BSV Forum - Writing - General Tips

Submissions

Nov 17 2009 03:24 am   #1slaymesoftly
Just a friendly reminder from one of your over-worked mods that it is very important for new authors (new to us) to read the rules very carefully before submitting your first fic.  We actually mean them (the rules).  And we enforce them.

If you spam the validation queue with multiple chapters, they will all be rejected - sometimes without even being looked at (depending on which mod you get).  If you need a beta and you haven't used one, or if your beta isn't very good with punctuation, grammar and sentence structure, then you'll probably find your chapter rejected for mechanical issues.  We cannot always be as strict as we'd like with submissions in terms of how well-written and interesting they are, but we can and will hold the line when it comes to spelling, punctuation, grammar and sentence structure. 

Other rules to consider: this is an archive for fics about Spike, the vampire.  It is also a Spuffy archive.  Spike, the vampire + Buffy, the slayer = Spuffy.  This is not the place for your AH fics. Or fics that may as well be AH because none of the characters except Spike are who and what we expect them to be.  Your stories do not have to follow canon, but they do need to take place in the world we know and, if  peopled with the characters we know and love, we must be able to recognize them.

You may see an occasional Spike-centric story in which Buffy is not the slayer (or just isn't involved in that particular story about Spike) and the world seems very different from Sunnydale-centered fics.  My response to anyone who points that out is to say that there may be a few older fics on here like that. Fics that were already archived before the current owner and mods became the deciders. If you look carefully, you may even find one  or two in which only Spike is who he is. Chances are, that's because they were just too good to pass up - that the characters and the atmosphere in the story are very believable and presented really, really well. Which is probably the reason we took it.  In order to avoid finding ourselves having to tell someone that their particular story does not reach the level of excellence that would cause us to want to post it in spite of the rules, we are rethinking the policy that led us to make those exceptions. Until then, please do not try to put us in the position of having to tell you that your story is not good enough for us to make an exception for it.

We love that authors want to be on the Bloodshedverse. We love our readers who support our authors.  But, one of the reasons that authors want to be here and readers want to read here is because we're known for maintaining certain standards. To be included in this archive means you have achieved a minimal level of competence in your writing. It may not be prize-winning prose, but it will be grammatically correct and the characters will be recognizable as those Joss created. To accept anything less would be cheating our readers and disrespecting the authors who have made the extra effort to meet the requirements.

Thank you.
I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Nov 22 2009 08:59 pm   #2slaymesoftly
I added some more explanatory details, so I'm just bumping this up for a while. :)
I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Feb 06 2014 06:57 pm   #3slaymesoftly
Just bumping up because it's been a long time....
I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.

 Closed