I write my stories in MS Word. But that formatting get's wiped out if I copy and paste it. Any suggestions on the best way to format something for posting in the galleries? I want to make sure my stuff isn't too difficult to read.

In word, under the Home tab, you want to use 'no spacing', not 'normal'. The reason for this is counter-intuitive to the way you would write for a publisher or self-publishing on Kindle. For the Kindle, or a publisher, you don't want any hard paragraphs (no hitting the enter button until the end of a paragraph), but for online writing it's completely opposite. And in that way, you will maintain your formatting, because you are now leaving hard paragraphs behind that don't really obey grammar rules.

So, you write a paragraph, letting each line wrap automatically, and then at the end of the paragraph, you hit the enter button twice (double-spacing between paragraphs).

But, the next thing is also counter-intuitive to writing for a publisher. The publishing rule is 'one subject per paragraph', or break a paragraph when a character speaks, but not when you are publishing for online reading. Any paragraph that is longer than five lines becomes too difficult for a reader on a monitor. So, you break your paragraphs every five or six lines, double-spaced between, and a separate line for all dialog, even if it technically belongs to the previous paragraph.

Basically, you have to split your paragraphs with double-spacing, so the reader's eyes can follow, even if the paragraph by grammar rules says it should be one paragraph. Otherwise, it becomes too difficult to read, and you lose your reader.

You can do all this easily in Word, and then cut-and-paste while maintaining a visually pleasant story to view.

Now I'm going to share a bit of formatting that will make your story look a little better. And you do it in word, then cut and paste the whole thing, Below is a header, and a footer. The only thing you change is where it says, 'Story / Description'  That's where your title goes. Don't do anything to the footer. Place your story between the header and the footer, and you have a visually appealing story.

<div class="panel"><div class="panel-heading"><h3 class="panel-title">Story / Description</h3></div><div class="panel-body"><div class="form-group" style="text-align:justify;">

</div></div></div>

Thanks. I'll look into trying that

Plan_B is to deprecate Word's mega-bloat { Spit !! } and use plain-text: Notepad to ~100 kb, else Wordpad...

FWIW, I've tales migrated as plain-text from Apple ][+ via serial to BBC_B, on floppies to Archimedes A440/1 then to a succession of PCs...

most of my stuff is already in Word. It's an old copy because why pay for a subscription when what's already paid for works? And I sometimes use Write It Now. It's a novel writing app that I won here a few years ago. It's got a lot of great features for organizing. If it's a story I'm doing a lot of planning for, I'll use that

I wish Scrivener would sponsor, so we could add that as a contest prize. Scrivener is my chosen writing software, but Word Perfect does a really nice job also of organizing novels. I haven't liked MS Word much since it changed in 2007. Personally, I think 2003 was the best version, then they screwed it all up.

2007 is the version I'm using. I didn't like it at first, but I've gotten used to it. My mom has 360. I can't stand it.