House Big Bang

Hi, participants, readers, viewers, writers, and artists!

We've had a wonderful week here at house_bigbang, and that's due in no small part to everyone who's commented on the artwork and stories. Thank you to everyone who's offered feedback to the writers and artists in this round. Of course, everyone can continue to enjoy the stories and artwork, and feedback is always welcome on any of the pieces. However, at this point, if artists and writers would like to repost your contributions to your personal journals or elsewhere, please feel free to do so!

Over the next couple of months, we'll be doing a Spotlight Story post for each of the stories, highlighting it for a few days on the community. Otherwise, it'll be pretty quiet around these parts until we start gearing up in the fall for Round Four.

Thank you to everyone for participating!

Hi, participants!

As mentioned in the last post, we'd love to see the stories from the previous rounds uploaded to the AO3. The two collections from previous years are http://archiveofourown.org/collections/house_bigbang08 and http://archiveofourown.org/collections/house_bigbang09. Writers, if you need a invitation code to the Archive Of Our Own, please let the mods know and we will send you one.

To display thumbnails of your artists' work that link to the artists' feedback posts, simply cut and paste the appropriate code block at the top of your story. If any links are broken or if there are any problems, please let us know and we will edit them, but they have been double-checked, so hopefully they'll work well for you. These code blocks are also excellent for pimping your art in a livejournal post, or really anywhere that takes html!

( Code Blocks: Round One )

( Code Blocks: Round Two )

Hi, Big Bang Participants!

This post is to let you know that we're undertaking a change this year! We wanted to give everyone as much advance notice as possible, so this is only the first such announcement. A more in-depth post will be coming along in the next few days.

Here at modly headquarters, it's our goal to make the challenge as big a success as possible with as little work as possible. To that end, we're trying something differently this year! We're going to move the story-posting to the Archive Of Our Own (AO3), which is a multi-fandom archive that is set up for challenges such as ours.

Benefits to moving

As repeat participants know, the bandwidth for the challenge's current site tends to be exceeded by all the enthusiasm for the challenge! Comparatively, when the AO3 was bombarded by the Yuletide hordes, it only slowed down a bit. With the move, we anticipate zero downtime after the reveal.

Every writer who submits a Complete Draft will get their own shiny account at the Archive of Our Own if they don't have one yet. You can choose to use it only for this challenge, or you can choose to use it like any other archive: uploading your stories for redundancy's sake, bookmarking others' stories, and participating in other challenges that are hosted there. (Other examples are Yuletide, which moved last year, and smaller ones such as Remix and Purim Gifts, which are most likely moving there later this year.)

Eventually, we hope to have the previous rounds of the challenge brought over to the AO3 as well.

For Writer Participants:

- The Complete Draft Deadline remains unchanged (February 15), and that is the date by which you must send the mods a .doc, .txt, or .rtf version of your story, so that we will be able to send it to your artist(s). The mods will then send you an invitation to the Archive of Our Own, and you will have until February 25 to upload your complete draft. However, after that, there will be no Final Draft Deadline. You can edit your story to your heart's content, for as long as you want, pretty much in perpetuity!

- Your stories can have as many chapters as you like, you can fix your own typos when you spot them, you can tag your stories however you want, you can choose what sort of warnings you want your story to have, et cetera.

- Your stories will be marked as invisible "Mystery Works" until the Reveal Day, April 1 2010.

- Feedback will be through the Archive, which is set up exactly like livejournal, with threaded comments; all comments on your story will be emailed to you.

For Artist Participants:

- The Artists' Portion of the challenge will remain largely unchanged; however, art will be posted directly to house_bigbang rather than to the current site.

- This means that each artist will have their own feedback post on the comm, which means they will not need to make, and later unlock, their own feedback post (as in previous years).

Questions & Queries

A more comprehensive explanatory post will be made in the next couple of days. However, feel free to email or comment with any questions you have; it will help us to write our FAQ! We will do our best to respond quickly.

Other News

The Artists' Sign-Up Post is here, and we are accepting artist sign-ups until February 15, so come on down if you're interested!

The Complete Draft Deadline for writers is of course approaching: February 15 means that writers have approximately five weeks left!

And just as a reminder, there is no penalty at all to withdrawing from the challenge before February 25. At that point, the Artists' Portion will be underway, and that means that artists will be creating art for stories (therefore expecting those stories' writers to remain in the challenge) and writers will have submitted complete drafts (therefore expecting the artists who signed up for their story to remain in the challenge). Before that date, if for any reason you need to withdraw, all we ask is that you let the mods know at housebigbangmods@gmail.com.


Your enthused mods,

queenzulu, thedeadparrot, and usomitai

One and all, may I have the honour of presenting the forty-eight writing participants of Round Three?

( masterlist )

Participants, you ought to have received an email from housebigbangmods@gmail.com. If you did not, there is a problem with your email address! Please let us know so that we can correct it as soon as possible.

Remember to join our support community, housebigbangers, for any squee, terror, productivity, procrastination, joy, and flail posts. housebigbangers is also open to any and all cheerleaders and betas who'd like to be part of the challenge by supporting the writers and artists.

Good luck and happy writing!

Welcome, potential participants! The Official Round Three Big Bang Timeline is as follows:

October 1 - October 15: Writers' sign-up period; artist sign-ups begin.
October 15: Writing begins.
December 15: Halfway point.
February 15: Complete draft of stories are due; artist sign-ups end.
February 15 - February 25: Artists choose stories.
February 25 - March 25: Artists create art.
March 15: Final drafts [edited, betaed, word-perfect] are due.
March 25: Artists' submissions are due.
April 1: Archive opens.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. October 15 through February 15 is approximately 120 days. To write 20 000 words in 120 days, you will be writing about 5000 words a month, or 1250 words a week, or just under 170 words a day. Following this, there will be another month (February 15 - March 15) in which you can have your story thoroughly betaed.

2. The complete draft must be a finished story and it must meet the 20 000 word minimum. The final draft has been betaed, spell-checked, looked over for typos and is the draft that will appear on the archive.

3. We hope that writers and artists will have an opportunity to view their stories before the archive opens, to check for typos or HTML issues. This MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE, but the mods will not be correcting any typos in the final drafts, so we will ATTEMPT TO OFFER THIS OPPORTUNITY.

4. This year, artists will receive complete drafts, rather than final drafts. Therefore, artists may potentially create art for scenes which are later cut or altered in the final draft. Writers and artists should be aware that this is a possibility.

5. All questions and/or concerns will be gratefully received either as comments to this entry or as email to housebigbangmods@gmail.com.

Writers' sign-ups are here. Artists' and vidders' sign-ups will open in a few days.

Hi, participants.

This is an announcement about a change in format. The original plan for Round Two was to attempt a staggered reveal, that is, one story and its art every two days, rather than a simultaneous reveal, with all stories and artwork going live on the same day.

Unfortunately, due to the mods' personal circumstances and need to prioritize offline commitments, it will not be possible to have the staggered reveal. Therefore, all stories and art will be going live on March 25, 2009. (Or, more likely, at 11:59 PM Mountain Standard Time on March 24.)

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the change. If you have any concerns or questions, please email housebigbangmods@gmail.com. We hope that all the participants (and the fandom in general) will appreciate having the entire archive to enjoy at once.

Some participants have asked when they should change the setting of their Feedback Post from private to public. Since there will be a simultaneous reveal, the answer is late on March 24 or early on March 25.

If you haven't created a Feedback Post for yourself yet, please go to this post and do so.

Thank you for your understanding.

queenzulu and thedeadparrot

Hi, participants!

I hope everyone is as excited out there as we are here that the challenge is coming to its conclusion.

The archive is coming along wonderfully. All the stories have been uploaded, and the mods are currently working on uploading the artists' submissions as well. The next and last step we need to accomplish to make sure the site is ready is for each participant to make themselves a Feedback Post, as detailed in the FAQ, here.

The important details are these:

1. We will ask each participant to make themselves a Feedback Post in THEIR OWN LIVEJOURNAL, and give us a link.

2. The archive will go live on MARCH 25. All stories and art will have a preview with a link to send email to the author or artist. They will also be linked to the author's or artist's Feedback Post.

3. Once the archive is live, the author or artist can also link directly to their story or artwork on the archive from their Feedback Post. The archived story/artwork will link to the creator's Feedback Post, and the creator's Feedback Post will link to the archived story/artwork. The readers and viewers on the archive will have the choice of commenting at the creator's Feedback Post, or by email.

PLEASE FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS TO MAKE YOURSELF A FEEDBACK POST.

1. Update your journal with the subject line "House Big Bang Challenge Round Two: Story Title and/or Art Title". You can add pairing and rating to the title if you'd like.

2. Cut and paste the following headers into your post. These headers are not mandatory. You can write your own headers as you see fit, but these are the same headers that you submitted along with your story and/or art, so they are the simplest.

<b>Title:</b> <b>Pairing</b> <b>Rating:</b> <b>Length:</b> <b>Spoilers:</b> <b>Author's or Artist's Notes:</b> <b>Summary:</b>

3. Post-date your post (that is, edit the date) to March 25, 2009. The exact time of day is not important. Your update window should look like this:



4. Set the security of your post to PRIVATE. This is so as not to spam your flist before the archive is live.

5. Comment to this post with the link to your Feedback Post. Please title your comment "Link to [Your Story/Artwork]". The link will then be included on your story and/or artwork on the archive.

6. A mod will reply to your comment here with a link to your story and/or artwork preview, and you can then edit your Feedback Post to include the link. On the day your story and/or artwork is revealed, you can set the security to PUBLIC.

7. On March 25, point your flist to the archive, to your Feedback Post, or to the community; all will have links to the archive.

8. In your Feedback Post, you can include any other information you'd like: your excerpt, your triumph, your flailing, your unending squee over Big Bang.

9. An example Feedback Post is here.

SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

10. If you have more than one art, please make only one feedback post that includes headers for each art.

11. If you cowrote a story, please choose one author only to create the feedback post.

12. If you wrote a story and created art, please make a separate feedback post for story and art, and please be sure to indicate which link is for which.

~

Comments or questions? Please send them to housebigbangmods@gmail.com, as comments to this post are for feedback links only!

\o/

Artists

An email has just been sent to all current artist participants to outline the artists' portion of the challenge.

If you received the email, then you are on track and on the list!

If you did not receive the email, please comment to this post to let us know so that we can work out what went wrong. Some emails bounced! The mods require a working email address for all artists.

Congratulations

Our list of writers who have completed the challenge continues to grow! Congratulations are in order.

anna_bm

Congratulations to our participants who completed drafts of over 20 000 words!

You are, in a word, AMAZING.

This year we have SIXTEEN entries, with wordcounts ranging from 20 000 words exactly all the way up to 56 000 words. Pairings include House/Cameron, House/Cuddy, House/Foreman, and House/Wilson (and perhaps more; we'll know for sure when we have complete headers). Gen, crossovers and AUs are represented as well!

Writers, if you did not make the cut-off or dropped out for some other reason, have no fear! There is always next year. We also hope that you'll join housebigbangers and perhaps find time to offer your services as a beta.

Artists, your portion of the challenge now approaches! We can always use more artists, and the sign-up post is HERE. The more artists, the merrier! Each story will have ONE piece of art guaranteed, but if we have more artists--or artists willing to take on more than one project--then we will have several rounds of artist picks. If you sign up as an artist, please ensure that you friend or watch the community in order to see reminders and announcements!

More announcements will be made as the due date for final drafts approaches. In the meantime, writers, good luck with your edits! Have an excellent month.