Writing Conventions

This is a "Stub", or a short article with little useful information.  Any editor with more information about this subject is invited to help improve it.

(This page was originally written as a public service by Zen Master and then added to by others.)

Writing Conventions and Limits

   As Swarm writers, we pretty much write for Storiesonline.net.  The Swarm Cycle was first homed on ASSTR, but that died in the 2010's.  SOL's rules are far more restrictive than ASSTR's were, so some older stories on ASSTR cannot be moved to SOL.

Age of Majority

   StoriesOnline.net is hosted in Canada, and any material posted there must meet Canada's standards.  The only rule that matters to us is that all humans must be at least 14 for any sexual contact.  The actual rule is #7 at [[1]].
   A 12-year-old boy can shake his dick off after he pees, but he cannot play with it.  A 13yo girl can show her gynocologist her twat but only for medical purposes.  She can't show it to her neighbor when playing doctor even though he IS a doctor.  If she got hurt playing in the yard, she needs her mother there when she sees the doctor next door.
   A teenager can have sex with his girlfriend, his sister, a goat, his great-grandmother, and a knothole in a tree, and SOL won't blink as long as all humans are 14 or older.  ANY sexual content involving humans under age 14 violates Canadian law.  Apparently, it doesn't matter how old the goat and the tree are.
   No sexual situations are allowed if any participant is under 14 years of age.  No nudity, even the non sex types, because the website is hosted in Canada.  Any new story that has any 13 year olds or younger in a sexual situation can get the entire site shut down and then law enforcement can potentially come looking for the writers.  Even if you don't live in Canada, social media can still find out that you were charged with 'sex crimes' in another country.  And, what happens if you decide to visit Vancouver on a vacation with your family?  It might get embarrassing to be detained at the border for sex crimes.
   Note that this law went into effect in September of 2011.  Older stories are grandfathered in, even with new chapters.

Who Said What

   Each writer comes up with his or her own way of encoding different modes of communication.  Some use double quotes for everything.  Others have specific codes depending upon who is speaking and how they are doing it.  Zen Master does the following, and urges other authors to do the same:

   "talking" double quotes for speech from people,
   <talking> brackets for speech from AIs,
   ("talking") double quotes inside parentheses for people doing private communications using their implant, and
   (<talking>) brackets inside parentheses for private communications from an AI.

   There are authors who use double angle brackets << and >> for the AIs.  Note that some languages actually have a single character for these (the European guillemets «message»), but unless the reader happens to have accidentally chosen the exact same character set on his computer that the author used -there are dozens- he won't see the same symbols that the author used.  This issue has led to some authors insisting that only the original 7-bit ASCII symbols (values 0-127) should be used in the final published file.
   While it would be nice if all authors did the same thing, that is nowhere near as important as having an author be consistent throughout a story.  And, maybe, throughout all of his/her stories.  That's about the only thing that the authors really agree on, for this particular subject.  Besides, what if we all agreed on the One True Way, spent the next six months re-issuing all our stories to match, and next year someone new came up with a better idea?  Do we stone him for apostasy, or do it all again?  I vote for being lazy and allowing sleeping dogs to lie.

   Some of us find it simpler and easier to remember to use <via implant> and "any out loud communication" no matter who or what is communicating or to whom.  However, ZM's recommendation about consistency is the guiding principal. - Omachuck

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))