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Why submit? · What gets posted? · How to submit · Additional guidelines · Critiques/beta reading · Article submissions
Why send your story to me, rather than to your friend with the spiffy color-coordinated site at Geocities? Well, ask her to post it too! It's always good to have a backup, she'll doubtless appreciate your contribution, and it is your story to do with as you please. However, there are some advantages to having it posted here, which may appeal to you.
First, it's that much more likely to get read. This is a pretty popular site, and your story will be noted on the updates page. Second, the Index is not located on a free webspace provider, and therefore your fic will seldom if ever be unavailable due to server outage, nor will ad banners be pasted on it.
When you send me your story, you can usually expect that it will be posted, regardless of whether I personally like it or not. There are certain exceptions.
Arbitrary? Yeah. But I am not all that draconian, and can usually find redeeming qualities in almost any fic. If I find redeeming qualities, it gets posted. If not-- well, you can always put it up on your own website.
- "Humor" in which the characters of Les Miz are barely recognizable, and which isn't funny. Funny is completely subjective.
- Outright pornography. In Manon's dictionary, that's "graphic sex for the sake of graphic sex, devoid of artistic merit". Artistic merit is also completely subjective.
I will scan it for any glaring typographical errors, but it's common courtesy to run your own spelling and grammar check before you send it to me. Other than that, I will not alter your fic. That means I won't fix it for you if you do something really stupid, like have Marius say "Dude!" or change someone's name halfway through or insert snippets of blatantly incorrect French.
First, do some basic formatting. Proofread your fic for spelling and grammar errors. Remove all special characters (smart/curly quotes, ellipsis, etc.) and replace with standard keyboard characters.
When that's done, simply fill out the submission form and send it.
If the form doesn't work for some reason, you can email your story in PLAIN TEXT FORMAT.
Submissions must have a title. Any title. Please. The dumbest thing you can think of is better than "Untitled", if only because it is then easier to give it a filename. I'll bend this rule once per author, because titles are admittedly difficult, but just once. More than that, and I'll start giving them titles myself, and you Don't Want That.
Story summaries should be concise, descriptive, and impersonal. If your summary doesn't meet this description, it may be edited.
- Yes: "A short, bitter Eponine angstfic."
- No: "This is just some thoughts of Eponine while she walks alone at night... its my first fanfic so I hope you like it."
Please, no "author's notes" unless they're necessary. Justifying what might otherwise appear to be an anachronism may be necessary. Explaining how you got the idea for your story, and that none of these characters belong to you, and that you wrote it especially for your best friend from school, is not necessary.
Adult content includes: a lot of foul language, explicit sex, graphic violence, touchy themes such as rape or incest. It does not include: a couple of profanities, vague sexual content with a fade-to-black, slashiness, mention of prostitution, death. This is Les Miz, after all. :)
If you want an opinion on your story, your best bet is to post at the Fanfic Forum asking for someone to beta-read/critique/go over/spellcheck it, and see who volunteers. You can send it directly to me if you want, but I don't promise I'll answer.
There are a few things I don't need:
- articles on the theme of "to slash or not to slash"; I already have a couple, and it just doesn't need to be that big of a debate.
- timelines of the book; I already have several, in varying degrees of detail.
- random gushes about how much you luv Les Miz.
- random rants about how much you hate Cosette/Enjolras/Javert.
If, however, you think you have a new and worthwhile slant on any of the above, you can send it in anyway and I'll take a look at it.
What would I like to see? Almost anything else that's well-written and thoughtful. I would be interested in, for example:
- a comparison of the published Les Mis sequels (Kalpakian, Harris, Ceresa).
- what you think makes a great fanfic.
- a list of the ten stories you feel are must-reads and why
- discussion of a certain genre of Mizfic (what IS the appeal of Javert Porn, anyway?)
- general advice on how to write better fic
- a study of insert-your-chosen-character
Basically, whatever you can come up with that hasn't been done already.
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