We want you to have the best chance of your story being accepted into the archive, and of being appreciated by archive readers. The following suggestions are to help you write stories we can accept, to make the most of your writing and make it as readable as possible.
If you have questions or need clarification on policy, email us at the admin address below, or ask in the MMSA forum.
If you are already an archive author, you may continue on to submit a story...If you take care over the presentation of your story, people will find it easier to read. They will appreciate it better and are more likely to reach the end of it rather than clicking on to something else in frustration. That means you have more chance of receiving recommendations and readers will remember your stories next time they visit the archive. They are more likely to read something by you again if they found the last story enjoyable in style and presentation, not just content.
Readability includes the obvious things like correcting spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, as well as less obvious things like good layout, such as separating paragraphs and story sections properly. Stories without enough "white space" are not inviting to the eye and are often difficult to follow. A page of text without paragraphs is very daunting and readers may simply click on to something else rather than wade through dense passages with no chance to mentally "breathe" occasionally.
We have taken great care over the site design to make it as readable as possible, with simple high-contrast colouring, a clear sans-serif typeface in a legible size, good page margins, adequate line spacing and as little page clutter as possible. We are trying to make your stories look their best, shouldn't you?
A well-written story is attempting to engage the reader in your tale, encouraging them to "suspend their disbelief" and be immersed in your fantasy. If the story contains glaring mistakes, that fantasy is shattered and the reader finds themselves frustrated and focussed on the reality of the text in front of them, not on the story you are trying to tell. You want to keep them concentrating on the story, not continually having to decipher your words or meanings.
Spelling is easily checked in most word processors. Granted, it won't help you fix odd slips like "bear bottom" when you meant "bare bottom"! But it should be standard practice to proof-read your story carefully BEFORE you submit it for others to see. One useful tip is to print it out on paper from your word processor. For some reason, the eye is much better at finding mistakes in printed type rather than on-screen, and you'll catch many more simple typing errors that way.
Grammar is more subjective, and grammar checkers in word processors are not totally reliable. But the important thing to remember is that what you should be submitting here is creative WRITING. The sort of shorthand you might use in email or other web situations, without full sentences, punctuation or proper capitalisation, is NOT what readers want to wade through. That will not encourage them to enter into the fantasy you are trying to create and enjoy it with you.
It does take more time to write properly and check your work thoroughly. But it's not a waste of time, it's treating your readers with respect by making a minimal effort to write correctly. After all, those readers don't want to feel they have "wasted" their time reading your story! The more readable it is, the more likely that they will bother, and try something by you again in the future. And you will have a greater sense of achievement at the end, and get more feedback and recommendations from happy readers. Everyone wins!
No! It's not our responsibility to edit your stories, it's yours to make them fully presentable in the first place! If you want advice, or help, you can try asking in the MMSA forum. There are some readers and reviewers willing to help well-intentioned authors with formatting and style. Where there are really bad problems with a story's formatting, we will advise you and suggest you rewrite it and update it before we will approve it.
Yes! We already mentioned the importance of including enough paragraph breaks, or "white space". Always make sure that your paragraphs are separated by at least one blank line, so that when your story is converted to HTML the software can recognise where they start and finish. Without paragraphs, the reader cannot easily separate different ideas or events as they occur and may get confused by who is doing what and when.
One good example of this is speech – it's very good form to make a paragraph change when the speaker changes, ie. two quotes from two different speakers should not be included in the same paragraph. For instance, the following is correct:
"Ow! That hurt," said Jim.
His dad chuckled. "That's the idea!"
But this is much less readable and it's easier to misread who is saying what:
"Ow! That hurt," said Jim. His dad chuckled. "That's the idea!"
The above snippet also shows the correct way to put punctuation around quoted speech, often misunderstood. Incorrect punctuation (and capitalisation) is the most common error in stories, and is a sure-fire way to make it hard for readers to understand where your sentences start and end, and which characters are speaking. Thanks go to author Harmony for the following useful guidelines posted in the MMSA forum.
Full stops (or periods, as we Yanks call them) always go inside the quotes, as do commas. If there's a tag line (eg. "he said") after the quote, then the end of the quoted sentence should be a comma rather than a period:
"Good morning, boys," the headmaster said.
If the quote is at the end of the sentence, it ends in a period, which goes inside the quote. And you would put a comma [or maybe a colon for preference] after the tag that introduces it, although if you're using some sort of gesture or action to indicate the headmaster is talking, rather than a "he said" type tag, then you'd write it as two separate sentences:
The headmaster said, "Good morning, boys."
The headmaster began: "Good morning, boys."
The headmaster held up his hand for silence. "Good morning, boys."With exclamation points and question marks, they go inside of the quote if they're part of the quote, or outside of it, if the quote itself is part of the question or exclamation. Examples:
The headmaster asked, "Don't you think it's a lovely morning?"
"Don't you think it's a lovely morning?" the headmaster asked.
Why do you think he didn't say "good morning"?
From the above examples, there are two other important things to note. The first is that the quoted speech ALWAYS begins with a capital letter even in the middle of a sentence, if it is the start of a spoken sentence. The second is that generally only ONE punctuation mark is required. It is incorrect to put a full stop inside the quote followed immediately by another (or a comma) outside. The one inside the quote closes both the inner and outer sentences. However, as the exception to this rule we mustn't forget the question inside a question (and embedded exclamations):
Why did John ask: "Where is it?"?
Why did Peter reply: "Here it is!"?
Also on the subject of quotes, we have recently added support for "smart" quotes in stories submitted in RTF format. For these to work correctly, you MUST use different quote marks for embedded quotes in a quoted passage, else the parser will close the quote and reopen it incorrectly. If you use double quotes as outer quotes, use single quotes inside the quoted passage, and vice versa. This is correct style anyway:
"He told me 'Trousers and pants down,' and I got it bare bum!" Tom grimaced.
Finally, here's some advice about breaking up stories into segments, maybe taking place at different times or places or from different character viewpoints. A common way to do this is to put a separation line (usually centred) of dashes, stars or other symbols between the segments. A regular mistake though is to assume that the person reading the story will have the same page-width as you, and to make the line very long to fill the width of the word processor window you are writing it in. This becomes a problem with webpages because the browser cannot break a long line without any spaces, and so it forces the story to have a horizontal scrollbar and not to reflow correctly when the browser window width is changed. If you use separator lines in your story, please make them fairly short so that this is avoided.
You can post a story using one of three formats, plain text, rich text or HTML. Plain text has no formatting and is output by basic text editors like NotePad. Rich text allows complex formatting and is output by fully featured word processors like Word or more basic ones like Windows WordPad. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is what is understood by your browser and is what web pages are written in. Your story will get converted by us automatically to HTML, or used directly if that is what you posted it in.
If you post in plain text, you will not be able to add any style formatting unless you have "marked up" the text properly into HTML with the correct tags. If you want to do that, you should be familiar with HTML – there are thousands of tutorials on the web that will give you the basics you need. This site supports a reasonable subset of simple style tags and you can insert HTML entities directly, so HTML gives you great control over the way your story looks. You can always edit the HTML source we store of your stories directly too.
For most people it is much easier though to use any simple word processor and to add your formatting there. You will need to export the finished document in Rich Text Format (.RTF) rather than saving in your word processor's proprietary format, as we cannot accept files like that. Rich text is a common interchange format supported by all word processors – instead of selecting "Save", from your File menu, choose "Save As..." and you should be able to select .RTF as the export file type in the save dialog:
Whatever format you choose to submit in, you can upload your file directly using the submission page browse box and the formatting you added should be converted correctly.
But be careful how you use formatting effects. If you read a book you will see hardly any in the main text, for good reason. Bold is best used only for headings if at all. Italics are useful for occasional emphasis, words in a foreign language, changes of story viewpoint (eg. flashbacks, another character's view or author interjections) or character thoughts rather than actual speech. Like any formatting, though, it is best used sparingly as it can distract the eye and disrupt the reader's concentration.
This is fully discussed in the main MMSA FAQ, and you should note particularly the explanation there about the difference between what activity may be legal BETWEEN REAL PEOPLE in the country you live in and what we accept as WRITTEN FICTION, as the two are completely unrelated. However, it may sadly be that in the jurisdiction where you live it is illegal even to read, upload or download stories containing some depictions of FICTIONAL activity (consensual or not) between FICTIONAL characters. While we cannot be responsible for what you choose to download or read, we urge you to use the search filtering options we provide here to try and comply with local laws and NOT to upload stories which contain content illegal for you to share publicly in your country.
Basically this site is (as indicated in the title) about MALE/MALE corporal punishment of all sorts. If your story contains that, it's got a good chance of being accepted, whereas if it's mostly about men spanking women or girls, or women spanking men, or just sex without much spanking, then it will probably be rejected. There need not be a full description of a spanking scene AS LONG AS the story is SUBSTANTIALLY ABOUT corporal punishment (of men/boys).
While we currently accept stories with only females spanking clearly NON-adult boys (F/boy NOT F/M), we will NOT guarantee that those stories will continue to be treated the same as our core content male-male stories. In particular, these stories may not appear by default in all listings in future. Please understand and respect the unique male-male heritage of this archive.
Stories containing sex, consensual or not, between minors and adults will be refused submission. For the purposes of this archive, a "minor" is defined as a child/teen under 14. Where children of under that age are depicted in non-solo sexual activity or play, the age difference should be no more than two or three years. However, descriptions of precocious sexual activity under the age of 7 or 8 are likely to be refused.
Where the acceptability of a story depends on the age of a character, and the age is not clearly given in the text, you will NOT be given the benefit of the doubt and your story will be refused until it is updated. Making vague references to a character's school year or form is NOT acceptable, as these are not definitive and may not be understood by all readers or reviewers who do not come from your country.
Stories containing purely gratuitous depictions of rape (any age) will generally be refused. We also reserve the right to decline stories containing what we consider to be gratuitous extreme violence or degradation. Historical settings that may cause offence (Nazi themes etc.) should be avoided. This is a site focussed primarily on male-male discipline, so that should be the focus of your story without straying into areas of clearly poor taste unless, at our discretion, there's an absolutely clear moral framework and message in the tale.
Other than that, you can post fiction, fantasy, poetry or commentary as long as it is on-topic and your own work. Posting stories by other people without their permission is NOT tolerated, as this is a breach of their copyright. Where found or notified, such stories will be removed. Interesting on-topic non-fiction accounts are also welcome, where there are not more obvious places to publish it. However, opinion that is purely propaganda, whether pro-spank or anti-spank, will not be permitted as this is a site focussed on fantasy, not on discussion of parental rights and choices.
Fan-fiction is great! Just make sure it's male-male oriented. In all cases we need a notice that this IS fan-fiction and a reference to the source though, as this is an international site and not everyone everywhere may recognise something/someone that you do, or older sources (1950s TV shows, for instance). It helps our reviewers know to categorise it correctly too.
Here's some good advice from the Nifty archive that we'd like you to follow for legal safety:
Stories involving celebrities must include a disclaimer that the story is fiction
and is not intended to imply anything about the true sexuality of the celebrities mentioned or any
personal knowledge about their private lives. This disclaimer should not make any mention of owning
or not owning a celebrity.
Stories about celebrities may not include stalking, threats against celebrities,
or the death of celebrities or their friends or family members as a plot device.
Stories involving fictional characters from television shows, movies, books, comic strips, etc.
must include a copyright and trademark statement for the production company or publisher (not the
television network on which a TV show appears, unless the network is the production company).
This archive contains stories of all lengths. Some are quite short, some are very long. There are readers who prefer stories short and to the point, while others prefer to get involved with careful characterisations, detailed descriptions of people, places and emotions as that is more fulfilling for them. You should write whatever length is comfortable for you and tells the story you want to tell in the most appropriate way.
If your story is long or will contain many episodes taking place at different times, you can split it into chapters, as long as each chapter is of a reasonable length. Make sure you title your story with the correct part number, or advise us how to how to handle the linking when you post it, and we will join the story chapters into linked series for you. A series can contain up to 98 chapters with an optional Introduction (Prologue) and Afterword (Epilogue) and we support a wide range of titling and numbering formats. Posting long stories in more digestible chapters will almost certainly be preferable for most readers and is likely to result in better feedback for you.
However, occasionally we receive stories split pointlessly into miniscule "chapters" of just a few paragraphs which are not useful and logical divisions of a much larger story. This style of posting wastes our database resources and readers' time searching the archive, as well as reviewers' time dealing with them, and is discourteous to other authors. We are therefore now actively encouraging posting of FULL length stories only.
If you submit a "chapter" of just a few paragraphs "to be continued..." then you may well find it is simply rejected. We would prefer you to wait until your story is complete BEFORE posting, then post it as a single piece. Chapter instalments are more likely to be accepted therefore if they are of a substantial length. You may also find that we actively join together stories which have been accepted previously where the chapter lengths are minimal.
This is NOT meant to discourage posting of shorter single-part stories or poems, etc., they are fine, just excessively short "chapters". If you find your stories being rejected and believe they otherwise fit our submission guidelines, this may well be the reason.
Interactive stories are fun! In principle, there is a starting point, a finish point when you reach the end of the story, and various points (or "nodes") inbetween reached by following different choices as the story progresses, which lead you through the story many different ways so that the story changes each time you read it.
Writing an interactive story is tricky, though. You'll need to plan it carefully so that all the various routes through the story work correctly, that the story is consistent depending on the various routes taken to reach a certain node, and that it is possible to reach all nodes you have written and of course to reach the end! That takes much more time and effort than writing a normal story, and you may want to consider collaborating on a complex project with another author.
We've now added support for interactive stories to this site. To upload them, the stories must be in a very specific format, and will not work otherwise. Some understanding of HTML may help to debug them as some portions must be in correct HTML format, but otherwise the syntax is quite straightforward. You may upload stories that are not in HTML format as long as the rest of the node structure described here is correct and separated by at least one newline, or you may include specific HTML markup as shown below.
Here is a short example of what some typical nodes might look like at the start of a story:
|1|
<h3>A headmaster's study.</h3>
<p>You are sitting behind your large wooden desk, glaring at the unhappy boy standing
in front of you.</p>
<p>You stand up, reaching for one of the objects laid ominously on your desktop.</p>
<p>What do you pick up?</p>
{A wicked looking cane} (2)
{A large slipper} (3)
|2|
<p>The miserable boy's eyes open wide in alarm. He obviously fears the cane! He waits for
you to give the command to bend over for his caning.</p>
<p>But first... are you feeling lenient or has he been particularly naughty this time?
What do you tell him?</p>
{"Shorts and pants down!"} (4)
{"Take those shorts off"} (5)
{"Bend over, boy!"} (6)
|3|
<p>The boy doesn't seem too worried by the slipper. You realise he's obviously far too
used to it and needs something more effective to teach him a lesson.</p>
<p>"Perhaps you require a better incentive this time," you say.</p>
<p>With a wicked smile, you put down the slipper and pick up the cane instead. It is
long and flexible and you give it a good swish for effect.</p>
{Continue} (2)
[etc...]
First, note that the nodes are identified by a number enclosed in vertical bars, on its own line. The bar symbol is usually found at the lower left of your keyboard. On the line after the node number begins the text you want to display for this node. It can be plain text with paragraphs and line breaks shown correctly or HTML-formatted. In fact, you can have any simply-formatted HTML text you want, with the usual restrictions on tags for this site.
The only symbols you may NOT use in this text block (and neither in the following link legends) are
the curly brace symbols { and }, as these are used to delimit the link legends, and the
vertical bar character | as this is used to delimit the entire node. If you need any of these, you can
insert their HTML entities instead:
{ use { | use | } use }
Please note the addition of the vertical bar as a prohibited character, this is a small
tightening of the original specification to make the format more robust and debugging easier for you.
After the node text, each on their own line, comes a number of links corresponding to different choices at this point in the story. Each link has a legend, which must be enclosed in curly braces, followed by a node number to jump to if that choice is made, which must be enclosed in brackets. There must be at least one link given and any text is permissible in the links except braces and vertical bars. It can be HTML-tagged but will appear on the page in bold anyway.
In the example above, the final "Continue" link will not actually be shown, and any link legend will be completely ignored ("Continue" is advised for debugging clarity). Instead the story text will continue directly with the contents of node 2, which is the only choice at that point. This allows short continuity nodes to join story situations without duplicating the following common node text.
There is one small enhancement in this implementation compared to others you may have seen. You can specify two or more nodes as the target of a link by separating the numbers with a comma, like so:
{A wicked looking cane} (2,7)
{A large slipper} (3,8)
In this case, the link actually taken will be selected at random from the multiple choices. This allows even more variation in the gameplay and keeps your readers guessing!
Finally, there are three things required in the file you upload to enable the system to recognise it as an interactive story: there must be a start node, a finish node, and a final end marker that MUST appear after every other node. The actual nodes may appear in any order you like, though. The start node is always 1, the finish node must be 9999. The finish node should link back to the start to allow the reader to play again. An absolutely minimal complete story would therefore appear like so (this example is shown without HTML, note the use of linespacing to indicate paragraph breaks):
|1|
Start here.
This is the bare minimum template for a complete interactive story.
{Continue to end} (9999)
|9999|
Finish.
You have completed the story!
{Start again} (1)
|End|
You just need to add some nodes of your own into the middle to begin your own story. It's that simple!
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