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lore (lore) wrote in lupin_snape,
@ 2009-01-19 14:22:00

Entry tags:

community project: blu, mod post

BLU = Snupin: Bigger, Longer and Uncut!

Welcome to the organizational post for the Snupin: Bigger, Longer and Uncut project! The goal of this project is to produce a web site hosting illustrated Snape/Lupin novels and novelettes of the highest quality. There are four ways you can participate in this project:

1. Write - Produce a Snape/Lupin story anywhere from 25,000 words (25k) to 50,000 words and beyond.
2. Illustrate - Artists will be asked to produce at least two pieces to participate.
3. Volunteer - Positions will be listed and then possibly called for as needed (betaing included here).
4. Read - Once BLU is live, read and leave comments for the writers and artists.

We're going to discuss the first three to help us get underway. Readers, we'll be counting on you at the end of a long haul!

Writers
• You will submit a plot synopsis to lupinsnape@gmail.com that includes both your IJ and LJ name and an estimated word count. The last chance you will have to sign up is April 30, 2009, and you will have to produce a full first draft that day to be included. Writer/Writer collaborations are allowed.

• Next, make a join request at both IJ Snape_Lupin and LJ Snape_Lupin. Be sure you also Watch/Friend the IJ and LJ communities so that posts to the communities will show up on your friends list. Important information and communication will happen on the communities and if you are not properly joined and watching them, you will be poked. Primary activity will happen on the InsaneJournal communties with the Livejournal communities acting as emergency backup.

• Once approved, you will post the same information you sent via email to an organizational post.

• Your fiction should be a work that is at minimum 25,000 (25k) words, featuring a Snape/Lupin or Snape/Lupin/other relationship. If you choose to write a threesome, Snape/Lupin content should equal or dominate the story. Snape/Lupin preslash or UST is welcome, but not true Gen. BLU is meant to celebrate the pairing. There are plenty of Gen challenges for people who don't want to write Severus and Remus in a relationship.

• There is no theme or topic for the BLU. Stories will be organized by length (Bigger, Longer, and Uncut lengths) based on the range of word counts we receive in the end. If you choose to continue a work you have posted previously, no more than 1/3 of your total word count can have appeared in public. In other words, if you finish an old WiP, such as a Lusty Month of May fic of which you'd only posted a few chapters totaling 10k words, your final BLU fic would need to be 30k or higher.

• This story should represent the very best work that you can produce. Stories should be rigorously beta-read and if the BLU organizers still think your piece needs work, it will be returned with some guidance as to what is giving the organizers pause. You will have the BLU writers community throughout the writing period from which to seek questions, opinions, support, additional betas and brit-picking.

• First drafts of your fic will be due April 30 along with a detailed listing of 3 - 5 scenes you would like to see illustrated. We'll discuss the art list closer to the first draft deadline.

• Final drafts will be due May 31 with no exceptions. We have to give artists and archivists time to work with your fic. If you wish to turn in a first draft or final draft early, you are welcome and encouraged to do so. You are likely to receive better art and more variety of art on your story if you give artists more time to work with it.

• One last word on the deadlines, just to beat a dead horse: The authors will be making or breaking the success of this project. If you are considering signing up for this project, you should work at a steady pace, use the resources available to you through the writers' community, and plan to meet all deadlines with a disaster cushion in place. If the writers get behind, the entire project becomes behind and the other artists, volunteers and readers will lose interest. We are on a little less than a six-month timeline for the entire project. Extensions are not an option when you have four months to write.

• Finally, writers will be anonymous to the artists and vice-versa. In addition, your plot should remain a secret to everyone except the members of the writers' community. You are welcome to talk about your participation in the project in your personal journals, maybe drop some hints, but the fullness of your story should remain a secret to the public until the BLU archive debuts.

Artists
• To sign up to be an artist for the project, send an email to lupinsnape@gmail.com that includes both your IJ and LJ name. The cut-off for sign-ups will be April 30, 2009. If you know of any friends that might be interested in participating, please point them over here.

• Once your email has been sent, make a join request at both IJ Snupin and LJ Snupin_art. Be sure you also Watch/Friend the IJ and LJ communities so that posts to the communities will show up on your friends list. Important information and communication will happen on the communities and if you are not properly joined and watching them, you will be poked. Primary activity will happen on the InsaneJournal communties with the Livejournal communities acting as emergency backup.

• Primary work for artists will begin May 1 and continue through a hard June 15 deadline, however, we are encouraging writers to turn in drafts early. If you are interested in working from early drafts, please join the art communities right away. At the very minimum, your first piece of art, based on first drafts, will be due May 31.

• Generally, we'll be asking for two pieces from each artist with each piece coming from different stories. No artist will have more than one piece in any given story, so the only maximum we will place on artists is one piece for every story submitted.

• Art assignments will be distributed through a loose ranking system, relying heavily on author art lists and your own scene choices through reading. However, we are looking for an even distribution of art on the stories, so you might be asked to consider doing art for a story if that story is coming up short for illustrations. There will be no assignments without choice, however, we ask that you remain as open and flexible as possible in return. Authors will remain anonymous until the archive is revealed.

• There is an additional element that should interest artists, however, we will only discuss it on the community to preserve the surprise. ^_^

• Submitted art should be web quality with flexible sizing options, as it will be in-line with the text.

• Your art for this project should represent the very best work that you can produce. We reserve the right to return art that doesn't fit the scope of the project (really, what I am trying to say here is that if your art is only of simple lines or cute chibis-only quality, you might not be a good fit for this particular project).

• Again, beating the horse corpse: The art deadlines will be tight, but if you're participating in the community early, you will receive all the consideration possible, as well as the support of your fellow artists. There will be little room for late pieces as the archivists will be working to make a July 1 deadline, so be sure not to take on more pieces than you can realistically handle in that timeframe.

• Which stories and scenes you are working on will remain anonymous until the archive is revealed. Please don't discuss specifics in your personal journal that will give away for which story you are creating art. The art community is there for your beta needs as well as encouragement, questions and support.

Volunteers
The following positions will definitely be needed:

• Website Developer - someone needed who is intimately familiar with e-fiction and can turn my requests into reality (within reason and sanity!).

• Story Uploader to artists' community - devise a way for anonymous drafts of the stories to be made available to the artists, either via web or e-mail (I don't think it will be realistic to upload 25K+ stories in IJ- or LJ-post format), and then implement by uploading the drafts, replacing old drafts with new ones as they come available. This person will also be responsible for posting the author art lists (again, anonymously) in the art community. Note, the heaviest of this work will probably happen right around the April 30 deadline.

• Quality Control - Basically, a reader or three who can go through the submitted drafts in a day or two, noting if there are any huge issues with them. These readers need to be flexible in that they might be asked to help the story uploader, help the author with beta or finding a beta, and anything else I might desperately ask of them. Right now, I only see the position as reading, but these volunteers could become my general right-hand helpers. Final job will be to read the fics assigned to them on the archive and check for proper spelling of author and artist names, correct information on the title page, etc.

• Story coder - Go through the story drafts and make sure there's no smart quotes and that all formatting will work in the e-fiction archive. This will include inserting art code in the correct places in the story. This position could be combined with....

• Web Site Uploader - Upload the stories and art to the actual E-fiction archive.

• Other volunteer positions as-needed - this might include icon or banner makers, drabblers, sketchers, or general cheer-leaders.

• Volunteers will need to be considered "solid netizens" as many of the positions might require password-level access.

• Volunteers must be extremely discreet and careful to preserve the anonymity between the authors and the artists. Many volunteers will likely have access to both sides of this process, but the fun for the artists and authors will be finding out "who they got" when the archive is revealed.

• Volunteers should be on top of all deadlines. Do not volunteer for a position if you cannot be sure you will be available during that position's deadline (April, May and June will be the busiest months, depending on the position).

Timeline:
Author and Artist sign-ups begin now and end April 30
First Drafts due April 30
Final Drafts due May 31
First art piece due May 31
Final art due June 15
BLU goes live July 1

Finally, everything said here is flexible and subject to change based on what we learn along the way. The deadlines must remain hard, but how we get to them is another story. If you are a potential participant, you would be better off signing up early and keeping an eye on your respective project community for issues and updates. Also, as many of you well know, I will consider various opinions on my way to making decisions, so if you want a hand in your fate, be sure to stay informed on the process.

And let me take this second-to-last paragraph to thank snegurochka_lee for suggesting we do this project. I ran away with it on her, there's no denying it, but be sure to remember that it wouldn't be happening without her encouragement and enthusiasm! *loves Lee*

If you have any questions or think I've forgotten to cover something, please don't hesitate to hit reply. I know this post seems dry, but I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do, and I hope the rest of you are as well! ♥!

love, lore

(Post a new comment)

	kopernik 2009-01-19 02:42 pm UTC (link)
	I could probably upload stuff. I didn't screw up the one I did at Snupin Santa, I'm pretty sure. And I'm a decent go-between. Let me know if you think you can use my v. v. special talents. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	lore 2009-01-19 07:40 pm UTC (link)
	I can definitely use your talents! How about you either contact me at the community email or set up a time when we can chat (preferred) so we can discuss what role(s?) you might want to take on? Thanks for volunteering! HUGS love, love (Reply to this) (Parent)

dianamoon
2009-01-19 03:15 pm UTC (link)

Yay! It's underway! ^__^

Okay, as I know I'm not the only Writer/Artist, I'm asking also incase any other Writer/Artists were also possibly planning the same thing (as I know my track record is a bit too shaky to believe I could pull it off ^^;;) but I'm sure there'd be at least one out there who could do it w/o a problem... As you want the stories to be anonymous to the artists, does that mean a person could only do one or the other? Since one would have access to both comms and see what's going on.

Previously, I was under the assumption that lets say I was able to complete a twenty-five thousand word story way before deadline, that'd give me the ability to work on art for another story as tech they wouldn't be in contradiction(wrong word but my brain is failing me) with each other. So just want to be clear on that. ^_^

I also wanna be clear about a few points in the Writers section. So to officially sign up, one must email plot synopsis etc before April 30th. And then BY April 30th submit first draft of story with scene selection.... So technically if one wanted to participate on the last day, they'd have to submit all that at once, right? (Like if someone wanted to do it but didn't want to commit so wrote the draft befor signing up and just happened to finish by due date)

Also, maybe bold out the 1/3rd part for people who want to do a WIP and not miss out on that note.

Oh, just remembered another thing... maybe we should have a chat time for potential writers to come in and talk about possible story ideas? Get some encouragement for one or another plot bunny so people won't be spending most of the time before deadline wibbling on what kind of story they'd really like to explore... If that makes any sense.. ^^;;

And once again, I'm willing to help on the efiction stuff, setting up,making layouts, hosting even (I've got lots of space on my mythark domain XD), so if you're fine with me, just hit me up on Y!M or in the chatroom. =D

For the story uploader thing, I had recently "commissioned"

bookofjude to write me a script that would allow quick uploading of files to a website w/o having to log-in to cpanel or go through ftp. So provided that that the volunteer is reliable, I can get that set up so they can upload anonymous versions of the stories with ease. ^_^

I think it'd be nice to get some volunteers for cheerleading asap to get people confident in signing up and stuff. XD

*hugs to both Lore for setting this up and Lee for suggesting it* at any rate, sounds like 2009 is gonna be a fun snupin year! ^_^

(Reply to this) (Thread)

lore
2009-01-19 09:11 pm UTC (link)

OK, let me track through your post and answer questions. For my purposes, "you" is the general you to be applied to everyone, not you, Di:

1. Can you participate as both a writer and an artist?
You can, but with this limitation - You can't join the writer community until you've produced your first draft. I know that sounds a bit extreme, but as Di pointed out, she'll have to write and finish early to be able to participate as an artist as well. If a writer/artist can finish a full draft by the April 30 deadline, I'll then give them access to both communities. In the meantime, writer/artists will be allowed on the artist community. We'll be communicating any major changes or issues on the Lupin_Snape community so that those working on fics who haven't signed up officially can remain updated -- thus, writer/artists will not miss any important info as they writer either.

2. April 30 sign-up and draft deadline?
Yes, exactly as Di interpreted. You can sign up on April 30, but you must also produce your first draft at that time if you are a writer. If someone pops up with a full draft on May 1 or later and neglected to sign up, that's going to be too bad. The timeline for this project is long enough that no one should be able to claim ignorance of the deadlines.

WiPs - that's unique enough that I don't think we need to stress it. If someone tries to abuse the privilege, I'm sure others will call them out at some point. It would be a shame to yank an entire piece from the archive, but I'm prepared to do it, even if someone claims ignorance of the rules.

Chat and story ideas - We can host some BLU-specific chats, but I do plan on putting up a plot suggestions post in a day or two so that community members can offer brief ideas.

Efiction and story uploader - We're going to need some very specific settings to make this archive work properly. You and I should get into a chat when I have the space ready. I don't know that I feel comfortable doing quick uploading when we'll be uploading art along with the story.

Cheerleaders are welcome here and on any BLU post on the community, but on the closed communities, participants will need to support each other. I could use a BLU icon to use on BLU posts, rather than just use my Mod Hat icon on everything.

If you have any more questions, please ask! It helps to clarify things. *g* *HUGS*

love, lore

	skree_ratling 2009-01-19 07:06 pm UTC (link)
	Me again - just confirming a couple of things... First draft due Apr 30: this means we have to basically have the story written by then, yes? With a further month to polish? And 'no theme or topic' means AUs are fine? (Heh, admittedly dauntedness is beginning to dent the excitement a little. But only a little.) (Reply to this) (Thread)