Author Topic: Article Submission Guidelines  (Read 2218 times)

ProvincialTwit

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Article Submission Guidelines
« on: May 16, 2010, 12:34:51 am »
So, you think you have a good idea for an article on the Viv Blog?  We're all sincerely doubtful, but if that's not going to discourage you, here are some rough guidelines before you go wasting all your time:

Your idea/article should be:
-Thorough
-Entertaining (this is entirely subjective and may be waived depending on content)
-Verifiable (to some degree)
-Informative
-Within the scope of Vivisector itself
-Of interest to the general Viv population
-Concise
-Grammatically correct and spell checked

If you manage to convince yourself that your idea meets most of these requirements, write up a brief synopsis explaining your idea, how you intend to expound upon it, and a general idea of length and content (ie, images and/or funky markup).  Email that synopsis to articles at vivisector.org, with 'article submission' or something similar in the subject, and indicate somewhere what your username on the forums is.  The Vivisector Cabal(tm) will laugh at you a lot behind your back and eventually one of us will send you a PM on the forums with a go-ahead, a don't-bother, or possibly asking for clarification.  If we give the go-ahead, it will probably be accompanied by additional information on what we'd like to see, suggestions on layout, or whatever. 

Step two:  Writing and editing.  Write your article, send it in plain text to articles at vivisector.org, and we'll look it over.  It's very likely we'll ask for some things to be rewritten or language to be changed or whatnot - don't freak out, that's just how it goes.  Assuming you can stick it out to a final draft that is approved by the Viv admins, we'll ask you to mark it up in basic HTML with image tags, and send the whole shebang as a zip file to - you guessed it, articles at vivisector.org.  If the zip file winds up being more than a few megs, we'll arrange some other method of getting it to us.  At any rate, assuming everything looks good, we'll post it on the front page blog with your name on it (and if I'm not lazy, I'll fix up any buggy markup), and fame and fortune will be yours.  Write enough quality articles, and we may even give you your own account on the blog!  Wowee isn't that exciting?

Sarcasm aside, we are interested in new articles and new writers.  As such, if we reject your idea or scoff entirely at your article, we will make every effort to explain exactly why.  If your idea is straight up crap and non-salvageable, we'll tell you so.  If it just needs a little work, we'll try to point you in the right direction.  If your writing is just plain awful, we may ask you to rewrite large swaths of your submission.  If your markup and layout is lousy, it may delay the article being posted.  Regardless, we're willing to work with just about anyone who is willing to work with us.

This thread is for questions relating to article submissions.  Off-topic posts will be shitcanned.  As noted above, interest checks should be emailed, not posted here.