Submission Guidelines

General | HTML Files | Word Docs | Text Files | Art | Vids

General Guidelines

• You may submit your story as a text file, a Word document, or an HTML document. We're not (too) picky.
• E-mail your story to Tardis.bigbang [at] gmail [dot] com.
• Make sure your story has been beta'ed, and have someone check over the spelling and grammar. No matter how good you are at proofreading, it won't hurt to have a second pair of eyes look at it.
• Leave one blank line between paragraphs. Do not indent paragraphs.
• Be consistent! Use italics the same way throughout your story. If you're using symbols to show where section breaks should go, use the same symbols—not "oOoOo" in one place and "*****" in another. Use double quotes and single quotes consistently.
• Include a note at the top of your story describing what should be done. If you want each chapter on a different page, say so. If you want it to be one big file with marked section breaks, say so. If you're using asterisks to indicate what should be italicized, say so. We want you to be happy with your story!
• Clearly mark your section/chapter breaks. Don't just leave an extra blank line; use some kind of divider. Tell us what that divider is.
• If there's anything we should pay special attention to, let us know. If you want to do anything funky with the formatting (e.g. IM conversations, block quote indents, etc.), let us know.
• Make sure you haven't left in any comments from your betas.

If you're submitting an HTML file...

• DO NOT use Microsoft Word to generate HTML. Submit a Word doc instead.
• Do not hard-code fonts. Do not use CSS. We want the stories to have a consistent look and feel.
• Use <p>...</p> to indicate the start and end of paragraphs.
• Use <hr width="50%"> as a divider between section
• If you want your chapters on separate pages, please submit them in one big file and tell us where it should be split. Don't worry about the header information.

If you're submitting a Word doc

• Turn off Smart Quotes. Smart Quotes are the work of the devil.
• Bold and/or italicize words—don't use asterisks or whatever. You don't need to include any HTML tags; we have macros that will insert them.
• If you're using any formatting other than bold or italics, tell us up front so we know to look for it.

If you're submitting a text file...

• Tell us up front how you're indicating bold and/or italics. Be consistent.
• Don't forget to leave a blank line between paragraphs.

Art Guidelines

If you want to submit art in a format other than JPG, GIF or PNG, please get in touch with us ahead of time.

Please provide art in three sizes: small, medium and large. If you want to include an extra-large as well, that's fine.

• Small is used for the thumbnails on the story page; see this page for an example. These should be somewhere around 120x120 pixels (but any shape is fine)—if you multiple the width and the height (in pixels), the result should be between 13,000 and 16,000.
• Medium is used for the thumbnails on the art page; see this page. These should be approximately 230x230 pixels (but any shape is fine)—if you multiply the width and the height (in pixels), the result should be between 48,000 and 54,000.
• Large is the main display art; see this page. It should be no wider than 750 pixels.
• If you want to send an even larger piece, you're welcome to do so. It will be linked from the "large" page.

Please name these pieces as follows:

• Small: ##_arttitle_small
• Medium: ##_arttitle_medium
• Large: ##_arttitle_large
• Even bigger (optional): ##_arttitle

"##" should be the number of your story. You can call your art whatever you want; it doesn't have to have the same name as the story. If you just want to call your piece "cover," please include your name in the filename, since it's quite possible we'll get more than one cover for a story.

Please include answers to these questions in your submission e-mail:

• Should we put this art at the front of the story, at the end, or in the middle? If in the middle, please give us something to search on to find the right place.
• Should we include an e-mail address for your feedback (it will be munged so harvesters can't find it)? If so, which address?
• Do we have your permission to include your art in a pdf file of the story?
• Do we have your permission to include your art in a pdf compiling all the round 2 stories?
• Do we have your permission to include your art in an ebook (.lit/.pdb/.prc) of the story?

Vid Guidelines

We'll make vids available in two ways: On YouTube, and downloadable from the Tardis Big Bang website. On YouTube, we won't make the vids easy to find by searching, in hopes that YouTube will let them stay up; you're welcome to upload them to your own account (or to any other site) as well once the Tardis Big Bang has gone live.

If you could send in two versions of your vid, that would be fabulous. One can be as high-res as you want to make it, as long as it's a size that's reasonably downloadable by someone with a broadband connection--maybe somewhere around 100Mb as a max, but we can talk about it. Smaller than that is absolutely fine. This version should probably be at least 640x480.

The smaller version should be something that's accessible to people on dial-up--no more than, say, 7Mb. This one might be around 320x240.

Pretty much any format is fine, as long as it can be played on both Mac and PC. If you're submitting an .avi file, the DivX codec is probably the best way to go. The mods have video editing software and can help convert to other formats as necessary.

Please include the number of your story at the beginning of your filename.

If you have a specific image from the vid that you'd like us to display on the story page, please send it to us, and make sure its filename is related to your vid filename so we can keep them together. Otherwise we'll pick something.

Unless anyone objects, we'll also convert the vid to .mp4 format for viewing on iPods/iPhones.

The vid guidelines are fuzzier than the rest--if you have any questions or suggestions, please do get in touch. We figured a lot of things out last year, but I'm sure we'll run into some new issues this time around.

If you have questions...

Email the Mods at Tardis.bigbang [at] gmail [dot] com, or reply to a modpost at the tardis_bigbang LJ community.