Box of Tricks

Just popping in with a reminder that the deadline for writers' final drafts and artists' rough drafts is the 23rd of September. That's just less than a week now!

The full details of what you need to send us (drafts and dates you can not post), where to send it to, what will be happening next, and other information can be found at this post.

As always if you have any questions you can email us at prosbigbang@gmail.com.

Now that we have just over a month to go until the final deadline we thought it was about time to let you all know what to expect over the next few weeks. Apologies for this long post, we didn't want any of it hidden under a cut.

The Deadlines

Wednesday 23rd September

Writer's final draft is due

• While you'll still have a few days to tweak and polish, we'd like the writers to have complete, finished stories by this point.

Artist's rough draft is due

• As the artists have less time to work on this than the writers, we only need to see a rough draft of their art at this point. What we're looking for is an indication that the artist is on track to finish in time for their posting date.

Artists and writers should all send their drafts to the friendly mods. Further information about sending us these drafts will be posted closer to the deadline.

Sunday 27th September

The posting schedule is sent out to artists and writers.

Thursday 1st October

Posting begins. *dances*

What You Will Be Posting

Writers

In a publicly accessible location of your choosing: your story.

• You may post in your own LJ, in an LJ you create specifically for this purpose, in an archive, like The Automated Hatstand or AO3, or on a website.


• We only require that the story is publicly accessible, and that you do not post your story before your assigned posting date.

In the ci5_boxoftricks LJ: a post with a link to your story

• We'll be supplying templates for what your posts should look like nearer to the posting dates.

Artists

In a publicly accessible location of your choosing: the art for your claimed story, with any commentary you'd like.

• You may post in your own LJ, in an LJ you create specifically for this purpose, in an archive, like The Automated Hatstand or AO3, or on a website.


• We only require that the art is publicly accessible, and that you do not post your art before your assigned posting date.

In the ci5_boxoftricks LJ: a post with a link to your artist's post.

• We'll be supplying templates for what your posts should look like nearer to the posting dates.

Writers and artists

Just a quick reminder that like last year both writers and artists will be making their own master posts to ci5_boxoftricks. But of course, as in previous years, writers and artists who would like the art included within the story should feel free to arrange to do so.

Some extra reminders / notes

We'll be supplying templates for what your posts should look like nearer to the posting dates.

We will also be asking you about any dates in October when you would not be able to post so put your thinking caps on.

If posting in LJ, there is a limit of 65,000 characters per post. This generally works out to an average of 8,000 to 10,000 words.

A new 2015 Pros Big Bang Collection has been made available here. To find out more about AO3 take a look here and here. To be clear you are not required to post your story / art at AO3 but if you are interested in posting at AO3 we still have some invite codes left so drop us a line if you would like one.

And we ask that both artists and writers do not cross-post their stories and art to any other community before the end of October.

And finally

As always if you have any questions, drop us a comment or an email (the address is prosbigbang@gmail.com) and watch out at the comm for future posts.

For those of you who haven’t seen a Big Bang Challenge before, it’s a collaborative effort between writers and artists. Writers sign up to write a story with a minimum word count. Later in the process, artists claim a story based on an anonymous story summary and produce at least one piece of art to go with it. The art can be an illustration, a manip, or even a vid.

Over the last three years we’ve set the minimum word count at 15,000 and we have decided to keep that word count for this year as it seems like a good figure for everyone. But please remember 15,000 is the minimum word count and if you would like to write 30,000, 50,000 or even 100,000 we will cheer you on all the way.

And now for the schedule.............

     Writer sign ups will start on the 1st February and run until the 1st March.
     Artist sign ups will start on the 1st May and run until the 31st May.
     Rough drafts are due at the start of July and the artists claims day will happen just after that.
     Final stories and art are due in late September and posting begins in October.

And you can find the more detailed schedule on the ci5_boxoftricks profile page and on the left hand side of the main comm page.

Of course even if you don't plan on signing up, please do feel free to join the community. You can help by cheerleading, volunteering to beta, providing prompts, and generally joining in the festivities.

So fire up your word processor, sharpen your pencils, fine tune your Photoshop skills, gear up your vidding software and get ready for the 2015 Box of Tricks!