Welcome

Welcome to Every Day Fiction. We’re delighted to have you join us.

One of the best facets of an online magazine is its interactivity. We welcome and encourage your participation, both by rating and commenting on the stories and by joining community discussions.

Readership

Every Day Fiction is intended for an emotionally and intellectually mature readership, and sometimes the stories involve concepts and language that may not be suitable for younger readers. We expect that you may be reading from a workplace computer (on your break, of course!) or over a meal, so we avoid explicit erotica and graphic gore, but we feel that some edgy content is appropriate for a readership of intelligent adults.

The Star Rating System

The star rating system is a voting system that allows us to see how well a particular story is received by our readership. It helps us understand our readership’s interests and preferences.

Below every story, underneath the text “Rate this story”, there are five stars outlined in grey. Some of them may or may not be filled in with gold, depending on whether votes have already been placed. When you hold your mouse pointer over the stars, they become highlighted in red — one star (to the left with only the one star highlighted) is the lowest vote you can give, and five stars (to the right with all five stars highlighted) is the highest vote you can give. When you click, your vote is recorded.

After you’ve voted, the stars will display the average of all votes received for the story. Once a story has received more than twelve or so votes, your single vote may not visibly change the displayed average, but please be reassured that all votes are counted and accumulate to slowly shift the average up or down.

Vote-changing after you’ve clicked is not an available feature of the system, so please click carefully.

Guidelines for Commenting on Stories

Everyone is welcome to comment on the stories. You do not need to log in or create an account to do so. Your email address is required but will be kept strictly confidential.

You should be aware that EDF is a magazine, not a workshopping/critique site. We allow reader comments because many authors appreciate the feedback they receive. Feedback as to what specifically worked or did not work for you, and technical analysis that can be applied to the author’s general and future writing, are generally the most valuable comments for our authors. Since any story in EDF has by definition already been published by us, suggestions as to how the author could change or rewrite it are of little practical use.

We don’t expect everyone to like every story, and you’re welcome to comment regardless of whether you liked the piece — differing opinions are a given, and constructive criticism is welcome, but please keep all comments courteous and respectful. We do not tolerate abuse, foul language (either explicit or abbreviated/asterisked), name-calling, personal attacks, or disparaging speculation about anyone’s background/education/lifestyle, etc. The comments are NOT intended as a place for gratuitous cruelty and hurtful put-downs, and while we don’t like to censor anyone, we find ourselves occasionally forced to delete mean-spirited remarks that cross boundaries of respect and common courtesy. Mocking a story, especially through the use or alteration of quotes from it, is also unacceptable. People who abuse the privilege of commenting can and will have their nasty comments removed (and, if necessary, their IP addresses flagged as a source of spam). Fortunately, the vast majority of our commenters are helpful and supportive even when delivering a less-than-glowing opinion, and we value that.

Please keep story comments focused on the story in question. Do not engage with trolls or offensive commenters; flag problem comments and report them — participation only adds to the problem. General comments for Every Day Fiction should be directed to the editorial team either privately via our contact form or publicly via our community places. Other discussions that segue away from the story can also be transferred to either our Roundtable on Facebook or our Roundtable on MeWe to be debated in full without taking away from a discussion of the story at hand.

It should go without saying that advertising and soliciting are not appropriate in story comments for any reason. If you have a new book or story out, or services that you’d like to offer to our community, please talk to us about advertising space — or better yet, send us a story and mention your awesome book/story/service in your bio.

***

For more information about Every Day Fiction, please see our list of Frequently Asked Questions.