I’m sure you’ve heard the spiel before. DeviantART doesn’t cater much to literature, we all know this. It’s a little harder for us writers to really get our work out there. Visual art is blunt, it’s instant satisfaction, and that’s understandable – to a point, at least.

We can think of all sorts of reasons for that. Maybe people are too lazy to read. Maybe they don’t know how to critique it, that’s no biggie. There are plenty of us out there who enjoy reading, critiquing, and sitting down to a great story here on dA.

That, as far as I’m concerned, is not the problem. I think a lot of the issues surrounding literature on dA starts where it begins: the submission process. Let me make my case.

Prose is my weapon of choice. Sometimes I churn out short little one-page stories, but when I write, I like to write. It’s unlikely that I’ll have a story that’s less than a thousand words. When all is said and done, and I get the idea that I want to submit it to deviantART (for critiques, something to give my watchers, to build my gallery – it doesn’t matter the reason). That’s nice, right?

So I go to the submission page, type in my title and author’s comments. I choose the category.

Oh wait.

I have to edit in HTML tags.

I have to edit in HTML tags in a 2000 word story.



Sounds like my problem, doesn’t it? No, it’s not. Many people here are in the same boat. Some tolerate it, some have found ways to make it easier, and some are deterred from submitting literature altogether. I’ve bitten my tongue and endured the process for too long, it’s time for a change. I’m going to just cut to the chase: the submission process is primitive. Manual HTML makes the submission process needlessly difficult and frustrating.

Here’s a list of workarounds, and why they simply will not do:

1. Get a third party program to export your document as HTML.

Sure, I could do that. It’s an extra step and it requires me to find said program. Someone once suggested that I get an entirely different word processing program just so I can submit stuff to dA efficiently. I don’t find that acceptable, nor is it a solution.

On top of that, I then have to weed out the HTML tags that dA does not support, after I’ve gone and gotten the raw HTML of my document. I’ve tried for hours, there is simply no clean cut way to do this.

2. Insert HTML tags as you write.

This is unrealistic, and it breaks the chain of thought that I need when I’m writing. I need to worry about plot content, about characters, about grammar and sentence structure – not where an italics tag should go when I submit it to dA.

3. Submit on a different website if you don’t like it.

This isn’t even a workaround, this is a cop-out. And I do submit my work elsewhere. I would love to be able to share it on dA as well, if it weren’t such a headache to do so.

4. Use PDFs, dA supports them.

dA supports PDFs as a download option. I find this inconvenient, because then I have to either tell my readers to download that instead (and still submit my story as text), or simply submit a sentence or two giving the instructions. That’s ridiculous. PDFs are not embedded in the deviation viewing area, so they are not a viable solution.

5. Honorable mention: Greasemonkey Script

There's a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that allows one to format a comment or a post by clicking buttons (called deviantPLUS), and I have it installed already. It does not work with the literature submission area though, unfortunately. It's also still manual HTML, just automated slightly, which is nothing more than a bandaid on the problem.

So, what gives? Why am I writing this news article? Simple: I want the submission process modernized, I want it made simple.

I’ve thought of a few things to remedy this problem. They range from a relatively easy fix to something more complicated, but I will list the reasons I think they would work.

1. WYSIWYG Editor

It’s simple: one uploads a document to dA, and dA imports said document into a WYSIWYG editor (What You See is What You Get). All formatting is kept. This is different from being able to “upload documents”! I know the reasons behind disallowing that kind of thing. No, this is a way for the documents to be easily rendered for submission.

Think it’s impossible? Think again. I’m going to redirect your attention to a site called FictionPress.com. They implement this very thing. I am very well aware that dA is not FictionPress, but there are countless websites that do, in fact, implement this. And it makes sense. Multiple document formats would be accepted, no manual HTML, voila.

Another option is "Paste From Word" or a simple "paste formatting" option, where one can copy their document and paste it into dA's submission area and formatting is kept. This can be done - Booksie.com does something like it.

2. Flash document.

One of the things I’ve remedied this with is a flash document structured like a PDF. I use Print2Flash [link] to accomplish this. Adobe has similar software, though it is not freeware (Adobe FlashPaper). Here is an example: [link]

Look at that, it’s embedded into the deviation viewing area and everything. It’s convenient, the file size is small (the entire chapter was around 700kb), and you can even have your choice of formatting.

What it does is essentially take a snapshot of each document page, turns it into an “image” and compiles it into a flash document. Want to see a website that uses this concept? Visit [link]

I think it’s very possible for dA to create its own engine for this. It might take a little work, but it will be worth it. You submit a document, and dA’s engine converts it to this format – simple.

3. Embeddable PDFs – the simplest solution.

Indeed, this is a very, very simple fix. It is possible to embed a PDF within a webpage. Why not have it that way? It’s easy, and it works. The only issue is that PDFs are sometimes tough on slower computers.

And there you have it.

But I’m not done yet. I’ve thought long and hard on the issue of the way literature is, you know, presented as well. It would make sense that a more attractive interface for reading would reel in more readers, no?

Film has its own interface, catered to the content. Literature is its own thing. Wouldn’t it be cool to have something like Amazon’s Look Inside feature? This is just an idea, but overall it would do a lot of good for the literature community.

I made a mockup some time ago detailing this very thing. It’s not the greatest but it gets the idea out there:



Thanks for your attention. This is an important issue to me and I assume it is for most of us. This news article is a way for me to bring awareness to the fact that literature submissions are a needless pain -- and even get a few suggestions in at the same time.

There are a lot of changes happening to dA with the launch of v6, and it's time to see something new with Literature.