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Welcome to alt.fiction.interactive. AFI is a usenet newsgroup devoted to interactive or collaborative fiction. Although there are similarities, AFI is not a role-playing game. AFI is comprised of Writing Units. Each unit will be led by a Facilitator and will have its own theme or genre. The writing units will be independent, each having its own FAQ or Guidelines as established by its Facilitator. A Facilitator may choose to limit the number of writers in his unit or to limit the length of posts. He may also divide his writing unit in two or more sub-units if he decides they are needed.
The sole responsibilities of the unit Facilitators to the main AFI group will be to keep the Chief Facilitator up to date on unit members, to conform to the basic guidelines outlined below, and to work with the Chief Facilitator to resolve any disputes that may arise.
Any member of AFI may propose a new Writing Unit by submitting his idea and his FAQ to the Chief Facilitator. It will then be sent to the newsgroup so that interested writers may contact the Facilitator. Any Facilitator may recruit writers for his unit.
Current writing units are:
Web Page URL's for each unit will be added to this document as they become available.
Each writing unit will have a mailing list of its members. All posts must be sent to the mailing list and to this newsgroup. Posting to alt.fiction.interactive may be done via your news reader or via DejaNews.
All materials posted on AFI are copyrighted by the author and may not be reprinted without the express written permission of said author.
We are all fallible human beings and must anticipate that disagreements among authors may arise, infrequently we hope. If you are having a problem of any kind, you should first take it to your Facilitator via private email. Such issues do not belong on the newsgroup. In the vast majority of cases, the unit Facilitator should be able to resolve the issue either my mediation or arbitration. Should that fail, the Chief Facilitator may be brought in to help. She will try her best to come up with a win-win solution for all parties, but in the event she must make a unilateral decision, that decision will be binding. She will give priority to the unit Facilitator's recommendations.
The purpose of AFI is to provide a venue for free creative expression in collaborative fiction. To do that effectively, we must establish some minimum guidelines based upon respect for each other as authors.
We cannot write fiction without creating characters and most of us care deeply about the characters we create. There will be three levels of characters:
It is totally up to the author to decide to which category his characters belong.
Relationships of all kinds are among characters are a vital part of compelling fiction and are certainly encouraged. However, if you write your character proposing a liaison with another author's character, you must stop short of having the character accept and leave it to the other author to proceed or stop. The best method is to e-mail the other author and ask if he agrees to begin a relationship.
The same holds true for respecting already established relationships. If you would like a character of yours to come between established lovers or marital partners, all parties must agree. E-mail the authors and respect their decision.
It should be mentioned here that AFI will have minor participants and readers. There will and should be sexual encounters among our characters and expletives are a part of conversation in certain situations. However, all authors are required to use good judgment in writing these scenes. Hard-core pornographic description and excessive vulgar language written for shock value only will not be tolerated. Any author violating this will be given one warning by his Facilitator. Further violations will result in the author being requested to find another place to write.
No author will be requested to take back a post. Once written, it stands. However, this requires due diligence from all of us. Read the posts of the other characters carefully so that you know what they are doing, what they're involved in, and how they are feeling at the moment. Read the main characters' biographies to learn what they are all about, how they behave, what they might do, and what they will not do. Be careful when writing someone else's character to write consistent with the author's character concept.
Still, mistakes will happen. If someone writes your character incorrectly, please do not flame him. It was not intentional. A private, polite e-mail explaining what was wrong and why should do the trick. If someone consistently miswrites your character or ignores what you have written, feel free to contact your Facilitator for help. A little common courtesy from all of us should help to keep AFI the friendly, open, creative group it was created to be.
Along the same lines, cross-posts will happen. Two writers post at almost the same time and the result is some major or minor inconsistencies. Minor mistakes in place or time should usually just be ignored. In a couple of weeks time, no one will remember that Judi wrote Mary upstairs in her bedroom while John wrote that she was in the kitchen cooking dinner. We can simply assume that the times were not exactly the same.
For major inconsistencies, well there's always a way to write around them, and it can be a real challenge to our creativity. Maybe something that happened was actually a dream or hallucination; perhaps there was a case of mistaken identity -- someone you thought you saw doing something was actually someone else. These examples are simplistic, but are meant only to illustrate that there are always options.
If a member, for whatever reason, finds he cannot participate for an extended period of time, he must let those on his mailing list(s) know that he'll be unavailable and when he thinks he'll be able to return. A member may write in as many units as he chooses. However, he should carefully consider how much time he can devote to this group and not take on more than he can comfortably handle.
Mostly, it just boils down to mutual consideration and a willingness to work with each other to produce entertaining and rewarding fiction.
As mention above, all story material will be posted to alt.fiction.interactive. The subject of your post should include an identifying abbreviation for your writing unit followed by your title. For example: [AM] Applied Science for a post for the AMBER writing unit. Current identifying abbreviations are:
[AM] Amber
[LC] Lord's Castle
[TH] Thalia
[SH] Stormhaven
A Starfleet ship will use the ship name as its identifier.
In most cases, writers wishing to communicate with others in his unit outside of the story line should be done via e-mail. However, if an author wants to add notes to his post, it is highly recommended that they be placed at the end of the post rather that interspersed in the body. In any case, anything not part of the story must begin with
or
and conclude with
, brackets included.
Additionally, all writers are strongly requested to refrain from writing 'tag' followed by another writer's name. It detracts from the flow of the story and we believe that all members of this group are perceptive enough to be aware when someone has left an opening for them to continue the story.
This document will be modified or expanded as our writing group continues to develop. It will be posted to alt.fiction.interactive on a regular basis as will a How To Join document. Each facilitator will post his or her FAQ or other relevant documents to the newsgroup regularly. By joining AFI, a writer is implicitly and explicitly agreeing to abide by the provisions of this document and by the provisions established by the Facilitator of any writing unit in which he participates.
AFI welcomes you warmly and eagerly anticipates your contributions.
Judi Marko
Chief Facilitator
AFI
