Submitting Your Fan Fiction to Gossamer

Help Us Get Updates Out Faster!

Due to the massive volume of fan fiction submitted to the Gossamer archive, we can only accept stories formatted in plain text. We can also accept large stories compressed using the ZIP compression method only as long as the stories inside the ZIP file are plain text. ALL WORD PROCESSOR DOCUMENTS WILL BE RETURNED. YOU MUST CONVERT THE FILE YOURSELF. For help converting the word processor file to a plain text file, see below. If you still have trouble converting it, contact us at formatting@x-philes.com.

Should I Use a Pseudonym?

There has been increasing concern over one's fanfic being discovered by co-workers, family, or other people who may know the author. When a story is posted on Gossamer, it has effectively been published. Hundreds of people visit the new stories page in the first day alone. Many of them will read the story and some may download a copy of it. If the author's real name was included anywhere in the e-mail Gossamer received, it will be included in the posted story.

Once the story has been posted with the author's name, it has been published--regardless of whether we post a revision without the name at a later date. It is also time-consuming for us to re-archive an author's stories. For these reasons, we request that you decide whether to attach your real life identity to your stories before sending them to any forum on the Internet. There are many free e-mail providers which can afford you some measure of privacy. We recommend using a pseudonymous account on one of these providers. This will allow you to receive feedback for your stories without revealing your identity.

NOTE: Author name changes are treated with the same priority as all other revisions. If you don't want your name on the story, don't send it to us with your name in the first place!

General Rules for Formatting Stories

So that your fanfic is readable to everyone, please follow these rules when composing the work: If your story is already saved as a plain text file, just attach it to an e-mail message or cut-and-paste it into a message and send it to submissions@x-philes.com. For more information about what happens then, see Where Do I Send My Story below.

If you use AOL, please read our AOL Submission Instructions document.

Converting Your Story to Plain Text

For your convenience, here are some settings to use and methods of saving text files for commonly-used word processors. Before you attempt to save the file in plain text, please make sure that you save the file in at least two different places. Not that we think you'll mess it up, but it's better to be safe than sorry!

Microsoft Word (on a PC)

  1. Save your story as you normally would, but do NOT close the window.
  2. Change the page setup so that the lines will wrap at an appropriate place. I use 1" margins for top, bottom, and left and 3" for right. Also change the font for the entire document to a fixed-width font such as "Courier." This configuration seems to generate files with about 70 characters per line.
  3. Choose "Save As" from the File menu.
  4. Type a different name for your file (I usually use title.txt) in the file name box.
  5. From the pull down menu below the file name field, select the "Text Only with Line Breaks (*.txt)" option. If this option is not available, look for other similar options such as "Text with Layout" or "MS-DOS text."
  6. Now you can hit the "Save" button and you will have an ascii version of your file which can be uploaded via your favorite terminal program.

Microsoft Word (on a Mac)

  1. Save your story as you normally would, but do NOT close the window.
  2. Choose "Save As" from the File menu.
  3. Type a different name for your file (I usually use title.ascii) in the document name box.
  4. From the pull down menu below the document name window, select (and this is extremely important) the "Text with Layout" option. This will be available on properly installed versions of Microsoft Word 5.0 and 6.0. IT IS NOT AVAILABLE ON MS Word 5.1!!! for reasons known only to God and Bill Gates. For Word 5.1, I'm at a loss. I have not found any other text format than "Text with Layout" which produces decent, readable ASCII text.
  5. Now you can hit the "Save" button and you will have an ascii text version of your file which can be uploaded via your favorite terminal program. As SUe noted, it is wise to chop up a long document into several shorter segments, labelled "01/05", "02/05", etc.
(Thanks to Sarah Stegall, a.k.a munchkyn@netcom.com)

Word 5.1 on a Mac

How to format ASCII text from Word 5.1/Macintosh to 70 character width...it's possible, it just takes a little more effort. Here's what you do.
  1. Select all the text in the document and convert it to Monaco 12 point (which every Mac owner has available).
  2. Go to the Format menu and select Document.
  3. Change the left and right margins to 1 inch.
  4. Now, do a Save As and select Text Only With Line Breaks from the File Type popup menu.
  5. Enter a new file name and click Save.
That's it. Complex paragraph formatting like indents will be lost, but it works.

(Thanks to Andrew Roazen, ajr9784@uncwil.edu.)

WordPerfect (tested on 5.1)

Retrieve your story into a document screen in WP as usual. Then use [CONTROL + F5] (Text In/Out). Choose [1] (Save As), then [1] again (ASCII). Give it a separate name so you know that's the ASCII version. When importing it into your newsreader or whatever, that's the filename you need to bring in.

(Thanks to The SUe)

WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows

Well, it's really quite easy. Type your heart away, then, when ready to save, select "file" then "save as" (or F3). A window box will open and at the very bottom is "format" and will generally say "Word Perfect 6.0 (*.wpd; *.wpt; *.doc; *.wp)". Scroll up until you see "ASCII (DOS) Text (*.*). Select this one, then hit "ok". This saves the document as a normal ASCII file, and not a high ASCII file.

Sounds and looks a lot more complicated than it really is. Anyone familiar with windows will have no problems. When you finally exit the document, insure that you are still saved as an ASCII file using the "save as" command (above) THEN exiting.

BTW, if you don't wish your lines to be all messed up when posted, do the following: If the ruler bar is not already present, select "view" then "ruler bar" and the ruler bar will appear. On the right hand side of the rule are two little triangles. Move BOTH to 5.5 on the ruler (this usually works for me) or 5.25. MAKE SURE YOU ARE AT THE TOP OF YOUR DOCUMENT WHEN YOU DO THIS!!! If not, half your document will have one set of margins and the remainder another.

(Thanks to smwicke@ix.netcom.com)

ClarisWorks on a Mac

Perhaps I'm the only person in fandom with a Mac/ClarisWorks combination, but in case someone else has this combo, this is what works. (After much trial and error...)
  1. In ClarisWorks, select Helvetica as the font. As the style, select Plain Text. Go into the edit menu and disconnect Smart Quotes. (Do not use [Option]/anything combinations.) Type your document and save.
  2. Make a new folder and put it on the desktop. (I labeled mine "ng.")
  3. Close your document and drag the icon to the folder to be copied.
  4. Open your newsreader. Click on "Mail to: News" or whatever your reader uses.
  5. Open the document from the desktop folder. Use the mouse to highlight all of the text. Cut ("command"+X).
  6. Click on the mail body and copy. ("command"+V)
  7. Put the title in the subject header and send.
Hope this will help someone!
(Thanks to Marguerite Lawrence, marguerite@swbell.net.)

Other Programs

If you're using Windows, try using copy-and-paste to paste your story into Notepad and format it there. If you're using a Macintosh, try editing your story in Simpletext. (Sorry, I don't use a Mac so I can't tell you more!) On unix, I would recommend Pico. If you don't have access to Pico, Emacs and several other editors can be used as well. Have fun editing a 30-chapter series in vi. :-)

Many thanks to Susan M. Stiefel for her story formatting page from which most of this information was lifted.

What Else Do I Need To Do?

Don't forget to classify your story so that we know what category to put it in and which keywords to list for it. It is in your interests to classify your story because it helps readers to find your story.

Where Do I Send My Story?

When you're done with all of the above and you have a plain text file ready to either attach to an e-mail message or cut-and-paste into a message, send your story to the appropriate submissions address according to these criteria:

Works in progress are no longer accepted by Gossamer.
Poems, songs, filks and non-fiction go to specialty-subs@x-philes.com
Revisions of previously-archived stories go to revisions@x-philes.com
All other submissions go to the normal submissions address submissions@x-philes.com

You will receive an automatic confirmation that your story has been received. This message will indicate whether your story was accepted or rejected by the "pre-screening" process. Pre-screening is performed automatically by a program. This program identifies word processor documents and binary files, filters certain high-ASCII characters and special e-mail features (such as quoted-printable) out of the message, and saves it as a file for a Gossamer volunteer to pick up later. Since the program uses the provided subject line as the filename, it is very important that the subject of your message be of the form "Title by Author" or "Title (1/2) by Author". For more information on formatting the subject line, see the Gossamer FAQ. If you're interested, here is an example submission acceptance letter and an example submission rejection letter.

Direct submissions are given precedence over copies of stories that we receive through other sources unless the copy that was directly submitted has a formatting problem that one of the other copies does not. We have a backlog of submissions to archive, so your story may not appear for a couple of months. Please be patient.

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