Stories

Characters

List all of the characters in the "Who:" section of the post, with their names separated by commas. For example, if the Who: section was like this:

Who: Enrizial, Anaia and Faraline

you would enter the following:

Enrizial, Anaia, Faraline

It doesn't matter whether the characters are NPCs or PCs - just copy all of the names from the Who: section, only deleting non-names (such as "NPC guardsman".

Once you click the submit button, the database will be searched for existing PCs and NPCs matching these names and you will be asked to confirm the names of the characters. If an NPC has been listed which does not already exist, then you will have to create a new NPC by entering a name and rank. (If you don't know, just make an educated guess or enter 0 for the age and "unknown" for the rank.)

Club Date

This is the Pernese date on which the post was supposed to have taken place (this is listed in the "When:" section of the post.

When a new story is created, this is set to day 1 of the currently open Pern month and Turn, so you can use this to work out the current Turn (which is not usually listed in the post).

Date of Posting

This is the real-life date (i.e. in Earth time) on which the post was sent to the club mailing list. This date is used to calculate in which month the post is to be counted for reqs.

Description

This is a short summary of what happens in the post, and should be a copy of the "What:" section of the email sent to the list.

Locations

Use this select box to select all of the locations listed in the "Where:" section of the post. You can select more than one by holding down the CTRL key.

Sometimes a post will take place at an non-PC location (such as one of the Northern Weyrs). In this case, select "Somewhere Else" from the list.

Notes

This box can be used to enter any notes the writers added to their post - such as a list of personas mentioned, an explanation of past plots for newer members, or the fact that the post was mentor approved.

Story Name

This is the title given in the subject line of the post you would like to enter. You don't need to enter [Triad Roleplay] or the acronym of the location.

So for a post with this subject line:

Triad Roleplay: EFH/DCW: Complaints

the title to be entered is "Complaints".

Story Ratings

There are three possible ratings for stories posted to this website: PG, PG-17 and Adult.

Most posts are rated PG, but those indicated by the writers as being PG-17 (and which MUST obey the PG-17 guidelines) should be rated PG-17. Members will still be able to view them, but a warning icon will be displayed next to the post title.

Posts sent to the Adult list should be rated as Adult, and only members over 18 and off mentorship will be able to see them.

Story Text

This is the text of the post - the story itself!

Spacing Most posts go to the list with a fixed line length of around 60-80 characters, which means that if we just copy and paste posts into the text box, there will be an extra line break at the end of each line. These then get converted into HTML line-break tags when the post is displayed. I can't think of any easy way to delete the line breaks without also getting rid of the breaks we *do* want (i.e. between paragraphs).

These extra line breaks aren't a big problem really, but if someone has their browser window fairly narrow the spacing can get all messed up if they're there. So it's a good idea to delete them all (there are programs to do this automatically, such as eCleaner) before entering posts.

Also make sure there are no extra line breaks in the description ("What") of the post.

Spelling and Grammar Not everyone remembers to spellcheck their posts. If any obvious spelling or grammar mistakes are spotted, they should be corrected.

Signatures These should not be included in the story text.

Posts that include more than one part These should each be entered as a separate story. Otherwise, the post will only count as a single post for reqs.

Writers

All of the writers who contributed to the post should be selected using this list box (not just those who had PC characters involved - those who wrote NPCs should also be included).

To select more than one writer, hold down the CTRL key while clicking on the names of each writer.