What are your Literature Suggestions for dA?

-Stacked deviations for chapters. Have it so comments can be separate for each chapter.

-Have better protection for our text. I know it's pretty much impossible to completely protect, but I've seen websites where if you copy text from their page and paste it elsewhere, they had hidden sentences from the copy that state where the text is from. It's almost nothing, but it does force more effort onto people to edit them out. (Plus they may not notice it right away. Sneaky sneaky )

-Shorter lines! The lines are seriously waaaaaaay too long. They need to be shorter so we don't loose our place so often. I get headaches trying to read it the way it is now.

-More font size options! Right now, we have the choice between "Okay I guess..." and "Holy crap this letter takes up the whole page!". Make a little sliding bar so we can choose the font size we want!

-Relativity! When you type something up in the submit text thing, it's totally different. I put "-xxx-" to mark a break in the story, and I can't tell you how much of a pain in the butt that is. Make it so what you type in the text box will appear in the actual deviation.

-Also, more literature contests would be nice.

-People like there icons (like the llama's) Perhaps making one for writers, would help promote them a bit. Like a quill or a book.

-Font options would be great, and perhaps a colour option for the font as well.

-I think that there aren't enough formatting choices (for example, text size and font face, though using a PDF fixes that issue) and the option to customize sta.sh Writer would be cool (eg, background color, etc), and... yeah. Also, maybe if you set a preview image for the deviation, it could be distinguished from a visual deviation in some way.

-Additional font options and formatting have already been mentioned, but those would be areas I would like to see improved. I still feel like sta.sh is buggy, and the WYSIWYG and HTML editing pages flakes out too often. Otherwise, it's a sufficient text editing tool.

-I'm not impressed with the PDF viewer built into dA - it doesn't work well with most mobile browsers, and I hate having to download them on a mobile device. It could use a little robustness.

-I'd also like to see some text print services and maybe some publishing/marketing partnerships that would give writers some universal tools to get out into the marketplace. I realize this suggestion is likely fraught with challenges, and I don't really care to solve them. I just wish they offered something like that.

I would love to see some sort of ability for two deviant's collaborating on a piece of literature to submit a piece together. I've collaborated only a few times but when you both submit the same piece, at times it can be highly annoying how one deviant has more fav's on the same exact deviation than another simply because people didn't go to favorite the other's link. That, and it would make it more constructive for both parties to be able to properly gain feedback and comments without having to switch back and forth on both deviations.
They could easy easily see what points are flawed and how they could work to achieve fixing problems both together and apart.

Trigger and spoiler warning's that can be implemented either via a "Mature Content" tag of some sort of a sort of hover your mouse over capability (though this sounds a bit too complicated; I like the Mature Content tag better).

Fix the literature category! Make it more user friendly! Fix the format; add new categories and delete some, and make an option to have "Fanfiction" under the category so people can automatically be directed to the "Fanart>Fanfiction" folder upon clicking that.
And there should be more categories in the "Fanfiction" folder.

For god's sake make it possible to copy and paste or drag and drop directly from a lit deviation into a comment/critique. Sometimes an artist has things italicized or in bold or whatever and I want to show them word for word what it is I'm looking at with the same effect. I tend to be the sort of person to take the hassle of nit-picking and putting all the same font abilities the writer did and show them where to properly emphasis words or whatever. Fix fix fix fix fix; it would make it so much easier on those who give feedback.

This one could be tricky, but make it more user-friendly for writer's to give commissions/requests/art trades. I occasionally do this but it seems... More difficult to get attention toward these types of art-related works? And it's not necessarily that people don't want them; I know plenty of people who enjoy seeing their character's brought to life in a story. Perhaps give more of the ability on the new 'Commissions' widget for writers?

Make it better for writers to advertise. Seriously, artists have the capability to advertise through ads and all sorts of media. A lit artist is mostly word of mouth or popularity and has a hard time finding their place in their community.

Make more community based groups! There's all sorts of officially run groups for dA; from Seniors to Volunteers and Bug reports. Make some for certain genre's of art; especially literature so that more writers can connect in one place. There's lit groups out there, yeah, but they're so scattered and for me it can be very confusing and hard to find writer's whom I want to meet or collaborate with.

Fix the titles on deviations. I want them bolder and bigger so they stand out more from the text. Perhaps give them backdrop shadows or something too?

Add in the "Details" area of a deviation (i.e, the area that states "Date of submission, file size, etc.) a "Word Count/Paragraph Counter/etc".

I'd like the possibility to insert images within the text, the way you can for blogs. The reason why I want this is because I think it would be nice if we could insert pretty breakers for scene change. I remember reading fairy tale books where the breakers were very detailed black-and-white tiny drawings that fit in seemlessly with the world of the story. They were leaves or branches with leaves on them, easy to make but very pretty and more subtle than using -xxx- for instance.

Above supported by One-For-Sorrow

I'd also like the possibility to make the text look like a book with pages that can be flipped. I know that can be done in flash, but not everyone has flash or knows how to use it well. I've seen a tutorial for making a flash file that reads like a book, with buttons for going to the next and the previous page, but even with that help, flash isn't free. It would be nice if we had a booklet option that would allow us to imput text and illustrations and make the finished file look like a book with pages that can be turned, rather than a long wall of text to scroll through.

Indentation! We need to be able to indent our stories without having to use five spaces, or some funky html. If we're able to upload the file why not be able to just leave our indentations in there?

I think it would also be nice to have a slight page-layout of some sort, so that people know they're going to a new page. Even something as simple as two black lines with a space between them would help rather then an entire wall of text. It makes it hard to sit still and feel like there isn't a pause until you get to the end of the chapter or story. If there was a proper break like they do in a word file or some-such it would be a lot easier to 'put the book down' for a moment and not feel like the flow is going to be interrupted.

Over all, I'd just like to see some simple fixes. I don't need it big and grand to bring people into the writing. The writing itself is the art, not the way you show it, but some basic necessities like formatting, indentation, etc would be nice to see. Italics and bold can stay, but please no colors or too many fonts. If people really need a font they can make due with what's available.

One thing I'd really like to see is the ability to import a .doc, .odt, or even a .rtf directly as a lit submission. (Similar to how you just simply use a .bmp or .jpg as a regular submission without necessarily needing to use Sta.sh or whatever.) I hate when I get my formatting and stuff just the way I like it only to have Sta.sh screw it up.  And don't even get me started on the bare-bones HTML thing. All that takes is one missed tag and the whole thing is shot...bleh.

Ooh, and here's an idea just for interest and eye-candy's sake. How about pages in a deviation? For instance, clicking on a dog-ear in a corner would "turn" the page. (Maybe even with customizable effects for the "turning" as well?) That "page turn" ability could also be used to link related images or chapters to the deviation(s).

Bookmarks! Some lit is so long that I need to come back later and catch up. I think that'd be handy too.

As for lit "watermarks", how about completely disabling right-clicks on lit pages? At least an option to do that, so that if you -want- to share that's cool too. Extra protection would help prevent copy-paste theft. Disabling a right-click is very hard to get around, too. It might help in non-lit deviations too.  
Or how about a customizable text or image that can be hidden in the background when displayed? I'm talking about a built-in watermark ability, not simply creating text in the deviation.

Widen Literature by apocathary