The Fan Fiction Rules - Read Me~

Is there a way to turn the swear filter off in this section? It really hampers some of what I try to post.

 

According to bobandbill, Serebii doesn't think it's possible to disable the filter for a single forum. Because the default font size is 4, you can use size tags to wrap one of the letters in a swear word to get around the censor but have the word render correctly. Like this:

f[size=4]u[/size]ck

 

Good to know haha. I will need this myself. Thanks~

 

I have a question about this section: What counts as a "scripted fic"? Is it literally anything in the format:

Character A: Dialogue.

Character B: Response to dialogue.

Character A: More dialogue.

Or are there are other criteria for deciding whether or not something counts as script-fic? For instance, I assume that the "Production Roundtable" segments of Guidance (here and here) aren't being counted as script-fic for the purpose of these rules, even though they're in the above format. Is it because they count as 'epistolary fiction' instead, because they could plausibly be in-universe transcriptions of the described meetings? Or is it because the only important thing going on in the meetings is the character dialogue, so the 'pure alternating dialogue' format is acceptable in this case as opposed to the stereotypical script-fic which uses the format for the entire narrative, including scenes which are ill-suited to it like action scenes or scenes where the characters are exploring a new environment?

It seems that Humans of Hoenn also doesn't run afoul of the rule, despite the text portion of it being mostly alternating lines of pure dialogue. Would an 'interview fic' in the same format, sans images, also not be considered 'script-fic'?

Would say, something like a philosophical dialogue between a Team Plasma supporter and a Team Plasma opponent in the style of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (which consists almost entirely of a conversation between three characters in the format listed above, modulo the inclusion of a few diagrams and pictures) be considered script-fic? I don't think something like that would be improved by adding 'stage direction' to it, since the focus is entirely on the ideas being communicated in the dialogue, and doing things like describing the coffee shop where the dialogue is taking place would just distract from that.

Also, what is the purpose of the "fics cannot be written half in script form and half in prose" rule? I'm assuming it's to prevent confusion occurring when different formats are mixed together in a sloppy manner, but as written it seems to rule out the use of mixing the formats as part of potentially interesting literary devices. For example, consider a story about a man who keeps receiving portions of a screenplay which seem to accurately describe his current life, but present him as a (stupid, cruel) minor character in a bizarre horror story who's ignorant of the supernatural conspiracies and cults swirling around him. It might be interesting for the story to alternate between chapters from the screenplay and prose chapters of the man trying to figure out what's going on.

Actually, to be honest, I'm not sure why 'stage-direction-free' scripted fic is banned at all. I don't think it's controversial that a skilled author can communicate characters' emotions and tone-of-voice with dialogue alone. And it's challenging, but I believe still doable, to also hint at setting details and what actions the characters are taking using only dialogue as well. Including a rule saying that any 'script-format' fic has to have stage direction to me seems to hamstring fics done in that format, and chip away at their very reason for being. Presumably the whole reason you'd want to write a story like that is to experiment with what can be done in fiction using only dialogue, and having a rule saying descriptions of character actions and such has to be added in to me feels like having a rule that any poem posted to the forums must have at least one line in every stanza that doesn't rhyme with any of the other lines.

It's true that 'pure-dialogue' stories can be written in a lazy and unskilled manner, but isn't this true of prose format stories as well, or indeed any type of story? Then there are some other categories of fiction, like songfic and drabbles, which I feel are also associated with being unskilled and low-quality, but which are not subject to any special restrictions like scripted-fics are, nor are they mentioned as being specifically discouraged. Singling out script-fic to me seems arbitrary. Writing a story using only scenery description and nothing else is also challenging, but that isn't banned or mentioned as being discouraged. Epistolary fiction in the format of letters between different characters can also be difficult to do well, but that too isn't banned or discouraged.

Overall, I feel like any good this rule might do in discouraging amateur authors from posting stories which fall into a particular failure-mode of lazy writing is outweighed by its potential to discourage truly creative and experimental forms of storytelling.

 

What's the policy on fade-to-black sex scenes in fan-fics?