Some stories have underline, some have bold, some have italics, some have a bunch of nice paragraphs that get all jumbled together when there's not an extra space in between each paragraph. MS Word does a great job of adding spaces before and after each paragraph, but the forum does not. Some stories have nice indentations at the beginning of each paragraph. Sometimes that indentation gets carried over to the forums. Sometimes only SOME of those indentations get carried over to the forums. Other times, NONE of the indentations get carried over to the forums. Why? Heck if I know. Do I bother to save all the indentations? Only if most of them have been preserved in the copy/paste.
Do I painstakingly separate out each paragraph to have an extra space in between? You bet your sweet, sweet forumite butt I do. Why? Because legibility is amazing.
Do I want to create a big set of formatting rules so I don't have to do nearly as much work?
NO!
I want people to write and enjoy writing. I want people to submit and enjoy submitting. I want people to read stories and enjoy reading. I don't want people to get caught up in formatting hell.
Okay, sure, it wouldn't be THAT hard for someone to format their story, but where does it end? Are stories not qualified if they're not formatted properly? If someone doesn't pay enough attention to the rules, do they get a lazily copy/pasted story without proper attention to their formatting? Italics, underlines, etc. add
depth to the reading experience, inform us how a story might be read aloud, and every story deserves proper treatment.
The contest is about writers established and new coming together in one place to battle to the bloody death in the spirit of friendship and healthy competition.
I'd rather not slap more rules on it.
(but next year may have some _suggestions_ for formatting)
« Last Edit: September 17, 2019, 11:20:08 PM by Bdoomed »
I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds? Six pounds? Seven pounds?