No problem. Let me trim the fat a bit from one of my bestiary articles and I'll send it in. I really like what I made this time and hopefully it will make it in! :)
An article with feats and rogue talents sent.
Golarion Gazetteer: Brastlewark should be in by tonight.
I'm working on something with Hellknight orders as Cavalier orders and possibly some other devoted character options, but I do not know if I can get it finished. . . got struck sick this last week.
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Final edit finished; that was brutal.
Two NPCs, with three songs between them, in 1500 words.
I started out intending it to be a Weal or Woe, with the songs as a separate, linked article, but found the links required to bring PCs into the middle of a standoff between the two were getting tenuous, after I found the Bellflowers apparently only seem to rescue halflings, whereas I'd set off on the assumption they were equal opportunity monkeywrenchers.
So my 'Edmund Dante/Villefort' 'race to rescue/kill the black sheep relative of the public icon' plot went down the crapper early last week, just as I caught some foul bug.
I scrapped that aspect, and folded the songs back into the article with the statblocks, which means cuts were in order.
Can't cut the songs, since they're parodies of real songs with specific length, so cut some of the NPC physical description instead. Let the designated artist decide.
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Adhere to word count limits. Don't give us an 800 word doc. Or a 1007 word doc. Or a 1243 word doc. Hit as close to 750 and 1500 as possible. Those are HARD TARGETS. (Except for side trek seeds, bestiary entries, and magic items...those should be 750 or less, like is mentioned up-thread here)
Still have time to get them in....roughly 48 hrs now.
March 31st, 11:59 PM...Pacific
I don't mean to be a stickler, but people can easily get confused about 750 OR 1500 wored count limit and think it could just be a word count range instead. Perhaps going forward you guys should just say the following categories are only 750 and these categories are 1500 so people don't get confused. Or you just make the word count be between 750 and 1500. So you don't have confusion and frustration on your end. I am pretty sure I am toeing the 1500 line but I may have come up short a few hundred words myself.
All three of my critters are polished and finished. I'll make a final final final pass over them for any entrenched errors (hopefully their invisibility will have finally expired) in the morning and then email them off around 9AM-10AM Eastern.
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I don't mean to be a stickler, but people can easily get confused about 750 OR 1500 word count limit and think it could just be a word count range instead. Perhaps going forward you guys should just say the following categories are only 750 and these categories are 1500 so people don't get confused. Or you just make the word count be between 750 and 1500. So you don't have confusion and frustration on your end. I am pretty sure I am toeing the 1500 line but I may have come up short a few hundred words myself.
The word count is a hard count for a specific reason. Each page of text is approximately 750 words. By having hard limits of 750 OR 1500, we are, in essence, stating 1 or 2 pages. Having word counts fall in the middle makes laying out the issue problematic as we strive to avoid having large areas of unused space (which is what an 1100 word article will end up having).
More importantly, hard word counts are pretty standard for any publishing company. There should be no need to limit specific types of articles to a 750 word limit; not only would it be a disservice for those folks who are indeed looking to get published in other venues as well, but we all could end up missing out on someone's moment of inspiration. And the explanation was pretty clear with this in the guidelines in the OP (emphasis mine):
Short and sweet. Unless otherwise specified, article sizes are 750 and 1,500 words. These are HARD targets, not a range, so come as close as possible to these targets. Coming in too far under or over these targets will likely result in the rejection of your submission. Anything over 1,500 words must be pre-approved by the Editor-in-Chief.
Folks missing the word count is an indication that they did not read through the guidelines. If the guidelines are not read, there is little that can be done to solve it short of rejecting works which violate the guidelines.
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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Not to be a jerk here, but we don't have THAT many guidelines to follow... And they are pretty simple, and clear.
Guidelines
• Thou shalt not disregard canon, thou shalt build upon it.
• Keep in mind thy audience. Keep it PG-13. No slash fic/porn fantasies, cheesecake/beefcake/fan service.
• Short and sweet. Unless otherwise specified, article sizes are 750 and 1,500 words. These are HARD targets, not a range, so come as close as possible to these targets. Coming in too far under or over these targets will likely result in the rejection of your submission. Anything over 1,500 words must be pre-approved by the Editor-in-Chief.
• Limit of THREE submissions per person per issue. So, pick your three best ideas!
• You should refrain from any submissions that are reliant upon another submission. This puts us in a difficult situation in being forced to take both if we just like the one, or taking neither of them. Any submitted articles that reference another article(s) must be pre-approved by the Editor-in-Chief.
• Stick to the theme. An article on frost giants in a desert-themed issue is not going to make it. Sorry.
• Submissions used to defame, harass, or threaten board members are not tolerated.
Believe it or not, I've seen 5 of the 7 guidelines broken now. Thankfully, everything is PG-13 so far (one got realllllly close though), and no one is defaming, harassing, or threatening anyone else.
Look, as Dain says, companies have similar, and in most cases more strict, guidelines in place. Failure to follow them makes it really easy to reject your submission. Wayfinder is a lot more relaxed for the most part, because we want everyone to have their chance, but it gets really discouraging to see so many not carefully reading these guidelines...or reading them, and promptly disregarding them.
We may not be Paizo, but we are emulating Paizo. And their standards. And when we get 100+ submissions, it really stands out who followed the rules, and who didn't.
And, man, I really hate rejecting a good article just because they blew the word count...badly.
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Hey Tim/Paris, we still have a couple of days to deadline, so any chance of an article count update so we can see if there are some gaps needing plugging?We have 96 submissions as of right now.
<snip>
Awesome, just 4 short of your initial target -
WELL DONE!!!
... to every person who submitted whether your article gets selected or not! And...
GOOD LUCK!
... to all the editors and artists end everyone involved with the task of reviewing, selecting and putting the issue together.
As a reward(?) for your sterling submission efforts, if your article(s) do not get selected, you could post them to the Blazing 9 thread where I will endeavor to perform a Template Fu review on them for you (and you might even get some other thread participants provide you valuable feedback too - it's what we do in that thread!)
Those of you who do get selected, congratulations - please keep your article secret so we all get a nice surprise on release day :)
Got a Brastlewark-themed Side Trek (350 words) and a Brastlewark Gazetteer (1500 words) that are all finished up. Running them past some friends and then they'll be heading your way.
Just submitted a magic item. :)
Made a rough draft after RPGSS was over for me and finally got around to finishing it. Hopefully it's up to snuff.
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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We are entering the final stretch, folks! The current count is WELL over 100 submissions now, so as Anthony said...WELL DONE!
And sorry for my negativity for the past couple of posts. Just a bit of frustration and a looooong weekend of logging in 100 submissions into our database creeping in. Those posts were supposed to be informative (that is, an alert to those still submitting articles), but after reading them, I come across as cranky.
Which is kind of what an Editor-in-Chief is supposed to be, right. JJ Jameson was never in a good mood, right?
;-)
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You're not trying to portray Spider-Man as a criminal, so we'll forgive you.
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Tim, you are doing everyone a favor by emphasizing these things directly in a bit of a confrontational way to bring it good visibility. Anyone who has freelanced before should know these things already, and newcomers hoping to use Wayfinder as an entry point are much better served in their future efforts by having this drilled into their head, rather than simply a polite and quiet rejection without knowing why.
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Tim, you are doing everyone a favor by emphasizing these things directly in a bit of a confrontational way to bring it good visibility. Anyone who has freelanced before should know these things already, and newcomers hoping to use Wayfinder as an entry point are much better served in their future efforts by having this drilled into their head, rather than simply a polite and quiet rejection without knowing way.
So I did favorite this post, but it also deserves a +1.
Don't worry about sounding "cranky", Tim. As things were clearly laid out in the guidelines, errors should be mentioned so folks can learn from their mistakes and not repeat them when they try to get a paying freelance gig.
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Hey now,
I understand that Wayfinder tries to keep the restrictions and rules light, but like I said, it can easily be confused by some. Even if they read the rules multiple times. Perhaps one flat number going forward would kill the confusion and save you frustration is all I am saying. You guys are going to do what you want no matter what I say, but I am just throwing an idea out there to make the team's life easier is all.
Also concerning freelancing, while many submitters are freelancers and understand the purpose of publishing restrictions and such, there are many who write and submit for Wayfinder with NO intentions of being a freelancer, they just like to write stuff. So in those cases, trying to write in the framework for some can be alot and can cause panic if they are 100 words over 750, or 100 words under 1500.
I personally take no offense, and am flexible to whatever. This time around, I had an overage of words that I had to cut down, but now I am sitting here sweating cause I think at least one of my posts was not EXACTLY 1500 words. So now, I fear rejection over being short the word count instead of being over the word count. That mess is stressful. Versus a "1000 words or less" rule, which would put the endless amount of word count post questions to rest.
Yes it's just "changing a few words in the rules" but those words count. As you have so stated.
While I feel the guidelines are clear, I think the Bestiary Guidelines that were listed later in the thread (reprinted below) should definitely be added to the OP for future Open Calls
That will probably mean that I should send bestiary entries together...Bestiary submissions are sort of a strange "beast", so to speak.
To further clarify, guidelines for bestiary articles should be:
- A single monster entry should be 750-words or less in length. This means that a 350-word monster stat block and text is just fine. We actually LIKE the creatures that don't aim for a 750-word count, because they often don't NEED all those words. Bestiary entries are at their best when they are short and concise.
- Because of the potential shortness of bestiary entries, we will consider up to two creatures ONE submission, if you are one of those people who want to submit multiple articles. The compiled bestiary article does not adhere to the typical word count limits, so the creatures we get, the better the potential for the multi-page article.
- Each creature should be a separate submission. This means that we would prefer that you not cram 4 creatures into one 1500-word article, and consider THAT one submission. It should be four separate documents. That is how we deal with them in editing. (It would count as two submissions though).
Any questions? I know this complicates things a bit, but I want to be sure that we don't short ourselves on the potential pool of creatures for the bestiary. That's one of our feature articles that I feel NEEDS the diversity that only a bunch of submissions can provide.
Anyways, gotta redo an article. Got corrupt on the dropbox transfer :(
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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I understand that Wayfinder tries to keep the restrictions and rules light, but like I said, it can easily be confused by some. Even if they read the rules multiple times. Perhaps one flat number going forward would kill the confusion and save you frustration is all I am saying. You guys are going to do what you want no matter what I say, but I am just throwing an idea out there to make the team's life easier is all.
I understand that you are trying to help, and that simplifying the whole word count thing seems a solution...but it would not be helpful. Locking everyone to a 750-word limit gives us nothing but 1-page articles. And some ideas NEED 2 pages. Locking everyone to 1500-words, well not every idea needs 2 pages to get the point across, and we certainly don't want all articles to be 2-pages. The variety of 1 and 2-page articles helps insert full-page ads without interrupting an article. It flows better.
Also concerning freelancing, while many submitters are freelancers and understand the purpose of publishing restrictions and such, there are many who write and submit for Wayfinder with NO intentions of being a freelancer, they just like to write stuff. So in those cases, trying to write in the framework for some can be alot and can cause panic if they are 100 words over 750, or 100 words under 1500.
But to those just writing for the love of writing (and the setting), why should you have different rules? Honestly, you SHOULD panic if you are over or under 100 words. You need to realize exactly how much extra work eliminating 100 words in an article can be. And if you are short? Well, now we need to figure out how to fill that empty space...either by getting you to write more to fill it, or finding an ad, or making the illustration abnormally larger than we do in the rest of the issue. We didn't choose 750-words and 1500-words arbitrarily. That's what's needed to fill the page with content.
Furthermore, that extra work needed? It's all unpaid. We do this for the love of it. When your article is accepted, and we work it over, correcting the mechanics, the grammar, the word count, etc., what we want is the BEST possible article in the end. And we work at it...revising, editing, consulting. It all takes time, and that time is freely given. Not following guidelines just makes more work, and that's more of our free time taken. We do love making this 'zine, though, so in the end, we do it because we want to make something together, as a community. But, just realize how much is being given here...freely. Please do not take that for granted.
I personally take no offense, and am flexible to whatever. This time around, I had an overage of words that I had to cut down, but now I am sitting here sweating cause I think at least one of my posts was not EXACTLY 1500 words. So now, I fear rejection over being short the word count instead of being over the word count. That mess is stressful. Versus a "1000 words or less" rule, which would put the endless amount of word count post questions to rest.Yes it's just "changing a few words in the rules" but those words count. As you have so stated.
Hitting 1500 words EXACTLY is not what we are asking here. There is a word count limit...a HARD target. What I expect is for authors to come as close as possible. How close? I don't even blink if I see a piece over/under by 25 words or so. 26-50 words...that's workable, but it gets flagged for possible rejection. More off than that? The more you are off, the more work and time it will take to fix the article, and then it just becomes based on whether it's worth the effort or not.
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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While I feel the guidelines are clear, I think the Bestiary Guidelines that were listed later in the thread (reprinted below) should definitely be added to the OP for future Open Calls
Absolutely. Every call for submissions has us refining and clarifying our guidelines. The bestiary and magic item submissions are obvious candidates for new word-count guidelines (as well as how they count towards your 3-submission limit).
Suggestion noted!
No problem. Always glad to help :)
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You're doing an awesome job Tim, just saying :)
Got mine in. I hope you like it.
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So please friends, understand, that I do not have any bad feelings, nor do I have any negative thoughts against the current plans.
I am just one of those types that likes to be thorough and detailed and understand why things are the way they are. As well as question if I think there is room for improvement. I know EXACTLY what it is like to do work unpaid and be a part of a much bigger picture. I do not wish to take anything for granted so that being said, I am just going to sit back and see how everything unfolds.
Thank you all for listening, I look forward to seeing the next issue.
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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So please friends, understand, that I do not have any bad feelings, nor do I have any negative thoughts against the current plans.
I am just one of those types that likes to be thorough and detailed and understand why things are the way they are. As well as question if I think there is room for improvement. I know EXACTLY what it is like to do work unpaid and be a part of a much bigger picture. I do not wish to take anything for granted so that being said, I am just going to sit back and see how everything unfolds.
Thank you all for listening, I look forward to seeing the next issue.
And, just to note, my intent was addressing the more general "you" of all people submitting stuff, and not targeting YOU, Lady Ophelia, in particular. Sorry if it seemed otherwise.
Hmm, I sent an article with 1,564 words, I thought it was ok to stay within a 5% margin.
Well, it's good to know that 25 over/under is the sweet spot. ;)
Just going to drop by here and say that as an editor trying to wrangle my first issue of Yggdrasil fanzine, and with a quarter of the number of submissions, it can get really tricky when there is no name attached. Having to go back through countless emails to try and determine who sent in what is frustrating. And unpaid. ;) Much more annoying when you have over 100 submissions. Not just no name no credit, but no name no publish.
I've contributed articles to three Wayfinders and have some other freelance credits. I find adding this at the top of my doc useful:
Annoyingly Alliterative Arbor Above An Atrium
Author: Morgan Boehringer
Editor/Developer: Tim Nightengale, Paris Crenshaw
Publisher: Paizo Fans United
Wordcount: 1497 words
Alright, despite catastrophic computer failure with my motherboard burning out, I was able to get both of my bestiary submissions in.
Contributor
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I've contributed articles to three Wayfinders and have some other freelance credits. I find adding this at the top of my doc useful:
Annoyingly Alliterative Arbor Above An Atrium
Author: Morgan Boehringer
Editor/Developer: Tim Nightengale, Paris Crenshaw
Publisher: Paizo Fans UnitedWordcount: 1497 words
We find that useful, too. ;) You don't necessarily need to add the Editor/Developer line, but the other information is very helpful. Adding the word count line tells us that you paid attention to that, as well.
I guess the thing that I'd like folks to keep in mind is that, to me, the only thing separating Wayfinder from other "official" publications is that none of us gets paid for the work we do. In every other way, we aspire to put out work that matches the quality of the best publishers. We do it to give Paizo's fans a chance to show Paizo's staff how much we love the stuff they create. The writers and artists are sharing their work with the whole community, but each piece is really a little tribute to the Paizonians, themselves.
If folks just want to create something and share it with the community, then I strongly encourage them to do so. There are many outlets for that, from creating a personal website to simply posting it on the messageboards. Wayfinder is something different, though, and so it needs to be approached differently. People don't have to be aspiring freelance writers/designers, but they do have to be willing to adopt some professional modes of behavior.
Of course, as Tim said, we're open to suggestions, and we try to be fair-minded in listening to others' thoughts and questions. It's part of that professionalism we're striving for. We, the Wayfinder staff, deeply appreciate the trust and confidence the community puts in us. We take our roles very seriously and will continue to work to improve Wayfinder, both in terms of what we put out and of the policies we develop to get that product out the door and into your anxious hands.
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So, who's rolling the Bluff check?
So, who's rolling the Bluff check?
Oddly, that was also my first immediate thought.
Point of Order-- what time zone does today and submissions officially end?
I still half 1.5 hours, right?
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I guess the thing that I'd like folks to keep in mind is that, to me, the only thing separating Wayfinder from other "official" publications is that none of us gets paid for the work we do. In every other way, we aspire to put out work that matches the quality of the best publishers.
And look, hard work on Wayfinder can pay off big! Congrats again, Paris. :)
I guess the thing that I'd like folks to keep in mind is that, to me, the only thing separating Wayfinder from other "official" publications is that none of us gets paid for the work we do. In every other way, we aspire to put out work that matches the quality of the best publishers.And look, hard work on Wayfinder can pay off big! Congrats again, Paris. :)
Paris! I never knew. You dark, deranged, beautiful thing.
Paris! I never knew. You dark, deranged, beautiful thing.I guess the thing that I'd like folks to keep in mind is that, to me, the only thing separating Wayfinder from other "official" publications is that none of us gets paid for the work we do. In every other way, we aspire to put out work that matches the quality of the best publishers.And look, hard work on Wayfinder can pay off big! Congrats again, Paris. :)
I haven't gotten Faiths & Philosophies yet, but his Cloven Hoof Syndicate was pretty darn awesome.
Finally submitted my last article. . . went through a ton of ideas before it finally solidified into Hellknight Orders as Cavalier Orders.
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Contributor
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I haven't gotten Faiths & Philosophies yet, but his Cloven Hoof Syndicate was pretty darn awesome.Paris! I never knew. You dark, deranged, beautiful thing.I guess the thing that I'd like folks to keep in mind is that, to me, the only thing separating Wayfinder from other "official" publications is that none of us gets paid for the work we do. In every other way, we aspire to put out work that matches the quality of the best publishers.And look, hard work on Wayfinder can pay off big! Congrats again, Paris. :)
Um. Gee, thanks! :D
I think that my first submissions will be easily discarded (1586 words...) Too bad, since it took me a bit of an effort... ^_^
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Hitting 1500 words EXACTLY is not what we are asking here. There is a word count limit...a HARD target. What I expect is for authors to come as close as possible. How close? I don't even blink if I see a piece over/under by 25 words or so. 26-50 words...that's workable, but it gets flagged for possible rejection. More off than that? The more you are off, the more work and time it will take to fix the article, and then it just becomes based on whether it's worth the effort or not.
This is valuable info. I wasn't sure about the tolerances, either, but I hedged my bets by flagging a nice, but not necessary, chunk of article as a candidate for deletion if my article was over by too much. I'll leave it to Tim and crew to say if that's a legit technique or not.
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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Regarding our Ads and the deadlines there.....
Due to me getting on the ads part of the issue a little late, I bumped the dates a bit, to give publishers more time to decide and prepare....
The "deadline" to reserve ad space in Wayfinder #11 is April 15, 2014. That means that we need interested parties to commit to placing the ad, so we can lock in the number of pages of ads we will have for the issue.
Now, the deadline to get us the ad and payment is May 15, 2014. That means that the ad graphic file and the payment MUST be in to us on or before May 15th, when they would need to be applied to the layout.
We are looking quite lean on advertising at the moment...which is a little bit of a concern, given that we will likely need to print quite a bit more copies for PaizoCon this year.
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PaizoCon Founder, Wayfinder Editor-in-Chief
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Hitting 1500 words EXACTLY is not what we are asking here. There is a word count limit...a HARD target. What I expect is for authors to come as close as possible. How close? I don't even blink if I see a piece over/under by 25 words or so. 26-50 words...that's workable, but it gets flagged for possible rejection. More off than that? The more you are off, the more work and time it will take to fix the article, and then it just becomes based on whether it's worth the effort or not.This is valuable info. I wasn't sure about the tolerances, either, but I hedged my bets by flagging a nice, but not necessary, chunk of article as a candidate for deletion if my article was over by too much. I'll leave it to Tim and crew to say if that's a legit technique or not.
The problem with defining tolerances is that once defined, they become the new target. I have no doubts that writers would strive to aim for the upper bounds as much as possible, in order to get those extra words.
The term "hard target" really was stated BECAUSE we had so many people submit articles BETWEEN 750 and 1500 words. So, that term is there precisely to clarify that we need the word counts as close to the targets as possible...not somewhere in between.
We are not draconian, though. Failure to hit the word count target is not necessarily instant grounds for rejection. It is DEFINITELY a mark against the article though. And the more "off" one is, the stronger the mark against it. This compiles with other guideline violations, as well, plus misspelling, grammar issues, stat block or mechanical errors, etc. It adds up, and enough bad marks gets you a rejection.
And yes, Charlie's technique of pointing out what could be cut is helpful, but honestly, I'd rather you just make the decision, and cut what needs to be cut to hit the word count target.