is often the first stop for many people who have just discovered GA and who may not have even registered yet and for some it is the only part of the site they will ever see. In addition, many current members enjoy the Archive because of its greater scope and because of the expanded options for searching by genre. By requesting to have your stories added to the Archive you greatly increase your number of potential readers.

Whom should I contact? To request your story added to the archive please PM AFriendlyFace (Kevin) with a story description, story codes, genre and links. For more information about the Story Archive, please see the article below.

*Writer Resource & Information Packs (WRIPs)

What are they? A guide to the resources and support available to writers, with key information and advice for writers of all levels and abilities, details of WST projects of interest to authors and information about the requirements for hosted and shared hosted authors.

How can they help me? These packs are a vital guide, talking you through the many different projects managed by the WST and providing you with information about how best to benefit from them, providing you with guidance as you establish yourself at Gay Authors and pointing you in the right direction when you need help.

Whom should I contact? For more information about this forthcoming project, please PM C James.

*Writer Skills Development Workshops

What are they? A series of focused workshops managed in conjunction with the Mentoring Program aimed at helping writers of all abilities develop their existing skills and discover new techniques.

How can they help me? Any writer who believes they have nothing to learn is a fool. Even the best writers need to develop their craft. These workshops will provide you with a way to learn, improve and develop as a writer as authors of all abilities work together to tackle problems, discuss issues and find new ways of expressing themselves in their stories.

Whom should I contact? For more information about this forthcoming project, please PM C James.

WST Writing Projects

What are they? Writing Projects designed to challenge authors by providing them with specialised writing projects to work on. The first such initiative produced by this project is the "Fairytales Anthology", launched this month at Gay Authors (see the announcement on the front page).

How can they help me? By challenging writers to tackle new and complex writing projects, we aim to help them to develop their craft and learn news styles of writing. Each writing project will provide writers with a unique challenge, enabling those who participate to expand their skills.

Whom should I contact? For more information about writing projects, or if you have any suggestions for future challenges, please PM C James.

AFriendlyFace (Kevin)

Editing Tips...

Spelling & Grammar

The most basic element to check when editing a story is that the author has included no technical errors - spelling or grammatical mistakes.

Every editor needs to feel comfortable checking spelling and grammar. Even the best authors can screw up when it comes to spelling and grammar, whether it's because they've mistyped or because they simply have a poor grasp of these skills. This is where they must rely on an editor to help them.

I have frequently been asked by editors whether they should be using the spelling and grammar checking facilities built into programs like Word and the answer really isn't a simple one.

There is no doubt that spellcheckers are a valuable tool for editing, but they should never, ever be relied upon. Sometimes the suggestions they come up with can be bizarre, other times they try to make you correct something that should not be corrected.

For example, in my story Replay I have characters called Rick and Josh. Both of these names are also words and so there are times when the spellchecker tries to convince me that they should be "rick" and "josh".

Spellcheckers can also miss errors where the mistyped words are real and not out of context with the sentence. This happens a lot with words like "of" and "or", "an" and "and", "then" and "than". It may seem like a minor error, but sometimes the smallest error can change the whole meaning of a sentence.

Spellcheckers will often also miss corrections where a number is inserted into a word. For example, "ju5t" and "p0t" don't show up as errors on most spellcheckers.

Go through the story with a spellchecker first, definitely, but consider all the suggestions it makes in the context of the story and sentence, then go through the story again with your own eyes.

The real question is how to spot errors when you're reading through a document. The human brain is set up to read what should appear, rather than what actually does. An example of this is as follows:

"It deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm."

Understand that? Most people do. This is because the human brain doesn't read individual letters in a word, but rather the word as a whole. Similarly, when reading a sentence the human brain doesn't always read what's actually there, but rather what it expects to be there.

So how do you combat this and send your author back an error free document? The answer is, you probably can't. Errors are bound to slip through. All you can do is your best.

The first stage is to go through the document with a spellchecker, ensuring the corrections it is suggesting are ones you actually want to make. After that, you need to read through again, without any aids. Read through it at a normal pace and that should enable you to spot any glaring errors.

Once you've been through it with a spellchecker and read it yourself, read it a third time, this time looking at each sentence one at a time, checking the words for misspellings and then reading the whole sentence aloud to see how it flows and whether it makes sense.

Nobody's perfect and you're bound to miss something, but if you've checked, double-checked and triple-checked you can at least be certain that you've done your best and removed the majority of spelling and grammatical errors.

RHawes16

There must be a better way!

Have you ever found yourself skimming through eFiction or the author pages and wishing there was some type of way to search only for stories in one particular genre? Perhaps you only like to read stories that are complete, but how can you tell ahead of time without reading the last chapter posted and risking spoiling the ending? Or maybe you are offended by graphic sex and only want to read "no sex" stories. Alas, what can you do though?

These functions just aren't easy to manage in eFiction or the author pages. But WAIT! There is something you can do! The GA Story Archive not only has all these features, and more, but is also more comprehensive in scope with listings for gay stories all over the net, not just at GA!

How does the archive work?

The archive doesn't actually house the stories themselves; instead, it is a database of links to stories all the web! The archive essentially houses all the information about the stories: descriptions (what the story is about), codes (what type of content it contains I.E. anal sex, masturbation etc), genre (fantasy, modern, historical, etc.), author (who wrote this puppy), status (complete or in progress) and a few other things.

You can locate a story by searching for title, author, genre, code, or status! Once you pull up a potential story to read you'll find the story title and author, a brief description of the story, how many times the story has been viewed, how it's rated by other readers, the genre, and codes. You'll also find a link. If this story seems like one you want to read simply click the link and you'll be taken to wherever the actual story can be found!

What if there's a problem with some of the information?

Suppose you clicked on a story because you thought it was about two men ice fishing in Canada who never moved beyond masturbation, then when you actually started reading it you discover that it's really about two seventeen year old girls in Delaware who go to the mall and do everything imaginable with/to each other in the dressing room. Clearly you might be disappointed.

GA wants to correct this informational error. Thus, if you find any incorrect information, or if the link to the story no longer works please PM AFriendlyFace and report the problem

How can I get my work included in the archive?

If you're a hosted or shared hosted author at GA, or if you've written an anthology piece, your stories are automatically eligible for the story archive. In fact they're actively desired! So please PM the relevant information to AFriendlyFace.

If you're an eFiction author, have your work posted at another site, or if you simply have a recommendation for the archive then please post the relevant information in the Story Archive Suggestions forum. This forum is monitored by the Recruitment Team and they will evaluate and respond to your request. Once again this information may be PM'd to AFriendlyFace if preferred, but for non-hosted nor shared hosted authors posting in the Story Archive Suggestions forum is the standard practice.

Just what is this relevant information?

When submitting a request for your own or another author's, story to be added to the archive the following information is needed.

Title of the story

Author of the story

A brief description of the story - this can often be taken directly from the site or author's page. If not just sum up what the story is about in a few brief sentences.

Example for Romeo and Juliet: This young guy and this young woman fall madly in love. Unfortunately their families hate each other and disapprove strongly of the romance.

More information could be provided (additional plot, setting & location, supporting characters etc.) and is very welcome. This information should not spoil the ending however. (EX: "They kill themselves at the end")

The story's genre - The archive uses the following genres:

The story's codes - This is basically who's doing what to whom. The archive uses the following story codes:

A link to the story - Occasionally links to other sites may become outmoded; as a result, we prefer to use either a link to the story at Nifty (which virtually never changes their links). For writers whose stories are at GA, we use the link to eFiction or to the writers' hosted/shared hosted pages.

Authors may also include a web page and/or an email address to which readers can send feedback; however, this information is not required.

If you have any more questions about the archive please PM AFriendlyFace. Remember the archive is an excellent tool to bring many wonderful stories right to your fingertips! Please check it out!

AFriendlyFace (Kevin)