Rules and Regs for Submissions

1 - Each chapter must cover the required beats that will be stated for each podcast.  We’ll explore what each beat means as we come to it and it needs to be written, as well as brainstorm some ideas.  Of course, you don’t have to follow whatever comes out of the brainstorm, but if you want to participate and are struggling to know what to write, then the brainstorm will help.  Who decides is you have covered the beats?  Me.  I am the arbiter of that.

2 - Each chapter must be 1000 words or less.  I mentioned before that the goal is a ten thousand word story, but really, that is the word count limit on this project.  Each chapter is capped at 1000 words, but if you can hit the beats required of the chapter in a haiku, then do it.  Since there are 15 beats and 10 chapters, the chapters will contain one and a half beats each. Each beat will be 666 ish words.  This will make sense later, I promise.

3 - There is no limit to the form here.  You can write normal prose, a poem, or a screenplay formatted chapter, it’s all good.  We are here to write, goddamnit.  So do that in any way you feel comfortable or that you feel like doing or experimenting with.

4 - Keep things R.  It can be tricky to know how much detail you should put into any sex or violent scenes or what to include in them.  Especially with a gore story, things are probably going to get a little nasty as far as violence goes.  As far as any sex scenes, I have no problem with a sex scene, but keep it respectable.  This means no children or animals, and if you find yourself describing someone’s genitals in detail, you have gone too far.  But with the tight word limit and so much to do within it, it is unlikely this will be a problem for you.  Who decides if you have been too sexually explicit?  Me.  I am the arbiter of that.

5 - I will not be editing your work in any way.  I will read your story exactly how it is written, down to any typos, grammar errors, or punctuation placements.  This isn’t to say “make sure the piece is perfect”.  I, for one, am going to try to keep the pieces I submit (if I have to submit them) to draft one or two.  This is not a place where you need to feel the same pressures you feel when you submit something for publication.  This is a free space where we can leave things rough around the edges, and write as we did when we were children, uninhibited and natural, because there are not stakes here. 

6 - I will choose randomly from the pool of entries that qualify and that chapter will be read on this podcast as part of the larger story.  This thing will be a crazy mish-mash.  I mean, none of us know where it is going, or who will take it where.  That’s the fun.  If there are no qualified entries, I will write the chapter, and if the following week there are no qualifiers, then I will get a friend to write that chapter and back and forth and on and on til the end.  But please, don’t put that on us.  Write and submit, it will be fun, trust me.

7 - Research is optional.  If you want to write about something you don’t understand completely, you can research it and make it detailed and correct, or you can bullshit your way through it, and whatever you write will be truth in the story.

8 - How to submit. 

Submitting a chapter: Use the form below.  If you don't want to copy/paste your chapter into the form, upload your file in .doc or .docx or .pdf file type.  

Submitting art for the Illustrated Podcast on the Crandall Monk Youtube Channel: Use the form below.  .jpg would be best.

That’s the rules for now, we’ll see if we need to add more as this thing goes along.