Deadline approaching and writers' submission guide
Whoa, that snuck up on me! Everyone, signups for writers CLOSE on 31 May - that's this Saturday. If you want to get your signup in under the wire, the writer's signup post is here.
The deadline for FINAL submissions is 12 June. If you need to ask for an extension you must ask us before the deadline day - that is, by 11 June at the latest. You will be asked for a rough draft before we'll agree to an extension, because we must have something to give to your artist.
Final submissions are final
When you submit your final copy, please bear in mind that this is final.
The mods will not accept corrections or amendments once the final draft has been checked and accepted. This applies even if you submit early or ahead of your extension, so please ensure you are happy with your work before you hit ‘send’. There will be no exceptions to this rule.
You will have an opportunity to review the posting format before the stories go live and can make minor corrections then, but this review is for writer and artists to comment on the look and feel of the final format and ask for changes - it is not an opportunity to revise your work!
Writers’ Final Submissions
Final submissions of written projects are due by 12 June. If you need an extension on this deadline, you must ask for it before the deadline day, that is by 11 June at the latest. If you have not been granted an extension and have not submitted your finished project by 12 June, the mods will assume you have dropped out of the Big Bang. No hard feelings if you need to drop out.
Please note:
- Your story or meta project must conform to the rules, in particular your work must be at least 10,000 words*.
- If you are submitting fiction, it must be a complete story (or set of linked stories) which can be read as a stand-alone piece or collection.
- DO NOT include artwork of any kind with your text - submitting
the artwork is the artist’s job.
- Your work must be in a format compatible with Google Docs. Preferred formats are .rtf, .doc or .txt. Please check Google’s guidelines for other acceptable file formats. If you happen to know how to code HTML (fully for web pages, not LJ’s cut-down version) and can submit in that format the mods will love you! But don’t use Word to convert to HTML if you don’t know how to code - that just means we have to do it over.
- Your story must be beta-read and must be of an acceptable quality. We are not going to be overly strict about this because we want the Big Bang to be open to everyone, new and experienced writers alike. But the mods reserve the right to reject submissions that are riddled with spelling errors or sentences that simply don’t make sense.
Please submit your final draft as an email attachment** to almosthumanbigbang@gmail.com, using the following subject line for your email:
Final submission - project title - your name
In the body of your email, please include the following information:
Your name: (this is the name you write under, not necessarily your RL name)
Title of work:
Type of work: (Fiction, meta etc. If your project is made up of multiple pieces, please list them all here)
Genre and rating: (Gen, het or slash; also add here if other genre labels apply e.g. crossover, angst etc. Ratings can be any system as long as the meaning is clear)
Beta: (Your story must be beta-read - please name your beta here. This field will not be included in the story post, so if you want to credit or thank your beta publicly do so in the author notes as well)
Warnings: (if not applicable, enter “none”. You are welcome to enter “choose not to warn” or an equivalent phrase, but do not leave this field out.)
Summary: (A brief summary of the project.)
Author’s Notes: (optional)
About Posting
All written works and art for the Big Bang will be posted by the mods.
If both writer and artist have their final submissions in on time, you will be sent a link to the art and project posts when they are ready for your approval. You can request changes (e.g. to place the artwork at a particular point in a story) at this time.
If either artist or writer misses the deadline, we will do our best, but the mods will not guarantee you will get a chance to approve the posting.
Notes:
* Word limits: we will allow a small amount of leeway here, because different programs do sometimes give different counts for the same document. We won’t count each word individually and don’t expect you to. But the limits are strict, so please make sure your work adheres to these.
** If you are a Google Docs user, you can simply send us a link to your document “in the cloud”. This has the advantage that you can continue to make edits after submission though there is no guarantee such last minute changes will be picked up by the mods. If you choose this method, please ensure your document settings allow access to “anyone with the link”.