Guidelines for Writers

When you submit a story to the Other Voices page, here are a few guidelines to make the process smoother for everyone.

• The preferred file format is Microsoft Word 6.0, in .doc or .rtf files. If you don’t have MS Word, just submit it as a plain ASCII text file (.txt).
  
• Be sure to start the first page out with the Title followed by the byline.

• Put the story in the format that you’d like to see it published. We can do some arraignment of the page layouts, but would prefer it if the original author set it up the way they like. Break the story up as appropriate, even into chapters if you want to. Make it read and look like you want.
  
• Don’t mess around with different types of fonts. There’s no guarantee that anyone will have the same fonts that you do. Safe fonts to work with are Times New Roman (a little boring), Comic Sans MS (we use it a lot), and Arial (very easy to read). Bold, italic, and underline are okay to use, but watch out with that underline stuff. Links are generally shown underlined and confusion is never helpful.
  
• The length of the story isn’t all that important, but if it gets too long (more than about 20 pages) we would work with the author to find a suitable way to break the story into two or more chapters.
  
• Pictures included with the stories should be sent as additional attachments. If you like, you can zip everything up in one file. The filename of the pics should be placed at the appropriate place in the story where the author wants it placed. Put the pic filename in parenthesis. When I convert your story to html, I’ll look for “.jpg)” strings. Keep your picture sizes down to under 8”x10”, 72 dpi, and minimize the number of colors. In other words, keep the size down! Jpg format is preferred, but gifs are ok.
  
  ABSOLUTELY NO LOWER BODY NUDITY IS ACCEPTED.
  
• The genre here is erotic sci-fi fantasy superheros. It would be rated R or a mild X, but certainly not hard-core X, XX, or XXX. If you like to write that kind of stuff, there are many other places on the web that would be more than happy to use it.
  
• For any story submitted, we might make a suggestion or two about the structure or technique used in the writing of the story. This is always meant as constructive criticism. We never meddle with the story itself - the author always has total control over the story. If we feel that the quality of the story is simply too poor and the author will not improve it, we reserve the right not to publish it.
  
• Decisions to publish or not to publish stories on the Other Voices page are made by the one or more members of the AU Web Ring and should be considered final. That in no way means that the story cannot be redone and resubmitted. We’d like to publish everything we get. But that just isn’t possible, so we have to pick and choose. The standards established in the original AU by Sharon are our only guidelines. To understand those guidelines, just read the stories already published.
• By submitting any works to Infinity Bridge you give the Infinity Bridge permission to display and distribute any and all submitted works until such a time as we are notified by the original author with a request to take down the works

Well, that’s about it! We try to keep things simple to keep the fun in it. If you’ve thought about writing stories like you’ve read here in the AU, why not go ahead and just do it! Send it to Other Voices and who knows, maybe you’ll find that you have a lot of great stories inside you! And a more than a few fans out there across the world too!

-MAC

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As always, questions and comments are always welcome!