All right--first of all, I am going to state right up front that Chord
& Sorcery is NOT an open archive. You CANNOT upload fics yourself;
they must be submitted to me for approval, and I will add them to the
archive once approval has been given. A bit autocratic? Perhaps. But
I've seen far too many open archives that seem to hold nothing but
absolute drivel elsewhere on the net, and this is MY site, after all.
I'm paying good money for both the domain name and the webspace, and I
would prefer to preside over a small-but-classy archive rather than a
huge-and-mediocre one. So I, as Webmistress, have the final say as to
whether a particular story makes it into the archive or not, and if
you can't live with that, then don't submit your fic here; it's as
simple as that. (There are tons of other fanfiction archives on the
internet, and surely one or another of them will meet your needs if
this one does not. Try Fanfiction.net,
or Freedom of Speech
Fanfiction if your stuff is adult-rated; both of those will take
pretty much anything.)
So, that didn't scare you off? All right, then. There are four parts
to this guide: The Rules, The Recommendations, a short FAQ, and then
some information on how to format your fic for submission. I strongly
recommend reading ALL of it.
The Rules
This section covers the "absolutes" of submitting a piece of
fanfiction to the Chord & Sorcery archive. If you submit a fic
that does not fall within these parameters, it most likely will not
be archived.
Rule #1:
All fics must have some connection to music, and preferrably to
bands/artists who were popular or at least active during the late
1970's, the 1980's, and the very early 1990's. That's the whole point
of the archive. If you're writing about the Backstreet Boys, 'NSync,
Good Charlotte, etc. you will have to go elsewhere. (There are plenty
of places for that sort of thing; I believe that there's a whole
subdirectory at Google just for sites that deal with boyband fanfic.)
Rule #2:
No slash. I'm probably going to lose a lot of people right here, and I
know it, but c'est la vie.
The bottom line is that--again--this is my site, and slash just
doesn't interest me. There are a great many other sites devoted to
musician-slash if that's your thing, but I will not be archiving it
here.
Rule #3:
I accept fics of all ratings, from G up through NC-17. However,
certain subjects squick me out--for example, incest, nonconsensual
sex, child abuse, heavy BDSM, extremely graphic violence, etc. Now, I
realize that sometimes such things are needed to drive a conflict or
render a villain particularly villainous; that's fine, and my
sensitivities aren't so delicate that a simple mention of those
subjects is going to send me into a breakdown. I just feel it only
fair to warn you that if your fic is heavily based on one or more of
those themes (ie, it happens every other page) it has a
proportionately greater chance of being rejected.
Rule #4
Fics must be written in English; I can't archive things I don't
understand.
The Recommendations
This section describes what I would prefer,
but do not require, in
submitted fics.
Rec #1
Speculative fiction (fantasy and science-fiction) are the preferred
genres at Chord & Sorcery, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Other genres are acceptable, but I'd really like to see more of those
two.
Rec #2
Doppelganger and AU fics
are preferable to RPF.
I will be brutally honest here: When it comes to rockfic, there are
only so many ways to get a star and a fan romantically involved in a
conventional, real-life setting, and most of them have not only been
done but over-done. That's not to say that I won't archive those kinds
of fics at all, but I'd really love to see something new and
different, too. Let's get those creative juices flowing, folks!
Rec #3
I would rather get a finished fic than an unfinished one. I'm not
going to reject fics-in-progress out of hand, but you'll have a better
chance of getting into the archive if you give me a couple of
completed chapters and a good plot summary.
Rec #4
If you're going to write something with an adult rating, I'd prefer
that it be due to explicit sex rather than explicit violence. I'm a
fan of romantic erotica, and while I'll certainly archive other types
of fics, submitting a really well-written piece of what I once heard
called "fluffy smut" will definitely get you into my good graces.
Rec #5
Have someone beta-read your fic before you submit it--or, failing
that, at least make sure you run it through a spell-checker!
The Submission FAQ
I've read the Submission Rules and Recommendations, but I'm confused
by some of the terms you use and don't know whether my fic fits what
you want or not.
Try reading through my Fanfiction
Glossary--hopefully that will clear things up. If you're still
unsure after that, just contact
me directly and tell me what it is you've got, and I can let you
know if I'm interested or not.
Can I put a fanfic from the Chord & Sorcery archive on my own site?
Only if you get permission from the original author. There should be a
contact email address included with each story in the archive, so if
you find something you really love and would like to reproduce on
another website, contact the author directly and see what you can work
out.
I'm really new to this fanfic thing, and I don't know anyone who knows
anything about writing. Will you beta-read my fic for me?
I'm sorry, no; I have too many demands on my time as it is. However,
you are welcome to ask at the Chord
& Sorcery message board (the forum called "The Notice Board"
is the one you want for this sort of thing) and see if another of our
members is willing to beta for you.
Can I submit something other than fanfiction, so long as it has to do
with music?
Certainly! Fan creations in general are usually pretty cool, and I
would be happy to put up art, poetry, and so forth as well as prose.
Got all that? Then let's talk about formatting, and the actual
submission process.
Formatting
Since Chord & Sorcery no longer has an actual fanfic archive, all
submissions will have to be reformatted to bbcode in order to be
posted on the message board. Having said that, however, you may submit
a fanfic as:
Plain Text (.txt files)
Fics submitted as text should follow these formatting conventions:
Make sure there are blank lines between paragraphs. (Fics that
are one big chunk of text are very difficult to read.)
Use double hyphens (--) for dashes and three periods (...) for an
elipsis.
Indicate italics with /slashes,/ boldface with *asterisks,*
underlining with _underscores,_ and centered text with #pound signs.#
That makes it much easier for me to convert the file to bbcode.
HTML (.html or .htm files)
Fics submitted as .html should be plain, without background images or
embedded style sheets.
Rich Text (.rtf files)
If you write on a word-processor, this is a good format to use for a
fic. Most word processing software understands .rtf because it's based
on plain ASCII text, but it allows you most of the same basic
text-dressing as bbcode (italics, boldface, underlining, etc.)
Microsoft Word Documents (.doc files)
This is, quite frankly, the least attractive of all the choices, but
MS Word is so ubiquitous that I figure I'd be cutting my own throat if
I disallowed it as an option. Word documents, however, usually boast
one particular "feature" that, as far as I am concerned, is in the
running for the root of all evil: SmartQuotes.
If you don't know what SmartQuotes are, they are special open- and
close-quote characters that look much fancier than the standard ASCII
quotation mark, and they're inescapable in most software made by
Microsoft. However, they don't always translate well to HTML, plain
text, or bbcode--I have seen whole archives of fanfiction where all
the dialogue looks like this:
?Is there anything you *are* sure of?? she asked.
?Oh, yes,? he said, leaning on his rusty sword. ?I am certain that I
am, at last, dying.?
To be blunt, I am NOT having that sort of nonsense in MY archive.
Anything submitted to me as a .doc will have all its SmartQuotes
ruthlessly stripped out and replaced with good, reliable ASCII quotes,
and if you are starting a new fic that you intend to submit here,
please, PLEASE turn off the SmartQuotes feature. You should be able to
find it under Format --> Auto format --> Options. Go to the Auto
Format tab, find where it says "Replace straight quotes with smart
quotes," and uncheck the box next to it. This won't remove SmartQuotes
that have already been typed into a document, but it will prevent new
ones being added.
OpenOffice Documents (.sxw or .odt files)
Quite frankly, I expect I'll have a heart attack from shock if I ever
get a fic submitted in this format, but as it's the word processor I
use myself, I thought I'd include it in the listing for the sake of
completeness.
Once you've settled on a format, please use the
contact form here at
C&S to tell me that you have a a story to submit, so I can get you
the proper address to send it to (I'm trying not to leave my contact
into just lying around for the spammers to find...) then copy and
paste the following info into an email, fill it in as completely as
you can, and attach your fic (or one chapter of it, if it's
multi-part). Be sure to include the title, the chapter number and the
total number of chapters (ie, "Part 1 of 5" or "1/5", or "1/??" for an
unfinished fic) in the subject header.
Author's Name:
Author's Contact Email:
Story Title:
Story Genre (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Action/Adventure, Romance, Humor,
Angst, etc.--include all that apply):
Fandom (eg, which band/artist, or doppelganger thereof, is going to
show up in this?):
Story Rating (If your fic falls somewhere between two ratings, give
the higher one):
