MobileRead Short Story Anthology - [GUIDELINES]

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Is there an update on what has been accepted (if any), and on where the anthology is at this moment?

We've got five people contributing at the moment, and we could definitely use some more. Another five would be great.

Each of us has submitted one story at the moment. Of those I think two are complete, while the others are undergoing varying degrees of revision. We're up at about 22,000 words so far, though that will likely come down in editing.

Graham

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Graham

I think we felt that we didn't want to share the draft versions publicly. However, if someone specifically wanted to follow along I'd be happy with Katsunami granting them (read only) access to the Dropbox folder.

Graham

From our previous discussions on this thread, I had assumed it was going to open. This seemed confirmed when I saw the "Dear Reader" beginnings to the "Critique" instructions that were there (which I replicated in my own version on the assumption that there might be readers ).

[Dr. Drib]

I was only curious.

Remember, the editor [of the anthology] can always go in and update the post #1 [if he is the OP], and then also make a current post here to (perhaps) give any interested authors an idea of where you are and also create a legitimate 'bump', as well as giving all interested parties an idea of where the anthology stands at this time and what (may?) still be needed.


Don
(Moderator)

[Katsunami]

At this point in time, the anthology is far shorter than I'd hoped.

If it stays at around 22,000 words, which is only 57 pages (of which 19 are mine), then I think it might not be large enough to actually call it anthology. We'd need five more writers, and even then the book will only be around 115 pages. To be honest, I hadn't expected people to submit 1,000-2,000 word short stories (no offence meant).

If people want to, I can put the download link to each contributor's dropbox folder in the opening post, so people "outside" the project can download the works.

[arjaybe]

I'm planning on submitting another story, although it will also be under 2000 words. And Graham is planning to submit another, if I read it correctly. We could still use more contributors, and reviewers, though.

Jim

[mrmarlowe]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

At this point in time, the anthology is far shorter than I'd hoped.

If it stays at around 22,000 words, which is only 57 pages (of which 19 are mine), then I think it might not be large enough to actually call it anthology. We'd need five more writers, and even then the book will only be around 115 pages. To be honest, I hadn't expected people to submit 1,000-2,000 word short stories (no offence meant).

If people want to, I can put the download link to each contributor's dropbox folder in the opening post, so people "outside" the project can download the works.

A last resort would be to push the deadline further I guess.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

I'm planning on submitting another story, although it will also be under 2000 words. And Graham is planning to submit another, if I read it correctly.

Yes, and the second story will be longer. Both the ones I'm considering at the moment are around 6,000 words, which would push my contribution over the 8,000 before editing.

Graham

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by mrmarlowe

A last resort would be to push the deadline further I guess.

All options are open at this time

Originally Posted by Graham

Yes, and the second story will be longer. Both the ones I'm considering at the moment are around 6,000 words, which would push my contribution over the 8,000 before editing.

Graham

It doesn't matter. I'm actually thinking to start another story. If it turns out that we are the only five contributers, we can just decide that each person gets to use as much space as they like, within reasonable limits; let's say, 3 stories max per person, each story being around 8,000 words max. That would allocate 24K words to each contributor, possibly creating an anthology of up to 300 pages (but it will probably be shorter).

Even if we'd start writing additional stories at some point, and they don't end up in the anthology because we get new contributors, those stories are not wasted. Even if we decide not to create the anthology because the page count is under par, we will have learned a lot and have one or two stories to show for it.

Would it be advisable to post links to each contributor's folder in the first post, so people outside the project can download the files (but not drop other files into the dropbox)?

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Would it be advisable to post links to each contributor's folder in the first post, so people outside the project can download the files (but not drop other files into the dropbox)?

I'm happy for a link to be in the first post of both this and the review thread (it actually makes more sense to be there) to read-only access to my Dropbox folder, if that's OK with the moderators.

Graham

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

[...]Would it be advisable to post links to each contributor's folder in the first post, so people outside the project can download the files (but not drop other files into the dropbox)?

If everyone else is amenable, then it's fine with me. I had assumed this was going to be open. Having others read over and comment on the stories might prove useful.

[Graham]

Mind you the one caveat I have over this is that, if there was a lot of interest, we may get swamped with comments. It would be a nice problem to have, but it's hard work keeping up with the output of just the five of us!

Graham

[Katsunami]

Of course, but it would just be like: "Thank you for the comments. We will look at them, and see which ones are acted upon."

It's impossible to appease everybody, and maybe not everybody wants to read every story.

[gmw]

I imagine many, probably most, will be content to wait for the end result - it is going to be free after all. While I will welcome helpful comments while I still have a chance to do something about them, I suspect most people prefer to read just the one final version. (Normally that's the case with me too, but participating in this means being willing to put in what I hope to get back from others.)

[arjaybe]

Opening access to the stories is probably the only way we'll ever see anyone besides ourselves commenting in these threads. We're already doing this experiment in public, so we might as well open it up.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Opening access to the stories is probably the only way we'll ever see anyone besides ourselves commenting in these threads. We're already doing this experiment in public, so we might as well open it up.

I'm hoping that we can leave the early versions available for some years, too, along with the review thread, so that people interested in the anthology can look back at how the stories developed.

Graham