Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

The few of us that finish a story before we start to post it usually mention that in a blog entry when we start to post the story. Also, most of us that do that tend to load the story with delayed posting dates so you get the rest of the story on schedule, even if we go on holidays etc.

Currently every story is either marked, in progress, incomplete, or completed, so a further check box seems redundant.

I think doctor_wing_nut is talking about stories that the author finished but is posting a chapter at a time over a period of time.

That would differentiate the two types of "in progress" stories: 1) finished but not all chapters posted yet and 2) the author is writing it as he's posting it so it might get finished or it might not. The reader doesn't know.

It is not unknown for a story to be marked as complete only to have an epilogue added some time later.

I can recall a story subdivided into three books. At the end of each book, the 'complete' marker was set. Then when the next book started, the 'complete' marker was unset. Confusing!

AJ

I can recall a story subdivided into three books. At the end of each book, the 'complete' marker was set. Then when the next book started, the 'complete' marker was unset. Confusing!

If the first book truly ended, I would have left it complete and started a new book. If the reader shouldn't read the second book without reading the first, I would have made them an ordered series.

In this example, the term 'book' was used as a story partition. All three books were part of a single SOL story.

AJ

All three books were part of a single SOL story.

Then he shouldn't have listed the first one as complete.

But the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is 3 separate books.

It would be a welcome addition but only if the author has uploaded all chapters with delayed posting. That is the only way that such an indication would be reliable for readers.

I always finish a story before posting the first chapter. But I never upload all chapters using the delayed posting.

Why?

1. Sometimes the whole story is written, but I do the final edit to a chapter right before posting it (only minor changes).

2. I determine when to post a chapter on the fly. Going in, I plan on posting a chapter a week on the same day of the week. But sometimes when I'm ready to post I decide to post two chapters instead of one. Sometimes I post on a different day of the week thinking I might find a new reader. Sometimes I post a chapter earlier than I had originally planned. That just happened with the novel I'm posting now. I had three chapters that were rather dark — rape, abuse, etc. — that didn't go over well with some readers. So I posted the next chapter earlier than expected as it's more representative of the novel as a whole.

I'm very much the same here. Mind you, I'm still posting my first story, but the story was 'done' before posting. That said, more editors joined the project, so what was 'done' is not 'done' now. But, if I had to post the whole thing in its current form, it's work I'd be proud of.

I also sometimes adjust posting. I don't intend there to be cliffhangers; the work was written with the assumption that a reader could just read on. I don't want to create an artificial cliffhanger with major suspense, so a few chapters have needed to be posted together.

I wouldn't have started posting if it wasn't 'done' to my basic satisfaction; that's not good for readers.

Fixing typos and improved editing is the main reason behind my re-posting stories and chapters of stories as I re-post them once I'm aware of them and fix them. That's one of the advantages of being an e-publisher on sites like SoL, I can be responsive with changes.

I wouldn't have started posting if it wasn't 'done' to my basic satisfaction; that's not good for readers.

It's also not good for authors. Since I don't do a detailed outline, I often have to go back to make changes in previous chapters to make later chapters work. Kind of hard to do when those chapters are posted.

Definitely. Mine would have 'worked'. They're better with changes I made pre-posting but couldn't after.

I tend to agree - but SOL's tools for posting would need a boost, in that case.

My story goes 89 chapters, almost all of which will be posted separately. Queueing all that would be a minor nightmare. Then, if I wanted to, say, decide to put out chapter 43 as a bonus chapter, now I need to requeue 46 chapters.

If SOL had a tool that you could feed X chapters into and say "post these M-8am/W-8am/F-8pm/Sat-8pm every week until done" and could also say "ok, pull the next off the queue and post it X" and could also easily replace queued chapters with updated versions without breaking the whole thing, we'd be in business.

With the current situation, the temptation for most people would be to queue up several chapters 'properly' and dump a wall of text after that to claim 'completeness', knowing they would always cancel the wall-of-text. What really is the point of that? And, are moderators going to vet the giant blob-of-chapters as to whether it meets a requirement for 'completeness'?

In the end, the reader really has to rely on the author's statement that the story is complete.

If SOL had a tool that you could feed X chapters into and say "post these M-8am/W-8am/F-8pm/Sat-8pm every week until done" and could also say "ok, pull the next off the queue and post it X" and could also easily replace queued chapters with updated versions without breaking the whole thing, we'd be in business.

last year Lazeez started a system where you can upload a single file with multiple chapters with code (spaces added to stop it running). In his post about it Lazeeze said:

So you can submit a serial story and have chapters posted at defined dates in one shot.

there is now a { date } tag for chapters or relative date { date :+3a } for 8AM release after three days, or { date :+5p } for 8PM release after 5 days. How to use it:

Under the chapter title put the tag like so:

< p > { p } Chapter xx < / p >

< p > { date: 2019-10-20a } < / p > or < p >{ date:+1a } < / p >

That makes the chapter appears on the site on the 20th of October, 2019 at 8am.

< p > { date :2019-11-10p } < /p > or < p > {date :+2a } < /p >

That makes the chapter appears on the site on the 10th of November, 2019 at 8pm.

You can schedule multiple chapters to show up at the same time, but each scheduled chapter must contain a tag.

Limitations:

1 - Works only on whole story submissions. The timing script will mark a story completed when it runs out of scheduled chapters.

2 - First chapter can't be scheduled. You schedule the first posting with the wizard's current scheduler.

3 - Format is rigid. No spaces inside tag. Any syntax error makes the system ignore tag and chapter end up on the site on the initial posting and the tag remains in the text.

4 - Dates earlier than processing time are ignored. If you schedule your story to post on the 20th of October and chapter 2's schedule is for the 18th, the tag is removed and the chapter is posted with chapter 1.

The number of days in the tag is the number of days after the previous post. So:

chapter 1

chapter 2

{ date : +3a }

chapter 3

{ date :+3a }

Chapter 3 posts 6 days after chapter 1.

...........

If you use the +1 option then wish to amend the schedule at any point you need only change the date information of the first chapter affected by the revised date to a specific date and let the rest go with the rotation you already set.

Edit to add: I forgot to mention that the code I provided above is used when submitting the file in HTML, when submitting in Tagged Text don't use the html code of < p > < / p > listed above.

Thanks for posting this! Is this documented somewhere (other than in the forums)? i.e. am I the idiot for not knowing this existed?

I may try to make use of this. I'm still not sure I like it, given the amount of work it'd be to update a posting, but, maybe?

I agree in that I think it should be mentioned in the Text Formatting Page as well as the Author Help and FAQ Page. However, to the best of my knowledge, it's only mentioned in the forums in the post where Lazeez announced it. Maybe seeing this post may get him to add it to them.