GI Course Lecture V

Lecture 5: The Community, Submission, Editors, and Chains
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This is the final course for GI! I’m very glad that you’ve taken enough of an interest to make it this far. These are the final step to making your issue a success.
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Part 1: Uploading Your Draft to the Forum!
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Please, do this. You could try submitting your draft right away, if it’s really good, but I strongly suggest uploading to the forum first.

When uploading, make sure that your draft is easily readable to everyone. It also doesn’t hurt to first talk about the draft a tiny bit, or talk about your inspiration for the draft, or introduce yourself, before the draft itself.

The thread title should be either [DRAFT] (title) or [DRAFT] - (title). If you have no title, you can put “Title Needed”. When you put it up for “last call” (before submitting it), you can change [DRAFT] to [LAST CALL], if you want. When you do submit your draft, put [SUBMITTED]. If you have to destroy your draft, or abandon it, put [DISCARDED] or [SCRAPPED] or something. If you just want to put it on hold, you can leave it OR put [ON HOLD]. And, if it gets accepted, you can optionally change it to [ACCEPTED].

Note: If you do not have enough room, please feel free to abbreviate the [TEXT], or say “Name in thread” rather than putting the full title there. The [TEXT] is mainly there to help people figure out if your draft is being worked on, or even is a draft. (People don’t just post drafts in GI, you know.)
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Part 2: Editing your draft…
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Ah yes, the dreaded time has come. Someone has commented. Oh no.

Normally I look at who sent it, close it, wait a few days, look again, read it, and then either work on it or wait another few days. I don’t recommend doing this, but that’s what I do.

Community feedback is sometimes hard to swallow, especially if your draft either sucks or needs to be discarded. But it’s important! It’s how you improve both your draft and yourself as a GI writer! Even experienced authors and editors can learn a few things, if someone sees something you missed, or has a suggestion that you find improves the quality in any way, or finds that your topic has already been entirely covered by another issue! It’s important.

When editing your draft, please, for goodness sake, keep the original, and have the newest draft in the original post. What you should do is… ok, say you have a new draft and an old draft. This is what it should look like.


(Current Draft here)
[spoiler](Original non-current draft here)[/spoiler]
[spoiler] (Second non-current draft here)[/spoiler]

This helps everyone. Commenters, you… everyone. And you can add as many spoilers as you want, as long as you number the drafts. But please, keep your current draft non-spoilered, keep your old drafts in spoilers, and do NOT post any drafts anywhere but in the first post, if possible, unless you’re highlighting changes that way. It will help everyone out a lot.

Also, feel free to decline feedback. Don’t do this too often, as feedback is important, but if you strongly disagree with someone, or commenters disagree with each other, then do what you want! Sometimes people misunderstand things, or their ideas just aren’t all that good. But really think about it first, since most feedback is good and should be implemented.
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Part 3: Submission, Editing, and Acceptance
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When you feel your draft is done — and this process should take AT LEAST 2 weeks — then you may submit it. It could be a little odd at first, but you’ll figure it out. Any flag changes you recommend will have to go in with the option text, sadly, so just make sure you separate them nicely (if you have any).

After this, it’s a waiting game. It can take anywhere from a few days to a year! It really depends. The editors prioritize new authors, followed by draft quality, followed by personal interest in the draft itself. The editors are people, too, and they have a heavy workload. They don’t even get paid for it; they do this for fun, and/or to help. So be patient with them, please!

It’s best to assume a draft is not accepted, generally. Editors don’t usually tell people if their drafts were denied since they have so many to kill, and people might just re-submit their drafts anyway. But don’t be discouraged; just keep writing! Sometimes it just takes a while. You could ask an editor if your draft’s been deleted, or ask for it to be deleted, but please, don’t do this often, if at all.

If an editor does look at the issue, they may do one of two things. One, they may edit it, have it peer-reviewed, and then add it to the game, surprising you with a new acceptance notice! Two, they may edit it, go over it with you, and then peer review it and add it to the game. This lets you go over ideas with one another, but is a tiny bit less of a surprise. Not by much though. It really depends on the editor, though, and no; you can not request a specific editor edit your draft.
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Part 4: What’s Next?
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Congratulations if you have an accepted issue! Once an issue of yours is accepted, you pass the course and can graduate! However, that’s not the end. Well, ok, for some people it is; they just want an issue in the game, or a fancy blue gift box badge. But others want more. So just keep writing! Practice, again, makes perfect.

You can also experiment a bit. Take on more daring subjects, enter co-authorships, try new narrative structure or new writing approaches, discuss maybe making an issue chain (BE VERY CAREFUL! These take an unfathomably large amount of time and effort between you and an editor, and so far only editors have made these). If you’re good enough, you may even become an editor yourself!
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HOMEWORK:

Upload your draft, edit it according to feedback and personal judgement, and submit it! once you do that, you pass this lecture! You’re done with the course — mostly.

To graduate from this course, you must first have an issue accepted. That’s not going to be easy. But hopefully, after reading this and taking community suggestions, it won’t be hard either!