Submission Guidelines for 2011
There are about three weeks left before the deadline of July 1st, so no one panic. But for those over-acheivers who are done or nearly done, here are the submission guidelines. You can turn your submission in at any time - early will make me really happy :)
First, just in case anyone is confused about this point, you only need to work with one of the prompts you've been given and submit one story.
The minimum story length is 1,000 words. There is no maximum.
Submission Guidelines
- Fiction can be submitted in .txt or HTML (.htm or .html) or .rtf formats. I will not accept .doc or .docx files.
- You must format your story ready for posting on LJ, that is with any bold, italic, centring etc already coded in as HTML. Please see this guide to HTML formatting for LJ posts if you're not sure how to do this.
- If your story is too long for one LJ post, you should either send it as multiple files (part one.txt, part two.txt etc) or indicate in your file very clearly where the chapter break should be.
- You should include the header (below) in the story file, as well as in your email.
- Do not include any fancy font formatting (that is, no coded-in colours or font styles. Heading tags are okay.). This is to make sure your story is readable for everyone - if you code in colours they may clash with someone else's style, and coding in fonts only works if everyone reading has the same fonts as you on their PCs/phones/iPads/etc.
- Including art (e.g. banners or illustrations) in fic - this is allowed, but you must supply the art files, not just a link. Image files must be in .gif, png or .jpg format.
- Please get your fics beta'd! Stories riddled with errors will be rejected, but we won't send a piece back for relatively minor mistakes.
- Do not code web-bugs or counters into your story. If you do, it will make me cranky and it will be removed before posting.
If anything in the guidelines is not clear, please contact the mods and we'll talk about it.
Header Info for ALL Submissions:
You should email your submission to supernatural @ summergen.co.uk (without the spaces). Include in your email the following header information:
Title:
Author: (We'll remove this before your work is posted, but we still need you to include it.)
Recipient:
Rating:
Warnings: (not optional - see note below)
Author's Notes: (optional)
Summary:
Ratings: you can use any rating system you like, as long as the meaning is clear.
Warnings are at your discretion. You are more than welcome to put "Warnings: Choose not to warn" or something similar if you prefer not to include this information. But please do include the field in your template. If your fic has nothing you feel the need to warn about, just put "none" in that field.
Summaries can be difficult, I know. If you don't like to use a regular summary, you could state the prompt you've used or maybe give a quote from the work. But please do include something here.
You may add additional fields to your header if you wish (e.g. spoiler warnings), but you must include everything in the header as given above.
Deadline and extensions
The deadline for submissions is July 1st.
If you cannot finish your story by the deadline you can either drop out or request an extension.
If you need to drop out, please let the mods know as early as possible. We will do our best to find a pinch hitter for you but the more time they have, the better.
If you need an extension, you must ask for one before the deadline, that is by June 30th. We won't begin posting until July 11th so a short extension won't be a problem. But please be realistic about how much time you need. There are no extensions on extensions, and if you ask for an extension and then default...well, that's not fair to the mods, the pinch hitters or your recipient.
If I email you chasing your submission you must reply promptly.
When we have received your submission we will reply to your email to let you know. If you submit on or close to the deadline, don't expect to receive that acknowledgement instantly - we're going to be busy!
Making changes after submission:
This came up for a couple of people last year, so I'll say it here. If, after you've submitted your story you find some mistake in it you absolutely have to change, you may re-submit your work. Just email it to us again, using exactly the same format you did before. As long as it's before the deadline, we'll pick up the most recent vesion when it comes to posting time. If you need to change something after the deadline, you can do the same thing but we won't guarantee to use the amended version.
You can only re-submit once. Blame the person who last year re-submitted four or five times for this rule. I understand the need to tinker with a story, but if you're going to do it, make sure you catch everything you want to change on the first try!