Story Guidelines - Read BEFORE You Post Anything!

[plix]

Revision and simplification of story acceptance guidelines, 01-01-13:

Further revised 05-16-13. Added example of email submission

Spelling and Grammar: Your story must be easy to read. Use spell check. Grammatical nightmares will be rejected. Ask for a beta reader on the forums if unsure.

Quotation marks around dialogue are a must: For example: “Hello,” he said, “I’m a eunuch!”

Stories must be at least 5 paragraphs long and must have a plot or theme.

Paragraphs – Just hit ENTER, Do not double space, or leave blank lines between paragraphs.

Odd spacing – will be rejected. There is a pattern to copy/paste submissions here, and are a dead giveaway to copying from other sites.

Character set – please try to use something common like Western Windows 1252. No special characters in titles! (~!@#$%^&*()_+=\|/)

Tags & content: MUST and WILL be used. We may edit tags and icons. Failure to use proper tags will likely result in deletion.

Unacceptable content:
Scat
Cannibalism (exception – eating the removed ‘bits’)
Glorified violence as main theme
Any other piss/shit play (enemas / catheter themes are fine)
Snuff*. A character death is fine, but stories glorifying death are not. If you kill off a character, use one of the CUSTOM tags and put “Death” in the box.
Snuffing of “our minor hero” – unacceptable.
BABIES - no stories where "our hero" is a baby will be accepted. That's just wrong.
Off-topic themes: This is EA. Genital mutilation is the story theme. M or F. Circumcision counts. Chastity does not. Fanfiction without EA theme is unacceptable.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism (claiming someone else’s work as your own) is never acceptable. If you want to rewrite another author’s story, or use “their universe”, get permission if possible. If that is not possible, contact an Admin.

Translations: If you love an existing story enough to translate it (not modify it) into another language, then by all means, do so and sign up as a beta reader.

Non-English Stories: Are acceptable. Put the language in the title. Example: “My Story – German.” or “Meine Geschichte – Deutsch”.

Stories will be posted on or around every Friday. Emails inquiring about your story will be ignored.

HTML code: Unacceptable. Plain text with bold or italic only. NO LINKS!

Use a program such as, MS Word, or OpenOffice to write and save your story. Include your story as an attachment to your submission email.

Email the story to eafictionarchive (@) gmail (dot) com. Include your story description, tags and username in the body of the email.

Also, include whether to post your email or not. We respect your privacy, and if you wish to remain anonymous, you must tell us so in your email. If you do not do this, your email address will be posted with your story.

Some authors want people to contact them via email, some do not. This is entirely up to you!

Anyone who has any questions should send a PM to Cainanite ONLY. Copies of rejections will neither be saved nor sent back to you.

If these guidelines are too much to ask to try and insure the smooth operation of the story section, then please go and post your story somewhere else and see what kind of response you get back. These guidelines are fairly lax in comparison to some of the other big sites.

_________________________________________

When you email in your story it should look like this;

To: eafictionarchive @ gmail.com (remove the spaces!)
From: YourName
Subject: EA Story
Attachment: myfirststory.doc

Title - My Story
Written by - My Username
Email - myname@emailprovider.com (or say, "Do not include my email.")
Tags - Gay, Penectomy, Testicles, Alchohol
Description - Two men walk into a bar. A bar bet goes horribly wrong and a new joke, as well as a new eunuch, is born.
_________________________________________

Send a PM to Cainanite if you do not understand these instructions.

[Kangan]

Bravo!

I just hate a story that has no paragraphing or mangled grammar. This sort of thing can make an otherwise good story totally unreadable. You don't need to be an English major to write good stories, but it sure helps.

[IEunuch]

This is a bump, so people, particularly authors, can read the updated version of the guidelines. Please scroll up to the first post and reread them.

As far as I know, all of these guidelines have been in place on an unofficial basis for a long time now. All this is doing is making them official and public. This does not mean that stories that were previously accepted would no longer qualify. This does not mean that exceptions will not be made for some items. That's what the word guideline means, and why it was used rather than "rules".

However, most of them are already lenient enough that I would imagine few exceptions being made. That does NOT mean a story will be rejected if it doesn't meet these guidelines. If it lacks tags, Plix will add them. If it lacks paragraphs, Plix may attempt to paragraph it. If it has no EA-specific themes, Plix will not add them. If it's not a story, Plix will not make it one. Last, if you've taken one small story, broken it up into 15 pieces consisting of 3 very short paragraphs each and submitted them one at a time, Plix likely will reject them all. (And I wouldn't blame him a bit.)

I'm not sure why so many fail to include email addresses these days. There are hundreds of pretty much anonymous free email sites out there (like say gmail). Likewise simple spellchecking. If you don't want it stored on your computer, try Google Docs, a free online word processor that even saves the files online. Added to the gmail, and you have everything you need right there. Worried someone will go through your history? Use a secure browser like Torpark, or even Portable Firefox. Heck, you can get USB thumb drives for cheap, and I do believe there are ways to both run small applications (like Portable Firefox) straight off them, leaving no trace, and secure the contents so only YOU have access to it. Plug the thing in, work, take it out. No traces.

Comments are fine, just please do not ask for specific hard & fast breakdowns of what would or would not qualify, as there are none.

[plix]

Lately I have noticed a lot of stories coming in that put spoken words in what I call "statement form." I thought I would say a few words on this.

A set of spoken words in statement form would be something like this:

I told him I was going to eat his nuts after I cut them off.

This is in contrast to spoken words being in quote form, which goes like this:

"I'm going to eat your nuts after I cut them off."

Note the difference, that statement form involves the words simply in a statement, whereas quote form uses quotation marks.

There is a time and place for spoken words in statement form rather than in quotes, but statement form can also be used inappropriately and excessively. Technically using statement form is not a violation of the guidelines because technically the words are not actually being spoken. However, I suspect some people are taking advantage of this because they do not want to take the time to set up a proper quote.

From this moment on, I am modifying the guidelines to prohibit inappropriate and excessive use of spoken words in statement form rather than in quote form. If in my judgement you use statement form inappropriately and/or excessively, your story may be deleted.

Like I said, statement form is sometimes better than quote form because the nature of the spoken words do not justify breaking up the movement of a story with a quote. But other times the spoken words need to be in quote form.

What is especially likely to increase the chances of deletion is putting an entire conversation in statement form. This is never appropriate. An example would be something like this:

I told him I was going to eat his nuts after I cut them off. He asked me how I was going to cut them off. I told him with a knife. He asked me how I was going to cook his nuts. I told him in a skillet.

This conversation definitely requires the use of quotes. Basically, statement form should only be used occasionally for a brief set of spoken words by one character, and never for an exchange between two or more characters.

Let me know if you have any questions

[Paolo]

Bump.

Please re-read this before submitting stories.

Thanks.

[Paolo]

Bump. Please look over the guidelines, if you have not already done so.

[Paolo]

Revised and cleaned up, 08-11-09.

[Il Musico]

Even if this thread is old, it's still valid, and there is a question here to which I want to give one (of several possible) replies:

> I'm not sure why so many fail to include email addresses these days.

Actually I did set up an e-mail address, named after my first hero Peter Andrews, which I used only for EA-related mail. That was quite a lot of years ago! But I got so little valid mail there, and such huge loads of spam, that I no longer use it. I think the private messaging withing the EA is a better option, should anybody wish to contact me!

For that reason I did not state an e-mail address when submitting my newest story.

Another explanation, of course, is that many people are too shy to use e-mail, even under a pseudonym!

Il Musico

[kristoff]

Even if this thread is old, it's still valid, and there is a question here to which I want to give one (of several possible) replies:

> I'm not sure why so many fail to include email addresses these days.

Actually I did set up an e-mail address, named after my first hero Peter Andrews, which I used only for EA-related mail. That was quite a lot of years ago! But I got so little valid mail there, and such huge loads of spam, that I no longer use it. I think the private messaging withing the EA is a better option, should anybody wish to contact me!

For that reason I did not state an e-mail address when submitting my newest story.

Another explanation, of course, is that many people are too shy to use e-mail, even under a pseudonym!

Il Musico

Keep in mind that not only search engines crawl through looking for data, so do spam bots. Post an email here, you will get spammed. I get hundreds a day from my archive related mailboxes

[Paolo]

Note the addition for the first time, I think, that this has happened.

NO BABIES.

Our hero must at least be able to carry on a conversation.

Thank you.

[Paolo]

Just so everyone knows, this list of rules may or may not be updated by Cainanite.
What he accepts to post at EA is purely up to HIM now.

[Cainanite]

Updated January 1, 2013

Please follow these rules.

I look forward to reading your stories.