FAQ Alt.StarTrek.Creative, Advice for Authors Version 2.18 September 1, 2001 This FAQ was designed to advise authors, new and old, of some things that may help them in posting to alt.startrek.creative These are only suggestions, but most of us would like you to follow them. This FAQ is located at : http://www.crosswinds.net/~stephenratliff/FAQs/Advice4Authors.txt Table Of Contents ================= I) General Suggestions A) Starting Suggestions B) Some Warnings II) Formating A) Text dos and don'ts B) Subject lines C) Story Header D) Synopsis/Summaries E) Writing Summaries F) Editor's List II) Getting Your Story Out There A) In the Archive B) To ASCEM C) To ASCA IV) Posting Hits V) Credits I) General Suggestions ====================== A) Some Starting Suggestions ---------------------------- Name your story ... there are only so many ways to list an untitled story and we have had plenty. We'd also like you to try to find a unique name. We have several titles which have been over used and we now request that you find another: The Return Aftermath First Contact (TNG only) Generations2 (TNG only) When you write an episode addition (an ASC Tradition) give it a subtitle so we can easily archive it. (i.e. the Basics: part 1.5) Use end of section and story labels. However, don't just put end at the end of each part. There is a certain story from '96 that went back and forth between the complete and incomplete listings because of such labels. When reposting your story, wait a bit. Sometimes it takes up to a week for all of the parts of your story to reach a person's ISP, and posting a story again and again day after day may not be well received. If you want feedback, ask for it. Oh and please tell us what type of feedback (grammar, spelling, plot, characterization, etc). Include how in depth you want us to get (Comments, Complaints, Critics, Flames ...) Helpful information of dealing with and giving criticism can be found in the Mannerly Art of Critique FAQ. (See Appendix) B) Some Warnings ---------------- The 'net is changing the way people think about intellectual property and people who have been around a long time are setting precedents for everyone else. Just because a story is available free, doesn't mean it's still not the property of the writer. Fanfic writers who post on the net get paid in one way--feedback. That's all you get for a story you put your heart into. Anyone archiving a story should ask for permission and make it clear how to get back to the writer. Authors: Once we post it, it's out of our control. We don't even have the recourse that an author of non fanfic would have, because we're writing in a legal gray area. Anyone can go into the archive and grab a story and do anything with it. Anyone can grab that same story when it's posted and do anything with it, so requesting that it not be archived won't stop the problem. If you think you want to make money off something you write (i.e. changing the mileau to something non-Trek, or possibly getting published by Pocket) *don't* post it on the net. The former ASCEM FAQ Maintainer found one of her stories posted on a non Trek newsgroup without her permission (although the guy did leave her header intact) and The former ASCEM FAQ Maintainer has run across her stuff archived on www sites also without permission. The irritating thing is that as a writer, as Authors we love the exposure, but we would like a little courtesy as well. II) Formating ============= A) Text dos and don'ts ---------------------- From Constable Katie, Post Collecter/Formater. *DON'T* use smart-quotes -- those little quotation marks that curve and look like typographical quotation marks. Smart-quotes screw up a lot of people's newsreaders, and many folks trash such stories unread as soon as they see the tell-tale subscripts and superscripts and/or little black rectangles and/or just plain garbled up screens. There have been several posts recently about how to turn off smart-quotes in your word processor -- follow those instructions! *DON'T* post your stories in HTML code. The vast majority of newsreaders can't translate the codes properly, and many people don't want to bother saving the file and firing up a web browser so they can read it. And it's annoying as heck to read a story full of

<&sp> and so on and so on...plus scientific evidence has proven that trying to read raw HTML code causes amblyopia. *DON'T* post stories as attachments or in Word, Wordperfect or other word-processing file formats. Such hijinks result in your stories being UUencoded, and not everyone has the time and inclination to run such posts through WinCode or WinZip or whatever to convert encoded files back into text. Also, trying to read encoded text leads to iron deficiency anemia. (You may, however, *email* ASCII text attachments to me at submissions@webamused.com.) *DO* post your stories in plain old ASCII text. In your wordprocessor this may also be known as MS-DOS text, or Simple Text or Generic Text or such. *DO* double-space between paragraphs. Simply indenting the paragraphs often isn't enough, and trying to read stories where the paragraphs run together make the head explode. (Results of scientific experiments proving this have not yet been published. Take my word for it.) *DO* split your story into digestible chunks -- approximately 25K per part seems to be good -- to accommodate newsreaders that can't handle larger articles without choking or cutting off the end of the article. I don't have experience with this myself, since my ISP and Free Agent seem to be able to take any length -- but I know there are many who do have problems. AOL, I believe, is one. (And, yes, I know I violated this myself when I posted "Torrid" -- it won't happen again, believe me!) Please note that the 25K limit is a requirement for posts to ASCEM, also for technical reasons -- if you don't break up your story for ASCEM, the moderators will have to do it for you. *DO* use a line-length of 70-75 characters. I have friends who trash stories unread if the lines scroll right off the screen. Not everyone's newsreader will do an auto-word-wrap. This doesn't even address the dreaded long-short-long-short problem. Speaking as the collector/formatter member of the new archive team, I can and will do some of this fixing as part of my duties, but again, stories that need to be fixed go last. I have a limited amount of time to do this stuff -- the less I have to do to a story to prepare it for the archive, the faster it will get uploaded and made available for the ravening hordes. B) Subject lines ---------------- The Subject Line should consist of a Post name, a short title, the Part Number, rating, the series, type and codes (A full listing of codes may be found in the Codes Used FAQ) The Post name is a three letter field consisting of one of the following: NEW For new stories REP For Reposts REV For Revised versions of stories COR For corrected versions of stories DRA For Drafts Next is the series. It's one of the following: TOS The Original Series TNG The Next Generation DS9 Deep Space Nine VOY Voyager ENT Enterprise OCC Original Characters or Crew AMA Amagosa Universe MIS None of the above. The Title should be no longer than 20 characters. This does not mean one has to keep the title short, but a shortened version should be in the subject line. The full title can be listed in story header (see below). The part number should be in the part number/last part format. If the last part is not known or you are not posting all of the story in the next week, a ? mark should fill the last part field. Roman numerals are reserved for stories in series that can stand alone. The next field is the rating. We enclose the rating in [] so that parents can set a kill file for stories rated [R]. The ratings are explained in the codes section. The last field is the codes and types. This should be enclosed in () so that it may be easily pulled out. The first item in the () should be if it's a parody, x-over, or poem. Next should come the romance codes as listed later in the FAQ. A sub-series may be list afterwards. Some examples: NEW TNG All the King's 5/? [PG-13] (Marrissa Stories #3) REV TNG Battle For Bajor 4/8 [PG] (Marrissa Stories #2) REP TNG Captain & Doctor 1/1 [G] (P/C, Marrissa Stories) COR TOS Galaxy's End 1/53 [R] (x-over, Star Wars) DRA VOY Harry's Mad [NC-17] (parody) C) Story Header --------------- The Story Header offers an opportunity to correct and expand on what is given in the Standard USENET Header. This is very important to our Archivists and Awards Staff. Stories missing, or with incomplete data will be delayed during the archiving process until such data is found. The following is a blank Story Header, copy it and put it at the head of each post. We use data contained in it as well as the Date, From, and Subject lines, which are part of the default nntp header. Title: Author: Contact: Series: Part: Rating: Codes: Summary: Here is how to fill out each line. Title: This is your full title. Simple, easy. Author: The author's name or pseudonym. Contact: Where to contact the author. Referred to as Contact to foil automatic e-mail address collectors. Sometimes combined with the Author line. Series: First the series (from Codes FAQ) then any personal series it may contain (like Marrissa Stories, Alliance, Happy Faced Generation, etc) Part: First a Postname (from Codes FAQ) then this part in the form 1/4, then any additional tag to identify post if necessary (for instance, I date each of my reposts because I often end up splitting them differently) Posts with DRA or REP may or may not be picked up by the archivists. Rating: The rating is using the American MPAA system. It's always enclosed in [] because in the Subject line, where a parent can configure software to block posts, a block of R doesn't work very well, but a block of [R] does. A reason may follow the rating. Ratings [G] Nothing objectionable. [PG] Somethings that may cause some parents concern [PG-13] Those under 13 definitely shouldn't read without Parental Guidance. [R] Restricted to mature adults (usually for violence) [NC-17] Absolutely no children (usually for sex) Codes: Codes begin with the Types (see Codes FAQ) then any character codes and pairings that may apply. All Codes are listed in the Codes FAQ Summary: 3-5 lines of what your story is about. A FAQ on summary writing is available. There are also some optional lines: Archive: Place which archives you wish or do not wish to archive your work here. The ASC* official archive is referred to as ASC* here. Disclaimer: Basically, Oh holy Paramount owns Star Trek, this humble person wrote this story D) Synopsis ----------- The Trekiverse Index requires a short summary. Our Index Maintainer would like all authors to provide one for their new stories. Stephen would like a 3-4 line non-spoiling summary for each newly posted story. Some people in order to prevent spoilage place this header in a separate post labeled SYNOPSIS, SUMMARY or the like. Some include it as part 0/? The Volunteer Staff encourage such behavior. If you do not post such a SYNOPSIS, please make sure all the information from the story header is in the first part. Please have all of this in the first 40(20 preferred) lines it makes Constable Katie, and my jobs easier. Summaries should be 2-5 lines long (80 characters wide). They should summarized the plot without giving the ending away. Some stories may sparse because of this but every effort to provide a concise summary should be made. The author's summary will be used if given. The author has a right to object to a summary and provide a replacement. If a replacement is provided, we will use it. If we think the summary does not work, we may write another and ask the author if it would be ok. E) Advice on Writing Summaries ------------------------------ From Carol Thomas, former Adult Summary Writer Stephen Ratliff asked me to scribble a couple of paragraphs on writing Star Trek summaries for new summarizers, and this file is the result... . But it occurred to me that everything I "know" about writing these little suckers I learned through trial and error and writing hundreds of them myself. (I've been summarizing the adult stories since November 1995, so I probably should have learned something by now.) So, I pass on this information so that you won't have to go through the trial and error period yourselves. First, the format. My standard uses four lines: (1) the FTP path within the /pub/startrek directory, (2) the title and author, (3) the date posted and (4) the summary. This format makes it easy for Stephen to incorporate the summaries into the ASC Web page and gives any readers who see the summary outside the Web page the location of the story in the FTP archive. (See above section) If you use a different format, make sure to check with Stephen that it's easy for him to use. Second, the content. The most important thing to remember when writing a story summary is: give the reader enough information to determine whether this is "their kind of story" but not enough to spoil the ending. If you can do that, everything else is gravy. The rule of thumb I use is to summarize the first third of the story. By the time you're a third of the way in, you know the set-up and which characters are involved, but not how the main complication in the story will be resolved. Note, however, that you do have to read the whole story before you can summarize it: it's always possible that something you thought was a minor point will turn out to be an important one. You want your summary to accurately reflect what the story is really about. My personal approach is to end many summaries with a question or an ellipsis, to give the reader the idea that there is more to the story than is being told in the summary. That's just a matter of personal style, however; your own summaries will quickly come to reflect your own style. few miscellaneous tips: 1. If the story is a sequel to another story available on the archive, make sure you've read the previous story first. Sometimes this makes quite a difference to how the story is meant to be read. Similarly, if you're summarizing two or more stories that form a series, try to write the summaries in the same order as the stories are supposed to be read. This creates a more accurate impression of the story for the reader. 2. Make sure sequels are marked as such so that readers won't download stories then realize in frustration that they have to go back and download another story before they can read this one. As examples: Taste for Vengeance, A Karen Colohan Gul Dukat comes to DS9 with insidious plans to destroy the relationship between Garak and Julian Bashir. A sequel to "Getting Away From It All." Postscript Colleen Tom finally confesses his feelings to Harry, but will Harry ever reciprocate them? A sequel to "Ghost in the Machine" by Killashdra. 3. If the story is a romance, make sure it's clear to the reader who is involved in the romantic relationship. This is important to many readers. 4. If the story involves a character invented by the author, provide the character's full name and a little information about him/her so that the reader doesn't think s/he is missing something. For the same reason, if the story involves a minor character from one of the TV shows or movies, identify where that character came from. As an example: Academic Sabbatical JoAnne Soper-Cook Starfleet Cadet Anna Mithrais gets more than she bargained for when she becomes an assistant to Dr. Tolian Soran ("Generations"). 5. If the story's author keeps something a secret throughout part of or most of the story, make sure that you don't give away that secret in your summary. That sounds obvious, but it's easy to slip up here. (If there's a sequel to a story like this, try not to give away the secret in your summary of the sequel, either.) As an example, the identities of the main characters in the following story were kept a secret until the last paragraph, so I gave a sense of what the story was about without giving that away: Beauty and the Beast Nancy Brown Fleeing through dark caves, a human and a Klingon find unexpected comfort in each other's arms. 6. Try to keep your summaries down to four screen lines or fewer. If the story events are very complex, as is often the case, ask yourself what the main theme or conflict of the story is, then try to pare down your summary to reflect that. Not every detail is needed; give the reader just enough to get an idea of what kind of story this is. 7. Don't let your biases show up in your summaries. I've summarized a few stories that I just *loathed* (for one reason or another) but I know there are people out there who will appreciate them, so I try to keep the summaries as neutral and accurate as possible. 8. Proofread, proofread, proofread! It's horribly embarrassing (I know -- it's happened to me) to have a writer e-mail you to tell you that you've misspelled her name. Even worse is realizing after a summary makes it to the Web site that a word is missing and therefore one of the sentences doesn't make sense. That's it! Or at least, that's everything I could think of. Happy summarizing, and if any of you come up with other tips for writing story summaries, please pass them along. III) Getting Your Story Out There ================================ A) In the Archive ----------------- Any thing posted to ASC that reaches Constable Katie will be archived. She also archives works from ASCEM and ASCA as well. submissions may also be e-mailed to submissions@webmused.com Make sure your name is on the first page of the story (if you're using a pseudonym, then make sure your pseudonym is there.) B) To ASCEM ----------- Send Submissions with the standard ASC subject line to: ascem@earthlink.com C) To ASCA ---------- Send Submissions with the standard ASC subject line to: ascatrekfic@crosswinds.net IV) Posting Hits =============== The easiest way to post a story, is to cut and paste. First pull up your news reader. Then pull up your story in text format. Copy the story from the word processing program. Then past it into your news program. V) Credits =========== Section I B: A modification of Ruth Gifford (former ASCEM FAQ Maintainer)'s response to a post titled Warning to Authors Section V A: Post from Alara Rogers dated 9/3/95 Other assistance was provided by: Susan M Stiefel, FAQ Maintainer alt.tv.x-files.creative Ruth Gifford former FAQ Maintainer ASCEM (1995-9) Alara Rogers, ASC Archivist (1995-8) Macedon, Winner of Alara Rogers Award for Best Author 1998. Melissa Koehn, Backup ASC FAQ Maintainer (1997) Dina Lerret, Archivist (1998-present) Katherine "Constable Katie" Fritz, Post Collecter/Formatter Carol Thomas, Adult Story Summarizer (1995-98). J Winter, Backup FAQ Maintainer (1998-2000) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Once again, these are only suggestions, but most of us would like you to follow them. Stephen Ratliff another insufficiently reluctant staff member of ASC. *************************************************************