Melrick

41000

Hey everyone,
Been following the site for a while and reading stuff but recently joined.

Also started writing and posting as well.

What should I know?

I can now process people, and I’ve caught up as of now.  Thanks for your patience.

I can now process people, and I’ve caught up as of now.  Thanks for your patience.

Update: It’s still currently impossible for me to process people to join the forum.  I can only apologise, but it’s just as frustrating to me.

I can now process people, and I’ve caught up as of now.  Thanks for your patience.

Update: It’s still currently impossible for me to process people to join the forum.  I can only apologise, but it’s just as frustrating to me.

Due to the recent server migration not going as smoothly as hoped for, it’s currently impossible to approve people to join the forum.  Some people may also be having issues with the archive.  This is being worked on and will be rectified as soon as possible.

Due to the recent server migration not going as smoothly as hoped for, it’s currently impossible to approve people to join the forum.  Some people may also be having issues with the archive.  This is being worked on and will be rectified as soon as possible.

As with just about anything, this didn’t go as smoothly as it could have and should  have, given that it’s an intracompany transfer, from Nexcess to LiquidWeb, their parent company.  So, instead of finishing up by, say the 3rd, we finally finished this all up by the 19th.  Having said all that, I have to say I am really excited about the change, and here’s why.
SSL finally works as intended moving from Interworx to cPanel has made a huge difference.  We can actually tailor PHP needs to different subdomains.  For example, the forum needs 8.x, and has that version.  The archive is on 7.x.  Manta is working on bringing all of it up to 8.x  The ability to use the later versions of both PHP and my SQL are necessary to be able to implement things that we could NOT in lesser versions. The hardware is worlds away from what we used to have.  More powerful, and efficient. Much better physical virus protection Much better spam protection Mind you, Manta and I both tend to work a bunch IRL, so the SNAFU on the timeline really, really, put a wrench in things.  
 
BIG BIG thank you to Manta for carrying the load during this migration, as work, as it tends to do, wouldn’t let me have time off for much of anything.  Go figure.

Yes, but they all have real life jobs and homes to take care of, and one of them is in the Southern Hemisphere, so on a totally different timezone than any of us. Plus, we are all volunteers. We’re not some heavily funded conglomerate. We are not on here 24/7, so give people time to at least catch up. 

The purpose of this forum is for people to place advertisements for things outside of the AdultFanFiction realm.
If you have a website that you’d like to promote, post the details here. If you’d like to request a role playing friend, go for it! As long as the post is promoting legal activities, and it doesn’t constitute spam, then you can post the information here.
There’s no format for you to follow regarding how your post should look; it’s entirely up to you!

Better late than never, I suppose.
I'm Elyse. She/They.
Most of the things I write are on AO3 but I might post some here at some point. 
 

The Art of Foreshadowing
 
What is it?
Quite simply, foreshadowing is to hint at something, in a casual way, where it will be brought up again later on in the story in a more significant and relevant way. The ‘art’ is in exactly how you lay that little hint, without telegraphing “THIS IS IMPORTANT! REMEMBER IT!”.
 
Why it’s important
Story telling is easy. No, really, it is! The art is in how you tell the story, that’s what makes it scary, exciting, sexy, etc. Foreshadowing is a very important tool to use in many, if not most, stories. I’m sure most of us have watched movies where all of a sudden, the hero just happens to find the one thing he or she needs to save the day. “Oh that was convenient!” we shout at the screen. It’s far too convenient, and therefore, annoying, for the hero of your story to miraculously find exactly the right thing he or she needs right when they need it the most. This is the reaction you’ll get for unrealistic and unbelievable story telling. What you need to do is to leave a little hint earlier in the story, something that, at the time, didn’t seem all that relevant or important to the story, but allows the reader to later say, “Oh, so that’s why the author did that!”
Foreshadowing is more important in some stories than others. Detective mysteries rely very heavily on foreshadowing. Everyone reading the story is hoping to guess who the killer is before the detective, and a well written story should provide enough hints to allow the reader to do this, if only they work out what’s important and what’s a red herring. There’s nothing worse than coming to the conclusion and realising that the detective was apparently privy to information that we, the reader, were not. This is bitterly frustrating and poor story telling. When the detective goes through the steps that allowed him or her to catch the killer, everything there should be something that the reader could also have picked up on. Nothing should be a clue that we hadn’t been exposed to in some way.
As suggested above, you can also use foreshadowing to misdirect the reader, by laying a hint that you know the reader will think is important but is actually a red herring. You would then follow it up a little later with another hint – the true one, this time – but because the reader has thought the earlier hint was the real one, they might be tempted to overlook the true one. I think you’d need to be a little careful with how you do this, because it can backfire if done poorly. If done right, though, then it can be a clever way to get the reader to watch your left hand while your right pulls the card out of your sleeve.  On the other hand, some stories, like detective stories, rely very heavily on leaving plenty of clues and red herrings, creating a pretty tangled web that needs to be weaved with great care.  This is why a good detective story can be so difficult to write.  Huge respect to Agatha Christie!
 
How and when to foreshadow
More often than not, foreshadowing should be of the fairly subtle kind. If it’s shouted from the rooftops then it can cause the reader to keep a close eye out for it, so when it happens, it’s of no surprise at all to the reader, and, frankly, spoils the story. A better way is to drop the hint in such a way as to cause the reader to either all but forget about it, or to make the reader think that your hint was just a bit of flavouring, and nothing more important than that.
You can go overboard with foreshadowing though. If everything in your story is important, then the reader soon learns to understand that everything you mention is going to have something relevant to do with the climax of your story, which only helps to lessen the impact. By adding things to your story that aren’t important, it ensures the reader is never sure what’s important and what’s not. On the other hand, when you later proofread your story, you might actually see how you could turn one of these story flavour enhancers into an actual foreshadow. But as I said, these ‘story flavour enhancers’ should rarely be promoted as “THIS IS IMPORTANT” moments. Describing how the ashtray on the coffee table is overflowing with ash and cigarette butts might just be a way to simply show that the occupant is a smoker and a bit messy or lazy, or it might have important relevance later on. Who knows? Certainly not the reader, and that’s what’s most important.
Remember, foreshadowing should very rarely be obvious. It should be a fairly subtle hint that the reader may or may not pick up on. Too overt a hint comes across as too obvious and too forced. It needs to flow naturally with the story, appearing as something that is nothing more than a flavour enhancer.

Pen names restored, took a few hours since there are a ton of members. if they aren’t current feel free to edit them.
The attack didn’t get far, only managing to change pen names, user sensitive data is all encrypted so don’t have to worry about it..

Happy New Year to everyone! Let’s hope 2022 brings us all some much needed joy.
We’ve all had a lot on our plates with the pandemic, wildfires, floods, workplace upheavals, and just about everything you can imagine going on. But as a community of readers and writers, we can always fall back on the worlds we love to bring us some much-needed comfort. So find a good story to read, or write something that’s been tickling the back of your brain, and let’s see if we can find a bit of joy and peace in words.

Starting on Friday, November 19, the weekly Dribs, Drabs & Doggy Tales Challenge is returning!  You can find the challenge here, and the rules are here.
For anyone who has participated in these challenges before, welcome back! For new members, these are a great way to refresh your skills, break that writer's block, and get to know some of the other authors on the site. We really hope you'll give it a try, and join in the fun!

Damn, that’s sad.  I didn’t know her, but I’ve experienced something similar myself, and it certainly hurts. *hugs*

Damn, that’s sad.  I didn’t know her, but I’ve experienced something similar myself, and it certainly hurts. *hugs*

Damn, that’s sad.  I didn’t know her, but I’ve experienced something similar myself, and it certainly hurts. *hugs*

One of our members, and a personal friend of mine, passed away this morning after a long illness.
Anesor is one of the people who encouraged me to write, and while the first thing I ever posted isn’t up any longer, she never hesitated to offer support, advice, and friendship while I tried my best to hone my craft. We wrote together, beta-read for each other, and even indulged ourselves in some private commentary on some of the more florid fan fictions in our favorite fandoms.
I got the chance to visit her in-person once, and I’ll always cherish that day. It was like sitting down with a family member, because we knew each other so well by then. Her family was warm and welcomed this online stranger with open arms, just like Anesor did when she wrote the first review on my story, and asked me what happens next.
I will miss her voice, and her strength, and her sheer determination, but I will always hold our friendship close.

There’s no pending registration for you for the forum, so I’m assuming it’s the archive.

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