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Why are your Submission Guidelines so
strict?
We realize that our Submission Guidelines
may seem strict to some people, but it is the stated mission of Rooftop Sessions
to present Beatles fan fiction in a professional, highly literary milieu.
We at Rooftop Sessions pride ourselves on presenting to the public the
“finest in Beatles-related fiction,” and without some kind of guidelines in
place, we would not be able to clearly identify exactly what it is we expect
from the authors who are showcased in our pages, or what it is that makes our
high-caliber fan fiction stand out from the pack.
It is our belief that the reason we have lasted for nearly five years,
and the reason Rooftop Sessions is still around after all this time when other
fan fiction sites have come and gone, is the fact that we have such “strict”
guidelines. If you believe our guidelines are too strict for you to
follow, you are welcome to put your stories on your own website – no one is
forcing you to submit them to us.
Why do you want a “proper submission letter?” What should be included
in one?
A proper submission letter lets us know that you
are a serious and professional writer. If
you were submitting your manuscript to a “real” agent or publisher, it would
not be accepted without a submission cover letter containing at least some basic
information, such as your full name (or pen name), a brief synopsis of your
story, a brief bio of yourself and a request for review of your manuscript.
The same thing is required when you submit to Rooftop Sessions.
Your submission letter should be a cover
letter. Do not put the cover letter information in your
attached document. Otherwise, we are likely to send it back to you because
we don't think you've followed the instructions. The editors should not
have to go looking for your cover letter information anywhere but in the e-mail
note. Put the required personal information in the body of your e-mail and
the story only as the attachment!
A good basic submission letter should read
something like this:
Dear Susan,
My name is Candace Baker, and I would
like to submit my Beatles fan fic "In Another Lifetime" for
publication in your Rooftop Sessions e-zine. I have been writing fan fiction for
about two years now, but this is the first time I've sent one of my stories to
anyone for publication. Besides writing fan fic (and spending time being a
Beatles fan!), I am currently a junior at the University of Wisconsin, where I'm
majoring in International Business. I am also the assistant editor of the
Entertainment column in the university's weekly newspaper
A short summary of my story... a
16-year-old John Lennon wakes up one morning to find that he's somehow traveled
back in time to the year 1900. Everyone and everything in his new world is a
stranger to him...except for one very mysterious young woman. (It's a short
story, so I don't want to give away too much of the plot!)
I hope to hear from you soon whether or
not you decide to publish my story. My contact information is below. Thank you
so much for your time!
Sincerely,
Candace Baker
CLBaker@email.com
http://www.clbaker.com
How long should it take for you to
acknowledge receipt of my story and let me know whether or not it is accepted
for publication?
In theory, we will acknowledge receipt of
your submissions as soon as we get them. In
practice, however, it might take a day or two before we let you know we have
received it. However, we will do
our best to get a note off to you and at least let you know that we have
received your story as soon as possible.
Acceptance or rejection decisions will also
be made as soon as possible, but of course we have to take the time to read and
review the submission before we can make any decision.
The ultimate decision will be made by Susan Ryan, the Publisher &
Editor-in-Chief, but sometimes a second or third opinion is necessary and your
submission will be forwarded to other associate editors for review.
In such cases, review of a manuscript may take a little longer than
normal, but we do try to make the turnaround time as quick as possible.
If the review is taking much longer than normal, we will endeavor to send
you a follow-up letter letting you know the status of your story.
(The editors have “real” lives that sometimes must take precedence
over anything else. Please be
patient with us!)
In general, if you haven’t heard from us
at all within two weeks of sending something, please drop us a note. E-mail is notoriously unreliable, and though you think your
submission may have gotten to us, there’s always a chance it did not,
particularly if you didn’t get any kind of acknowledgement of receipt from us.
But whatever you do, don’t make
your follow-up letter nasty and argumentative!
There is no reason to yell at the editors for something that may very
well be beyond their control before you know the whole story of why you didn’t
hear from us – and nothing is a surer turn-off than a nasty and accusatory
letter!
I thought writing fan fiction about
real people was illegal! How can
you get away with it?
Writing fan fiction about real people is
actually, at this time, far less likely to get an author into trouble than
writing about other fictional characters that they did not create.
Real people, i.e., celebrities, have a certain amount of their privacy
removed from them simply by virtue of their fame, their “public personae.”
Real people are used all the time in historical fiction. How many
times have you read books with a historical setting that includes famous figures
from whatever time in which the book is set, for example, the works of Norman
Mailer, who constantly uses real people in his historical fiction?
Because celebrities’ lives are so out in the open, it’s a simple
matter to take what is commonly known to the public and expand it to speculate
on what might have been in private. And
the Beatles, particularly, had so much of their lives documented and accounted
for publicly that it’s a very easy thing to take what is known from the vast
compendium of information available and insert a fictional interlude into their
history.
Why won’t you accept crossovers? I have a great idea for a Beatles/Harry Potter (Star Trek,
Xena, Buffy) fanfic, but you say you won’t accept them!
Copyrighted fictional characters (such as
Captain Kirk, Buffy, Xena, Harry Potter, etc.) belong to the people who
created them or the corporations who hold the copyrights on them. They are not “public domain” and “there for the
taking.” Of course, some
fictional characters are no longer copyrighted because their copyright holders
are deceased and there are no heirs holding the rights any longer or because the
time limitations under international copyright laws at the time of creation have
expired – e.g., the characters used in the recent film “The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen,” which uses fictional characters that are now in the
public domain to tell another, entirely new, fictional story.
But if you use a contemporary fictional character in your fanfic and that
character is owned by another entity – such as Paramount (for Star Trek
characters) or Fox (for Buffy) or J.K. Rowling, Scholastic and Warner Brothers
(for Harry Potter), you are courting trouble – you’re better off writing a
fanfic about William Shatner, Lucy Lawless or Sarah Michelle Gellar than the
characters they played.
Why aren’t you running any Paul (John,
Ringo, George) stories?
We can’t run stories if we don’t have
them! Generally, we have enough
stories for the current issue and the one after it in the queue when a new issue
goes up on the first of a month. But
we have no control over what people choose to write about or submit to us.
If no one is submitting Paul stories that are up to our standards, for
example, then it stands to reason that we can’t run them because we don’t
have them! The same goes for
whichever Beatle is your favorite; it seems that stories run in waves, and
sometimes we have a lot of Paul stories, or a lot of John stories, or a lot of
George stories, or a lot of Ringo stories.
Other times we have a lot of stories about one Beatle and absolutely none
about the others. It really does depend on what people are writing and
submitting. If you don’t think
you are seeing enough stories about your favorite Beatle, you might want to
consider writing and submitting something yourself and trying to rectify the
situation first-hand!
Why do you insist that your authors do
research? This is fan fiction, not
a history lesson! Who cares if my character talks on a cell phone or uses her
VCR to tape Ed Sullivan?
If for no other reason than that of
credibility, it is important to do research and get the small details right.
No one says you have to become a historian, but a good fanfic writer must
take special care to create an air of reality and authenticity, and lack of
attention to such details is an instant killer of believability.
For example, just because we now live in a wired world, with personal
computers in every home and VCRs, CDs or other modern conveniences does not mean
they have always existed, yet these types of errors crop up time and time again
in fan fiction stories. It is not
uncommon to read about characters putting tapes in their VCRs for the Ed
Sullivan Show, putting on pantyhose in a story set in 1961 or wearing
clothes that are completely wrong for the time period in which the story is set.
Try to remember, for instance, that John Lennon never saw a Compact Disc
or a cell phone – he died before they were on the market!
If you are not absolutely certain that something existed at a particular
time or place, look it up and get it right!
With the wealth of information available in books and on the Internet,
there is no excuse for such glaring mistakes and inaccuracies.
Regional errors are another big problem.
You don’t have to have lived in or even visited a place, nor do you
have to become an expert in its history, in order to write about it well.
However, if you have never set foot in the city in which you want to set
your story, it’s a good idea to get your hands on a guidebook or local history
book or look at a website so that you get the little details right. For example, you can't ski to work in Denver, go to a
fast-food drive-through in Midtown Manhattan or go to a modern American-style
shopping mall in 1960s England. Accuracy can mean the difference between a
successful story and an unsuccessful one, and attention to the little things can
pay off with big dividends.
Why should I proofread and spell- and
grammar-check before I submit? Aren’t
you an editor?
There is a difference between a copy editor,
who deals with the nitty-gritty details of each individual story (e.g., sentence
structure, grammar, spelling, etc.) and a creative editor, who is involved in
the “big picture” issues (e.g., editorial vision, tone, voice, management of
the ‘zine as a whole). Susan Ryan
is the creative editor for Rooftop Sessions (though she has professional
experience as a copy editor), and as such cannot devote the time and energy
necessary to basic copyediting on manuscripts.
It is the job of the author to do the best job he or she can to proofread
and otherwise check a manuscript before sending it in, and self-editing is a
valuable skill every good writer should learn.
Then you should consider giving your manuscript to a beta-reader for
further copyediting before submission. No
one says it has to be perfect – errors get past even the best of writers and
editors, and the Rooftop Sessions editors are happy to do minor copyediting that
gets past the author and beta-reader. However,
any manuscript that is submitted with huge and glaring errors does not create an
air of professionalism, but instead makes the editors wary of reading the
submission, and certainly does not add to your credibility as a writer.
Shoddy manuscripts that are rife with easily-corrected errors are a huge
turnoff. If you submit a story that
has not been spell-checked, grammar-checked or proofread, the impression you
give is that you are lazy and sloppy, not professional or anyone who should be
taken seriously.
Please also
be aware that spell-checkers and grammar-checkers that are included in most word
processing programs are not foolproof. Many times, these tools will mark
items that are correct as incorrect, and vice-versa, and a real person can catch
things the computer does not. (For instance, I once saw a story where
someone had written Brian's name as "Brain" in a few places, a very
common typo. However, the spell-checker did not catch this error and it
took a human being to correct it!)
What is a beta-reader?
Why is it important to have one?
A beta-reader is someone with a good grasp
of proper English grammar and usage whom you trust to take a look at your story
before you submit it or put it up on the Web.
Typos and grammatical errors get past even the best of writers, and
definitely get past computerized spell-checkers and grammar-checkers; when you
have written the work yourself, you are too close to it to catch all the
possible mistakes. Having another
pair of eyes give your story the once-over can frequently yield a much more
polished work. Likewise, a good
editor (if you have the opportunity to work with one) can help an author tighten
up a story that rambles or loosen up one that is too constricted.
A good editor will never change a writer’s “voice,” but he or she
will work with an author to produce a final version that is clear, concise,
engaging and free of problems.
What is slash and why won’t you publish
it?
Simply
put, “slash” is fanfic with a homosexual theme, usually involving sexual
liaisons between two of the characters.
The term comes from Star Trek fan fiction, when such stories were
frequently written about Kirk/Spock, etc., and are named for the “slash”
between the characters’ names. In
Beatles fanfic, these stories frequently involve sexual encounters between the
Beatles themselves. While
there is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of stories that explore
homosexual relationships between the characters, the reason Rooftop Sessions
will not publish slash is because it can definitely be considered defamatory by
the people being written about. Remember,
these are real people who are not or were not gay (except for Brian Epstein) –
and while they do give up some of their privacy through their public personae,
speculation in areas that could be considered controversial, such as
homosexuality, can bring about lawsuits. Additionally,
in the experience of the editors, most slash stories border on the highly
pornographic – and while Rooftop Sessions will publish stories that have
sexual content, it must be tasteful and not lewd or full of vulgar anatomical
description. Rooftop Sessions will
publish stories with a homosexual theme, incorporating people who were or are
really gay or gay fictional characters, provided the story is not vulgar or
otherwise defamatory to the people named therein, but it is difficult to write
such a story without falling into the questionable category of slash.
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