Slasha, Baby 2012, please submit your fics by December 26
Slashababy fics are due on December 26!
If you have a problem that might keep you from finishing on time, please contact us as soon as possible, the sooner the better!
Beta Readings Are Good
Especially if you are new to fanfic or Lotrips, we urge you to have at least one beta reader, and preferably another as well. If you don't have a beta, email us and we will find you a beta.
How to submit your story
When you're ready, please send your story to secret.slasha @ gmail.com as an attachment in plain text (.txt file). Name the attached file "submission-from-yourname.txt" (where yourname is the name you signed up with).
The story should be formatted the same way as for an LJ post: please use for italics and for bold, but don't put in lj-cut tags or a disclaimer (we will add those.) Please separate paragraphs with a blank line.
Please use the following template for the header:
Title: Recipient: Author: Pairing: Rating: Summary: Pre-reveal Notes: Post-reveal Notes: (if you want to include beta info, please put it here) We will only show your pre-reveal notes until the
If you use MS Word
If possible, before even writing, you should start turning the fancy typography off
make sure that the Replace as you type options are unchecked: disable "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" and "Symbol characters (--) with symbols (-)
If you haven't done this, we have workarounds below.
Please do not use the HTML export from Microsoft Word, save the file as text instead. To change an MS Word Document (.doc or .docx) to text, open the document, go to the File menu and choose Save As. One of the options in the middle menu should be "Text". Choose that and don't worry if the compatibility bit of Word fusses at you. Just save the file and it will be nice clean text.
How to fix smart quotes and special characters:
Smart quotes:
They often look horrible in other people's browsers. Straight quotes, which are readable everywhere, are like this:
If you already have smart (curly) quotes and curly apostrophes in the story, paste or open your story into Notepad or TextEdit, then find a curly opening quote, and copy it into the Find & Replace box; then replace all instances with a straight quote ("). Do the same for closing quotes and apostrophes.
Also, if your Word automatically converts three dots (...) into a one-character ellipsis (…), please do Find & Replace and replace them with three regular dots. The same with a long dash (-): please replace them with two short dashes (--).
If you have any questions about formatting or about anything else, email us at secret.slasha @ gmail.com
-- your mods