You’re about to write with strangers. Play fair. Play nice. Don’t fight.
Do write darkness if the story calls for it. Don’t aim it at a real person.
Do let a character carry hate. Don’t aim a slur at a group.
Do write a character in despair. Don’t write instructions or romanticise self-harm.
Do use strong language if the story earns it. Don’t be surprised when it gets a Strong Language tag.
Never anything sexual involving minors. No framings, no exceptions, no literary defences.
Four things we care about, in order of how often they come up. Each section starts with why the rule exists, then says what it actually means, then answers the questions writers most often ask.
If you’re reading this because one of your lines was removed, the section you want is probably below. The rule we cited in your notification has a matching answer here.
Spam wastes the one thing this app runs on: other writers’ attention. Spam is anything submitted without intent to make a story better — copy-paste lines, the same line dropped into ten stories, joke submissions written in three seconds, or accounts coordinating to flood a story.
Can I submit the same line to two stories if it genuinely fits both? Yes, if it genuinely fits both. The test isn’t “did you reuse a line,” it’s “did you think about this story when you submitted.” A line that fits a horror story and a drama story because you wrote it for both is fine. A line you’re spraying everywhere to see what sticks is not.
Is a one-word line spam? Not on its own. Some challenges are built on brevity. Spam is about intent, not length. A one-word line that lands is one of the best things you can write here. A one-word line submitted twelve times in a minute is something else.
What happens if I get flagged for spam? The line gets removed and you’ll get a private notification telling you which rule it broke. No public record.
A villain can hold any view. A writer cannot use a story to attack a real person or a real group. The line is whether the hate lives inside the fiction or aims out of it. Hate and harassment cover slurs directed at protected groups, dehumanising language about real people or communities, and threats — fictional framing or not.
Can my villain use a slur? Almost always no, and we’re going to be honest about why: there is almost no story that genuinely needs the actual word on the page. A racist character can be unmistakably racist without the slur itself. If your line depends on the word being printed to work, the line probably isn’t doing what you think it’s doing. Lines containing slurs get removed regardless of who’s “saying” them in the story.
Can I write a character who holds views I find repulsive? Yes. That’s most of literature. The test is whether the story is engaging with the view (a drama about a man unlearning his father’s racism) or delivering it (a monologue that reads like a manifesto with a character’s name on top). Engagement is welcome. Delivery is not.
What happens if I get flagged for hate? The line is removed and the story it was in is paused while a human reviews it. You’ll get a private notification with the rule cited. Severe cases — explicit slurs, targeted harassment, threats — may result in immediate suspension.
Literature has always engaged with despair. We are not in the business of pretending otherwise. The rule is the difference between writing about and teaching how. Depiction is welcome. Instructions, methods, and romanticisation are not.
Can a character in my story attempt or die by suicide? Yes. This is one of the oldest subjects in writing and we are not going to be the platform that makes it unwritable. What we ask: don’t describe methods, don’t include anything that reads like instructions, and don’t frame the act as beautiful, freeing, or aspirational. A character can despair, can decide, can be lost — without the line becoming a how-to or a recruitment poster.
What’s the line between “dark” and “promotion”? Ask who the line is talking to. If it’s talking to other characters in the story, you’re almost certainly fine. If it’s reaching past the story to talk to the reader — telling them how to do it, telling them it’s the answer, telling them they should — that’s the line.
This is the one rule with no shades, no FAQs, and no good-faith edge cases. We treat it as the bright line of the entire platform.
Any text that pairs sexual language with markers of a minor — explicit, implied, framed as fiction, framed as anything — is removed immediately on a single flag. The account that submitted it is banned. Where the law requires it, the content is reported to authorities.
There is no literary defence. There is no “but the character is actually a thousand years old.” There is no framing that makes this acceptable on The Last Line. If you are here to write that, you are in the wrong room and we will show you the door on the first attempt.
Creative writing uses strong language. We know that, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. Words like “fuck,” “shit,” and their cousins are legitimate tools when the story earns them. They are not violations and they will not get your line removed.
What they will do is add a Strong Language tag to the story. The system detects strong language automatically and tags the story — there’s nothing to approve or dismiss, because it’s a statement of fact, not a judgement. Tagged stories stay fully visible and fully functional; the tag is a content label, not a punishment. Readers who’d rather not see strong language can switch it off under Settings, and those stories drop out of their feeds.
Does strong language count as a strike? No. Literary profanity is not a violation. The four categories above are violations. Swearing is craft.
We operate a three-strike system. A strike is issued when a confirmed violation is found in a story — whether you wrote the line yourself or, as Director, curated it into your story.
Strike 1: A warning. You’ll receive a private notification explaining what happened and which rule was involved.
Strike 2: A final warning. Same notification, but this time it’s explicit: one more and you’re out.
Strike 3: Your account is suspended.
The bright-line rule (sexual content involving minors) skips the ladder entirely. One offence, permanent ban.
If you start a story, you’re its Director. That means you’re responsible for what goes into it. When you curate a submission into your story, you’re endorsing it. If that line later gets flagged and confirmed as a violation, you receive a strike alongside the person who wrote it.
This isn’t about catching you out. It’s about keeping the room safe. Read what you’re adding to your story. If a submission makes you uneasy, don’t pick it. That’s the job.
When you tap the flag icon, you’ll be asked to pick a category:
1. Hate speech / slur
2. Sexual content involving a minor
3. Self-harm promotion
4. Spam / off-topic
That’s it. You won’t be asked to defend the flag, explain yourself, or fill out a form. Your flag goes into a queue a real human reviews.
You will not be told what happened to a line you flagged. We don’t publish moderation outcomes. Stories that had a line removed just continue. This is deliberate: public moderation trails turn into recruiting tools for bad-faith actors, and we’d rather protect the room than perform the protection.
If a line you wrote is removed, you’ll get a private notification telling you which rule it broke and linking back to this page.
You’ll get a private notification. It will name the rule, link to the section above, and tell you whether it counts as a strike on your account.
We don’t have an appeals process yet. We’re a small team and we’d rather spend that time getting the first review right than running a second one. If you think we got it wrong, the thumbs-down on the notification goes to a real person. We read them.
We are trying to run a room, not a courtroom. The rules above exist because writing with strangers only works when everyone trusts the room is being kept. They are not meant to make you anxious about every line you submit — most of you will never bump into them, because most of you are here for the same reason we are.
If a line you wrote was meant in good faith and got removed anyway, that’s frustrating and we’re sorry. The rules are the rules even when the writer meant well, because the alternative is rules that mean nothing. If it happens, take the note, read the section, and write the next line. The room will still be here.