Writing Section Rules and Guidelines v2

Did you write something for the Simpsons, Futurama, original fiction or another fandom? Feel free to post it here!
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archonix
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Writing Section Rules and Guidelines v2

Post by archonix » Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:55 pm

These are the current rules and guidelines for posting your writing in this section.

Rules

[*] No Porn (as defined by the admin)
[*] No unnecessary violence (ditto)
[*] No flaming - if you can't be constructive then don't bother

Please also see the general rules for more information.



Guidelines

The Simpsons and Futurama Fanworks Central recommends Open Office for writing and reading documents. It's free. Nuff said.

There are two ways to post your story in this section: as an attachment, or as inline posts.

For most purposes we recommend attachments as they allow your readers to take what you've written and read it elsewhere. Generally we recommend that you stick to attachments if your story is longer than the word count of the post. An attached document allows for better formatting as well. However, it may be that you want to serialise your story, post it in small chunks for easy digestion, in which case you can either post your "chapters" as attachments, or post them inline.



Posting a single attachment

Rather than explain this I will post a recent fic as an example, with hints in italics. Ratings are as follows: U (universal), PG (parental guidance, PG-13 etc), M (mature)

Your title. This is important

A Different View

Rating followed by an brief sentence why that rating was chosen

Rating - PG (some violence and swearing)

The plot summary is what will grab your readers. It can be a summary of the entire story or just a teaser, the important part is that readers are grabbed by it. Make it good.

Plot Summary

An accident in the Professor's lab changes Fry in to a woman, and has more profound consequences that alter the very course of history itself. Now, whilst having to deal with the changes in her personal life, and a new-found friendship, the new Philippa Fry and the crew have to battle to prevent a sinister alien conspiracy that reaches to the very heard of the Democratic Order of Planets in a quest that may force them all to make a sacrifice almost too difficult to comprehend.

If you have other files or artwork you want people to associate with your story then it's a good idea to link to them.

Also: Some art related to this fic can be found [iurl=http://www.simpworks.com/forums/index.p ... #msg101499]starting here[/iurl]. Browse through the thread to see what you can find and enjoy the rest, too, why not?



Posting Chapters Inline

Try and account for formatting. You may have nice indents and fancy font effects in your story but these will not transfer to the forums. Make sure you check for bold and italic sections. You can use Open Office to do some fancy text replacement that accounts for formatting. A short tutorial on how to do this will appear shortly.

Posting your chapters inline allows a little bit of freedom with posting images in order to illustrate your story. It is possible to link to images that are attached to other messages.

Posting Chapters As Attachments

If you are posting your chapter as an attachment it is a good idea to post a few words along with it, perhaps a summary of the chapter or an introduction to grab people's attention. Usually the first paragraph will do. You may also want to post your chapter title if you have one. You can post attachments by clicking "additional options" under the text entry box.

Once you have completed your serial it is generally a good idea to post the entire story as a single attachment in the first post of your thread. You can do this by editing the post.

Attachment Guidelines

We prefer that you post in an open format such as OpenDoc (.odt) or, at a pinch, html or rtf, however we recognise that not everyone will be able to read these files so we also allow you to post .doc (word document) and .txt. Please don't use Word 2007's default document format. Only a dozen or so people in the world can read it.

Titling Guidelines

If you are making a new topic to post your fic, there are a few headers that we recommend you use.

REVIEW - if you want readers to give you an in-depth analytical review, please put this in the title.
NO REVIEW - If you don't want any review and just want people to say nice things, use this.
CHAPTERS, SERIES or SERIAL - if you are posting your story in pieces and chapters, please put this in your title.



Reviewing Guidelines

As stated, don't flame. If you don't like a story then say why, but do so in a constructive way. Try to be nice.

If a story doesn't have a REVIEW tag you might be able to get away with some constructive criticism, but don't presume to place an in-depth review unless they have asked for it.

Constructive criticism is best served with a lage dose of sugar. Praise the good things, be fair about what you perceive to be bad things - others might not even notice them. Always bear in mind that the author has put a great deal of work into writing their story and they will be very keen to see that other people have liked it.

And remember, talk about the story, not the writer.

Author Guidelines

Reviewers can be harsh, we know, everyone at TSFFC has gone through the pain of a harsh review at one time or another. This is natural. The ethos of this site has always been one of helping writers improve their skills so that they can craft ever better stories with more intricate plots and ideas. You may find people saying what feel like very nasty things, but remember that they are trying to help. If you don't want to listen to what they have to say, then simply ignore it. Don't take what a reviewer says as a personal insult because it is very unlikely that is what they intended.
Our choicest plans have fallen through, our airiest castles tumbled over, because of lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over.
— Piet Hein - Grooks
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