I was wondering, what exactly is the fanfiction going to be over though? Like is there a specific topic that it has to endur, or is it just as long as it involves anime?

It just has to be an anime fanfic.

You automatically win any fan-fic contest if you renounce Fanfiction publicly. Using other peoples creations to bastardize some homogaybuttsecks between two shitty animu characters does not make you a writer.



RAAAGH CRAIG SMASH HOPES AND DREAMS!

What is the max page limit?...like...fully max

I didn't even know there was a fanfiction contest. I'd love to enter one, I just wish there was more information about categories and such. I have this tendency to write out long fics and seems the only one I can write for and feel confident about, are Digimon ones.

What do you all think. Should I enter one of my Digi-fics, or leave it alone.

Philosophically we like to have as many of our rules be reactive, rather than predictive; our awards descriptive rather than prescriptive. As with the costume contest, where most of our award catagories will be determined after we see what kinds of costumes we are dealing with, the fanfic costume will be divided after we see the results. I think this is the best way for a small con to manage its affairs, basing them off of reality, rather than what we THINK you guys will do.

For that reason, the fanfic contest doesn't really have catagories set. Write the fanfic that you want to write, and we'll judge it on its own merits, rather than on merits we prescribe. This isn't a highschool level con where we grade you on how well you can follow instructions, we're a college level con where you are scored on your own raw ability and vision.

As for a page limit, there isn't one, but have mercy on us! Something to keep in mind is that a good writer doesn't need to use a lot of words to get his or her point across.
Also, if you send us something too long we just won't read it!

But how long is "too long"? I'd hate to enter a fic where it doesn't get read due to its being too long. ^^;

So what about like 5-7 pages? I finished the one I did...and I had my teacher check over it (She likes Anime too^^)

It's up to you to decide the proper length of your story. I guess I shouldn't say we'll immediately reject any story that we don't want to tackle. A better way to say it is we'll only finish a long story if you give us a good reason to! The stories should be well written, and if they don't hold our attention they were probably poorly paced and had way too much filler and not enough substance.

The short answer though is "don't worry about the requirements, just write the story you want to". Rules were meant to be broken anyhow, so why even write them.

I would join the fan fiction competition, but I've been rusty recently. :domo:

Kaisermikeb: Well, when you put it that way, I understand what you mean. Well, I have a fic in mind, and it is a bit on the lengthy side. It's also a drama-based story. I just hope that it doesn't come across as "boring", as some stories where the main genre is drama, can come across as such.

Out of curiosity, how are the winners of the contest announced? Will it be done online, or will it be done at the convention?

Thanks for explaining that. lol

We'll probably announce both at closing ceremonies and online.

Is there some format we have to write them in? Do we have to include the rating, the disclaimer, or any of that other stuff that FF.net makes you include?

again, how you do it is up to you.

Just make sure we know what show you are ripping characters off of though! As for rating, again, this is a college level convention, we can handle whatever you write.

What program would you recommend for the fanfiction?

Probably something like Microsoft Word. On the fanfiction page at the main site, it says it has to be submitted in .rtf format, and I know you have the option of saving a story in that format through Microsoft Word.

Aww...I have to type it at school...noo!

more or less everything exports to .rtf Word, open office, Word Pad, etc. etc.

It's standard formatted text format.

pdf or even html would probably do as well, you know. I mean, pdf is about the de facto standard in electronic document transmission and probably anyone at all with a computer can view an html document.
</:2cents:>

True, but neither are really good for simple text operations. They're both insanely useful, but their purposes are too broad, making them bloated for something so simple. And either one might lead to strange submissions that just look bad.

rtf is prolly the best bet, seeing as both Mac's TextEdit and Window's WordPad are default system software that can use it. Heck, I'm not sure why rtf is even needed. Plain text should work just fine (and used to be the required submission format for the TMFFA...)

I need to go read the description of this contest on the main site...

I disagree. PDF's purpose isn't broad - it's much narrower than any of the other formats under discussion. It exists to allow a document to viewed on any system, and have it look consistent on all of them. That's it - it's not even designed to be edited after it's been created, though it can be done to some extent.

Personally, I like PDF. It's a really nicely thought out format, that does exactly what it was designed to do. That said, I don't think it's appropriate for this. In fanfiction, the exact formatting isn't really important, and PDF files do tend to be a fair bit larger in order to preserve the formatting exactly. Besides, I'd expect that most people entering don't have and wouldn't know where to get software to make PDFs without paying an arm and a leg anyways.

HTML, RTF, DOC, etc may all show up slightly inconsistently across systems, but they're more than good enough, and I think we should accept any of them.

Oh, and possibly accept postscript too. It's probably even less suited for this than PDF, but you can't beat the cool factor of submitting entries in an actually programming language :-P

Please stay on topic. This thread is not here for you to debate the merits of various file formats. If you want to do that, take it to random. The propper submission format is .rtf, and there is no need to debate it.
This format was chosen as its files are small but can still include bolds and italics and such, so it won't fill up the rather limited inbox, but it will allow for versitility in writing. .docs are larger, and prone to having malicious macros and such in them. .txt is acceptable, though I figure most people will have some degree of formatting that could be lost in that, so .rtf is safer.

end of subject.

I was just wondering, how does one go about submitting a multi-chapter story? I know that the documents themselves have to be in .rtf format, but do we then submit it (if it has more than one chapter) in a .rar or zip file?

I know that fanfic.com likes to have a weird pseudo chapter system, but these should be stand alone works so I strongly recommend a short story format. That weirdo chapter system is horribly abused, and most of the writers seem to use five chapters for what should be the intro to one chapter.

If you use a chapter system, A) use it correctly, and B) just enter them all in the same document.

Short-story, eh? How "short" is a "short story"? I don't think I know the meaning of the word. j/k:P

So I have a couple of options here...either edit the entire fic I was planning to submit more than what I was going to (omit extra stuff, like certain Author's notes) so that it won't look too funky having it all in one document, or just submit a whole 'nother work that's actually short (though, I don't have many of these; only one comes to mind, right off). I'll think of something.

I know the whole ordel with the fanfiction.net stuff, I was thinking, if I have one already up, can I use it again? Or should I write another one?

SSJ: I don't really understand why you would need to edit your story to put it in a single text file? Shouldn't it be like that already?
Note, short story doesn't mean something that can fit on one page. It just sort of implies a stand-alone story (like a single episode of pokemon or Sailor Moon) rather than some long building work, or a part of a larger work (like a single episode of Eva or Lain)



Enishi: It doesn't have to be a new story this year, but it does have to be something you wrote.

Feel free to include any suplimentary info you think we'll need.

Can it be like a poetry form of a fanfiction? Or a story type...

Just Making sure

Well, it's a lengthy story. I was going to cut some stuff out of it anyway that was literally unnecessary to the story in general.

Anywho, since I always submitted stories to sites that do the whole "chapter" thing, that's how it's set up. One file = one chapter, that sorta thing that's why I'd have to redo it format wise and stuff, not that it's a problem.

I guess I shouldn't submit my fic then. I think it may fall under this category. My story was about one of the characters trying to find out more about his birth-parents and his getting over his Adoption complex. The duration of this story is a week, if I'm remembering right, but no, it's not like it's written to show what they're doing every single solitary minute of the day, of course. lol

I guess you could say that he's on a quest and runs into a couple of obstacles along the way.

I'm going to enter, its going to be fun though, no matter what!

I think you could still submit it. And if you've got the thing in individual 'chapters' (that is, each chapter is a separate Word document), you can always cut and paste the succeeding chapters to the first chapter so that it then becomes one document.

I did that with the first fic I ever wrote for anime and just inserted lines to show where one chapter/part ended and the next began, using a chapter/part header below the line.

I still have to redo some parts, since this story is so long. I don't want to overwhelm the judges or intimidate them into not reading it, but I'm tempted to just go on and submit as is.

If you're going to spread your story across multiple files, it would probably be best to collate them into one file for simplicity's sake. Any format will work (tar, gz, lzh, zip, 7z, rar, ace, bz2, etc)

By submitting "as is", I meant don't change anything within the story, and just combine all the chapters into one file - as the rules stated - and submit it. ^^

My email address won't let me send the document, so is it ok if I send it with my registration? (Yes, I haven't sent it, I have procrastination issues)

That's kind of annoying, but it should be ok. Worst comes to worst we'll scan it!

No, you don't need to scan it. I'm just going to put it on CD like the AMV making people will do with their AMVs. No scanning involved. ;)

I don't think this was mentioned anyplace...but are we allowed to submit more than one entry?

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. I would hurry though!

I'm ready to submit my fic, though, I'm still hesitant to because of the length. When submitting, though, what exactly shuld be included with it aside from the story itself?

I was planning on including in the body of the e-mail:

Author Name
Anime story is based on
Story Title
Story Rating
Story Summary