MobileRead Short Story Anthology - [GUIDELINES]

[Graham]

Instead of commenting within the document folders, how would people feel about my setting up a private Google Community?

It strikes me that this would be an ideal use for Google+, and would allow commenting with automatic notifications and conversational messaging.

I was going to say 'as well as' using the folders, but I think we should keep the comments all in one place.

Advantages: quicker, less formal response process, notifications.

Disadvantages: perhaps harder to keep track of things, informality may lead to hasty responses to the detriment of the review process.

Graham

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Graham

How much too long? It may come down in editing...

Graham

It's in the mobileread library - The Case Of The Golden Coprolite. Or look up the thread. It's way too tight to edit in to a shorted version. (I call it a micro novel. Michael Moorcock did several, I found out later.)

Maybe 20,000 with Concordance...
(I never did a word count.)

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

It's in the mobileread library - The Case Of The Golden Coprolite. Or look up the thread. It's way too tight to edit in to a shorted version. (I call it a micro novel. Michael Moorcock did several, I found out later.)

Maybe 20,000 with Concordance...
(I never did a word count.)

That does sound a wee bit long.

Maybe pen a short spin-off?

Graham

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Once the sorting-out process is completed, it would be helpful to make a post referencing to a revised [edited] post #1 in this thread, where all the adjusted information is gathered in one place for easy reference.

This is only a suggestion.

Good suggestion. After everything is sorted out, the first post will be updated, and the old one "archived" in a spoiler tag.

Originally Posted by Graham

Makes sense to me. It looks like Katsunami may already be editing post #1, and occasional posts referencing back to that would be helpful.

I'm guessing that this thread will continue with occasional posts reporting progress, and perhaps calling for more authors if we need them.

Graham

I think that would be a good idea, because with the lenght of stories and number of (possible) authors we have now, we're not reaching 200 pages.

Originally Posted by Graham

Instead of commenting within the document folders, how would people feel about my setting up a private Google Community?

It strikes me that this would be an ideal use for Google+, and would allow commenting with automatic notifications and conversational messaging.

I was going to say 'as well as' using the folders, but I think we should keep the comments all in one place.

Advantages: quicker, less formal response process, notifications.

Disadvantages: perhaps harder to keep track of things, informality may lead to hasty responses to the detriment of the review process.

Graham

I normally don't use social media, but as I will be writing stories under a pseudonym, I don't mind setting up social media for that "person". Actually, I intend to.

Are you proposing a Google+ Circle that is private to the authors of the anthology, so we can chat and post messages, and only use dropbox to store the stories in progress? If so, I'm fine with that, but maybe there's another way.

We could use this thread (the one we're in now) for organisational purposes, and create another with regard to the writing and editing. It's possible to tell an author:

"I saw you doing X, around the passage where Y happens..."

Then it could be discussed, giving people who are following the thread a tiny glimpse into the story (a name, a location...), and a glimpse of the writing and editing process as well, without spoiling the entire story. It might be interesting.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

It's in the mobileread library - The Case Of The Golden Coprolite. Or look up the thread. It's way too tight to edit in to a shorted version. (I call it a micro novel. Michael Moorcock did several, I found out later.)

Maybe 20,000 with Concordance...
(I never did a word count.)

Hm... I wouldn't mind 10K words or maybe even 12K split over two stories, but 20K is a quarter of the anthology's minimum size. I think that this is too long.

However, as we don't yet know how many people will be participating, it could be that the number of stories per person, and the number of available words is increased.

I wouldn't discard these larger stories just yet.

If we manage to find 10 or more people and/or agree on more words per author, it could be that the anthology becomes 400-500 pages. In that case, I wouldn't mind having one very large short story in there somewhere.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Are you proposing a Google+ Circle that is private to the authors of the anthology, so we can chat and post messages, and only use dropbox to store the stories in progress?

Yes. (Actually in Google+ parlance we'd have a private Google Community, and we could each create a Google Circle to hold the other authors in the team.)

Originally Posted by Katsunami

We could use this thread (the one we're in now) for organisational purposes, and create another with regard to the writing and editing. It's possible to tell an author:

"I saw you doing X, around the passage where Y happens..."

Then it could be discussed, giving people who are following the thread a tiny glimpse into the story (a name, a location...), and a glimpse of the writing and editing process as well, without spoiling the entire story. It might be interesting.

I'm not sure about this. It would be hard to avoid spoilers this way. I think that sort of activity should happen off MobileRead, and new threads started in Writers' Corner where a particular item of interest arises that could be discussed in abstract.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If we manage to find 10 or more people and/or agree on more words per author, it could be that the anthology becomes 400-500 pages. In that case, I wouldn't mind having one very large short story in there somewhere.

A danger of increasing the word count is that our writing has more room to sprawl. Editing to keep within a smaller limit should lead to tighter, more readable results.

I also suspect that if we want people to read the anthology, keeping it down to about 80,000 words would be ideal. Some of that could also be a foreword and perhaps a short piece by each author about the process. I think these could be of real interest to the MR readers.

Graham

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

[...]We could use this thread (the one we're in now) for organisational purposes, and create another with regard to the writing and editing. [...]

I must admit that I thought this was what you had in mind at the start. I'm not that keen adding yet another "forum" to participate on, I have trouble keeping up with what I've got. Of course the difficulty will be making sure we stay on the right side of the MR rules, but if we can do it, then I really thought that was the original idea.

There are lots of other writers's circles we could choose to join if we just wanted to join a conventional writing group, there would be no need to create a separate one. Whereas if we can make this something that is both interesting and educational for writers on this subforum then that would seem, to me, to be ideal. But if we have to remove ourselves too much from here then it will not longer really seem like an MR anthology.

[gmw]

I can't write too short, but it seems I can sometimes manage the 4000..8000 word limit. The risk with letting the limit grow too large is that it becomes difficult to manage the review process - one text begins to take up more of limited time we all have to participate on this. If all are kept down to something smaller there is a better chance that all works will get a share of the attention.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by gmw

I must admit that I thought this was what you had in mind at the start. I'm not that keen adding yet another "forum" to participate on, I have trouble keeping up with what I've got. Of course the difficulty will be making sure we stay on the right side of the MR rules, but if we can do it, then I really thought that was the original idea.

There are lots of other writers's circles we could choose to join if we just wanted to join a conventional writing group, there would be no need to create a separate one. Whereas if we can make this something that is both interesting and educational for writers on this subforum then that would seem, to me, to be ideal. But if we have to remove ourselves too much from here then it will not longer really seem like an MR anthology.

Interesting. I'd actually not thought of it that way. If I understand you, you're saying that we'd expose the detail of the review, critique and editing within the Writers' Forum. There would necessarily be spoilers that way, but later on readers could access both the anthology and the threads that show the way it developed and the choices made within the stories.

As you say, we'd need to understand the MR rules position on that. It would seem to fall foul of the self-promotion guidelines. It also seems a little beyond the stated purpose of Writers' Corner:

A place to discuss the art, craft, and business of writing and (self-) publishing.

Graham

[Katsunami]

@Graham:

In this case I must say that I'm more in agreement with gmw. I think it'd be better to create a discussion thread rather than take it completely off of MobileRead. If there is something that needs to be discussed that could be a really big spoiler, one could just discuss it by e-mail or PM.

I agree that the stories and the anthology shouldn't be too long; 80,000 words at the least, but no more than 160,000. We could indeed add a (small) foreword, a bit about the authors, and MobileRead to give some background information about the project.

We could also add an introduction, mission statement, preface, summary, prologue, epilogue, afterword, and closure to flesh out the work

@gmw: agreed; reading an 8K word story is about 20 pages, which would take me half an hour to read at normal speed, but it would take longer if reviewing it; let's say, an hour. Then there need to be comments and corrections, and maybe a complete re-read later on.

I'm starting to feel that 8K is the uppermost limit (possibly split between two stories) that we should adhere to.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Graham

Interesting. I'd actually not thought of it that way. If I understand you, you're saying that we'd expose the detail of the review, critique and editing within the Writers' Forum. There would necessarily be spoilers that way, but later on readers could access both the anthology and the threads that show the way it developed and the choices made within the stories.

As you say, we'd need to understand the MR rules position on that. It would seem to fall foul of the self-promotion guidelines. It also seems a little beyond the stated purpose of Writers' Corner:

There might be small give-aways, such as character names, locations, the mention of an event, but I don't think they need to be complete spoilers. If we need to discuss something that could be a grand spoiler, then... uh... just put those posts into spoiler tags. People reading the thread would be forewarned not to open those as there might be too much information in there.

With regard to self-promotion, I think we don't have to worry too much. Obviously, the process will draw some attention, but as long as the discussion is contained within one thread, I'm sure the MR crew won't have a problem with it.

It's a discussion on writing/editing/publishing, not an all-out promotion, after all. That can be done later, in the Promotions part of the forum.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In this case I must say that I'm more in agreement with gmw. I think it'd be better to create a discussion thread rather than take it completely off of MobileRead.

If we can come up with a format that's acceptable to the mods, then I'm happy with that. I can see gmw's point that a separate discussion on Google+ is a whole other thing we need to keep up with.

Can we clarify the proposal? I think we're saying the following:

1. This thread continues to handle the admin side of putting the anthology together.
2. We create (just) one separate thread that will handle the comments for all the stories in the review phases.

I'd suggest:

Any text quoted from a story, or reference to a character or plot point, is wrapped in spoiler tags.

Where something looks like it's triggering an abstract discussion about craft or style this is immediately split off into a separate Writers' Corner thread where it can be discussed in detail without reference to the original story.

We also need to check with a mod whether it's acceptable to refer to the stories by their titles or whether we need to use phrases such as "Graham's Fantasy Story".

Graham

[gmw]

The MR rules thing is interesting - but if I've read Dr Drib's posts correctly, it seems the moderators might not have too much of a problem with us if we always restrict ourselves to only discussing the works intended for the anthology. (I'm sure I will be corrected if I have misinterpreted. ) Yes, there is an element of self-promotion in that, but the risk for authors taking part is that there may also be an element of self-denigration (after all, others may be criticising the work online in this forum).

As for the stated purpose of this subforum, it could be argued that there is no better way to discuss the "art, craft and business of writing and (self-)publishing" than actually going through the process right here in the open where everyone can see what's involved.

Yes, any discussion of the details of a particular work will necessarily contain spoilers. If we have a thread for that then the subject can including a big "CONTAINS SPOILERS" warning, and/or spoiler detail can be put in spoiler tags (but that could start to make the discussion more difficult to follow).

[Graham]

Originally Posted by gmw

Yes, there is an element of self-promotion in that, but the risk for authors taking part is that there may also be an element of self-denigration (after all, others may be criticising the work online in this forum).

Actually that's a very good point. I'm not sure whether the self-denigration would excuse breaking the self-promotion rule, but it could well balance it.

Graham

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Graham

If we can come up with a format that's acceptable to the mods, then I'm happy with that. I can see gmw's point that a separate discussion on Google+ is a whole other thing we need to keep up with.

Yes, and as gmw said, there is no better way to discuss the art of writing, editing and self-publishing in this forum than actually doing it.

Can we clarify the proposal? I think we're saying the following:

1. This thread continues to handle the admin side of putting the anthology together.
2. We create (just) one separate thread that will handle the comments for all the stories in the review phases.

Yes, but the other thread could also be used to ask for help while writing, obviously.

Any text quoted from a story, or reference to a character or plot point, is wrapped in spoiler tags.

You'd even want to spoiler-tag single names, locations, and events? Maybe that's a bit much. I'd say that giving away a name here and there, or a hint of an event is not that big of a problem; it might actually keep people following the thread.

Where something looks like it's triggering an abstract discussion about craft or style this is immediately split off into a separate Writers' Corner thread where it can be discussed in detail without reference to the original story.

If the mods are willing to do that splitting on request, I have no problem with that.

We also need to check with a mod whether it's acceptable to refer to the stories by their titles or whether we need to use phrases such as "Graham's Fantasy Story".

I'd just refer to it as "Graham's Fantasy Story". I wouldn't reveal the titles until the end, because that could be a big spoiler.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You'd even want to spoiler-tag single names, locations, and events?

Only if it felt like it would be a spoiler. Nothing too draconian.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If the mods are willing to do that splitting on request, I have no problem with that.

No need for the mods. I wasn't meaning that the thread would be split. Just that if we were discussing whether a particular approach was correct or applicable it could take up a lot of the main thread, when it would be a useful discussion in its own right.

For example, let's say that the passive voice was being used for a particular purpose in a story. A discussion gets going in the anthology review thread about this. It could just as easily be handled in a separate, non-anthology-related Writers' Corner thread, so we could agree to start a separate thread for it. After thrashing out the pros and cons in abstract in the passive voice thread, we could then return to discussing the particular use - better informed, hopefully - back in the anthology thread.

This would have the added advantage of soliciting comments from writers and readers not involved in the anthology.

Graham