Submission Rules

aka Ten Things We Would Love About You

We have some very basic submission rules. In fact, some of them are more sort of... guidelines than outright rules. There is also some even more basic submission guidance for use of this software, which you can find under Help. Please read them before submitting a story for the first time.

1. All stories submitted to this site must have been at least proofread and preferably beta read. Stories that do not meet the minimum required standard of English, for example stories that are riddled with spelling or grammatical errors, confused homonyms (they're, their and there; your and you're) etc., will not be accepted. In this respect, the decision of the archivist is final.

2. This archive will archive stories in English only. However, if English is not your native tongue, and you require assistance in either translation or betaing, please contact one of the archivists and we will attempt to put you in touch with someone who can help.

3. All stories submitted to the archive must be your own work. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Any instance of plagiarism proved to the satisfaction of the archivist will result not only in the removal of the plagiarised story, but all other stories by that author, the author's name from the list of authors and an explanation for the removal posted on the front page of the site.

4. Stories should be filed in the correct categories:

- stories suitable for all ages should be filed in 'general'

- stories containing levels of violence and/or sexual encounters between partners of the opposite sex should be filed under 'adult'

- stories containing same sex relationships should be filed under 'slash'.

- stories containing both same sex relationships and heterosexual relationships should be filed under the genre of the primary relationship in the story. If there is equal weight, please contact us and we'll put adapt the categories accordingly.

We've tried to make categories as comprehensive as possible, but are open to suggestions for improvement. If you require any assistance with this, please contact one of the archivists, which you can do via the 'contact' option on their profiles.

5. Stories in a series should not be filed as separate stories. Instead, they should be filed as separate chapters within one 'story'. For details on how to do this, please refer to the Help page. Both the 'add story' and 'add chapter' functions can be found under the menu on 'Your Account' after you've logged in. Using this functionality is actually to your benefit as an author, as it pulls together all stories in a series on its own index page. If you don't use this functionality, it makes it far more difficult for readers to find the relevant stories and read them in order.

6. Works in progress (WIPs) may be posted to the archive, in chapters as outlined in 6 above. However, the same rules regarding the need for betaing and minimum standards of English still apply. In addition, WIPs should be updated regularly. Stories that have not been updated for three months will be removed from the archive. We understand that sometimes events in real lives upset plans, and that some stories take longer to finish than expected, which is why we would encourage all authors to complete stories where possible before posting.

If WIPs have been removed from the archive because they have not been updated, please feel free to resubmit once the story is finished.

7. Warnings, spoilers and ratings. We're not a huge fan of warnings, but we understand that some readers (and authors) prefer them, so we've created some very basic, high level warnings, namely 'adult themes', 'non-consensual', 'violence', 'BDSM' and 'death of a canon character'. Please use them. If you are an author who would prefer to give more specific warnings, you may do so in your story notes.

We do not have a specific 'spoilers' warning, as the show aired a number of years ago, but there is an option under 'genres' for episode related. If you wish to warn for spoilers, please include this information, including the episode concerned, within the story notes.

8. Ratings should always be used, with anything containing explicit sexual details classed as NC-17. For this rating we use pop-ups to warn readers of what is coming - the only rating that we do - but this is to cover our ass and ensure that if any minors do wander in, they do so in full knowledge that on their heads be it, and not on ours.

Where different parts of a story or series are rated differently, the first part (and therefore the series overall) should be rated at the highest rating, as it's the rating of the first part that shows up in menus and on your author's page. If there's going to be sex - in any part - then rate the whole thing as NC-17.

9. Authors notes should not be posted as a separate chapter. As they should be as succinct as possible, there should be no need to post them as a separate chapter. Instead, they should be posted as notes to the first part of the story. There should be no need to repeat them in each individual chapter, unless your 'chapters' are actually separate stories with separate notes.

By the same token, authors notes should not be used to thank people for leaving reviews, or to beg for reviews. In the first instance, you can respond to your reviews individually by going to 'Your Account', choosing 'View Reviews'. You will then see that next to each review is an option that lets you respond. As far as requesting reviews in the notes, if people are moved to comment, they will do so and the functionality to do so is right there, on the story. If you're not sure whether something is working, then seek a beta prior to posting rather than requesting readers to comment.

10. This archive is set up to allow both anonymous and signed reviews. We encourage constructive criticism, but flaming other authors will not be tolerated and may result in you losing your account. 'I think that this could be done better...' is constructive criticism. 'You suck...' is a flame. 'I think your story sucks...' is not a flame, as it is talking about the story not the author, but it is still rude and not constructive, and we're no more fans of rudeness than we are of flaming. Be polite.

If you are in receipt of flames - either anonymous or otherwise - please contact one of the archivists, as we'd like to be informed of abuse. However, we will not 'take sides' and we will not tolerate ongoing flame wars between authors. If you have a problem with another author, take it elsewhere.

If you have any questions about any of these points, please do not hesitate to contact the archivists. You can do this via the 'contact' button on their profile.