Well this is annoying

[amalthia]

I submitted the first part of my Harry Potter fan fic to Restricted Section.org and it got rejected for

"Your story has significant spelling errors.
Your story contains elements that do not match canon.

Your story contains incorrectly placed punctuation. "

Okay I can live with this but I've reread this story and while yes I know I'm probably too close to the material to read it objectively, I don't think I mispelled THAT many words. I've edited this part multiple times and had other friends read it and they let me know where I went wrong with puncation or mispelling, and I fixed everything they found wrong. And I have no clue where I went in a different direction from the cannon universe. sigh :(

Has anyone else had this much trouble submitting to Restricted Section?

I think they could have at least pointed out the parts that were flawed so I could find and fix them.

Maybe someday in the far future I'll get around to editing my story again, for now I'm going to concentrate on the new parts.

I guess I should have just wrote AU at the top, though as to why a fan fic has to stick completely to canon universe is beyond me.

Comments

[celticfaerie2.livejournal.com]

I guess I should have just wrote AU at the top, though as to why a fan fic has to stick completely to canon universe is beyond me.

A fan fic that sticks *completely* to canon is...Why bother? Part of the fun in fan fic is to recreate. It's using pre-existing characters to tell your own story. It's exploring characters you love and bending them to your will as a writer.

I think stores that stick to canon are boring and self defeating. Can't be much fun to write either. Elements of canon are nice, and often benefit the story, but...well, I just think it's more fun to stray.

Canon is wha is already deermined. The whole point of fan fiction is to explore what isn't there.

[amalthia]

Well i think they are just want locations to be the same or somethign like that. As in if you want to unlock doors with a spell you have to use the spell Hermione uses in the first book, and if you make up another spell name to unlock the door it'll disqualify the story.

It's really tough to keep everything in cannon for Harry Potter because there are just so many facts to remember. Like where Gryffindor tower is located and etc.... it's just too much.

I had a few friends read this first part and I'll admit they found some grammar errors and I fixed them but I really don't think my puncuation is that awful, and it bugs me that they won't archive a story because of a few mistakes in it. I had two words mispelled that I found so far, breath and breathe...

Man I wish I had the moderators from this archive beta reading for me.

[sailornaboo.livejournal.com]

Mine got rejected for the same reasons, but now that some time has passed, I can see my errors more clearly. In your case, I really thought your was Restricted Section material in both mechanics and style.

A theory -- perhaps they are pickier about WIP fics from new authors?

[amalthia]

Well I think when I'm completely finished with the story I'll just resubmit the whole damn thing at one time, which should be over 200 something pages.

you may be right about them not wanting to post another WIP by an unknown author.

It's just I haven't really seen archives this picky before. Hell I've enjoyed quite a few stories though the puncuation was off and some of the spellings were odd.

saraid wrote this wonderful Sentinel fan fic called Dirty Little Secrets and the first version she posted online wasn't grammatically correct but the story and the style she wrote it in was awesome. http://www.squidge.org/~pumpkin/saraid/sentinel.htm

and I was totally into the story. So I tried to read the story and if I liked it that's what counted, not how many grammar errors there were.

I guess I should have known Restricted Section would be picky, their submission page was rather long. Mine I think says, if it contains rape/abuse/and etc...I'll post it. the funny thing is I've tried reading some of the stories on Restricted Section and a lot of them suck. I mean there are some really good ones, but the majority are boring to read.

I thought it was like any other archive, a few good stories surrounded by medicore ones.

[juxiantang.livejournal.com]

Oh my!!! I can't believe it! I think there is something seriously wrong in the heads of the girls from Restricted Section. Like *seriously* wrong. Do they reject stories?!!! They archive lots of fics that will make any sane person throw up. And not to mention containing tons of errors. And what about those "elements that don't match canon"? Isn't all slash about something that doesn't match canon?

I think the archivist girl had a bad case of PMS when taking a look at your story. Or something. Because these comments are really strange.

I mean my "Damage Control" is there, and I'm sure there are more errors there than you can ever make :-) Not to mention "elements that don't match canon".

Please don't be upset. I really don't like those selective archives. The quality of things there is not higher than anywhere but their self-conceit... oh my.

[amalthia]

I'll survive. Basically I felt a small blow to my pride. I couldn't figure it out either, how that archive can archive a ton of boring not so great stories and decide mine wasn't good enough. sigh

Honestly there are maybe 20 really good stories and the rest...I tried to read and found washing dishes to be more entertaining than reading some of those fics.

As for Damage Control I didn't see any obvious errors...the girl did write back to me and let me know I got my breath and breathe mixed up..but I only used those words 2 times in the story...it seems like such a small thing. And puncuation...I purposely don't use correct punucation sometimes. grrrr

oh well I don't know if it's their loss or not, but I'm not going to waste time worrying about it again. There are other archives that aren't so picky. :)