DargonZine
Volume 12, Number 9 |
Distributed: 9/16/1999
Circulation: 708 |
 |
DargonZine is the publication vehicle of the
Dargon Project, a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the
Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the
project. Please address all correspondance to
<dargon@shore.net>
or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/. Back
issues are available from
ftp.shore.net
in members/dargon/. Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup
rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 12-9, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright September, 1999
by the Dargon Project. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@shore.net>,
Assistant Editor: Jon Evans
<godling@mnsinc.com>.
All rights reserved. All rights are reassigned to the individual
contributors. Stories and artwork appearing herein may not be reproduced
or redistributed without the explicit permission of their creators, except
in the case of freely reproducing entire issues for further distribution.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
|
Editorial
ince it's been another quiet month on the editorial front, I
thought I'd take the opportunity to give you an idea of what a story has
to go through before it appears in the pages of DargonZine. So let's
take the three stories in this issue as examples, and see how they got
here...
Although it can be broken down in more detail, there are basically
four stages in the development of a DargonZine story: developing the
idea, writing it, revising it, and printing it. Sounds easy, right?
In the beginning, every story is just an idea in the author's head.
The first step in translating that mental image into words is writing an
outline. The outline serves many purposes. For the author, it allows
them to draft, revise, and refine the story's overall structure, and
also serves as an aid to memory. In a collaborative writing project like
DargonZine, the outline is also usually the first thing that other
writers see. Posting the outline allows other writers to contribute
their ideas and gives us the opportunity to discuss the process of
formulating story ideas. It's also our first opportunity to offer
criticism and direct the writer away from potential trouble spots before
he or she invests a lot of time in writing. Because DargonZine is a
single anthology, writers have to live within some very specific
guidelines, and need to put in extra effort to ensure that their stories
don't contradict other works. The author takes in all these nebulous
contributions and criticisms and eventually comes out of the process
with an outline he or she would like to proceed with, and which is
acceptable to the other writers.
The author then goes off and actually writes the story, which is
probably the easiest part of the process. When the first rough draft is
complete, most writers will solicit critiques of the story from a couple
friends and make a first round of revisions in order to make sure it's
ready for other writers to see. Then the writer posts the story to our
writers' discussion list.
The third step is sometimes the most difficult, but also the most
educational: accepting critiques, revising the story, re-posting it, and
getting critiqued all over again! Comments run the gamut, from thematic
and stylistic concerns to nit-picking grammar corrections to questions
about the motivations and depictions of characters. Accepting criticism
is a perennial challenge because a writer always has a strong emotional
investment in his or her work. But the interaction between writers is
the most important part of the process for most of our writers, because
they have chosen to write for DargonZine because of the opportunity to
learn from one another and thus become better writers. The critique
process can also be very time-consuming; it may take a month or two for
people to read and critique one version of a story, and some stories go
through six or seven versions before being finalized! But eventually,
when the writer is satisfied with his work, he can finalize his story by
declaring it "ready to print".
All that's left then is to print it. Depending on what other
stories are available and whether it is part of a series, the story
might have to wait a few months to be printed. Once it is selected for
printing, the author will need to proof both the formatted ASCII and
HTML versions, provide a story summary, and submit new definitions and
descriptions of everything that appears in their story (these are
incorporated into our unique Online Glossary). After that, the issue is
distributed and the story is emailed out and put on our Web site for
hundreds of readers to see. For the writer, this is a proud moment,
knowing that they have done a good job and learned a lot along the way.
DargonZine has provided the vehicle for the writer to produce a final
work of art and offer it to an interested audience,
If you're interested in more of the specific details about what
it's like to be a Dargon Project writer, there's an overabundance of
information in our Writers' FAQ, which can be found on our Web site at
<http://www.dargonzine.org/writers.shtml>.
Looking specifically at the stories in this issue, all of them
followed very similar paths on their way to publication. Interestingly,
all three stories had their inception in August 1998, a little more than
a year ago.
Dafydd's first draft was posted just two months later. Dafydd has
been with the project for a long time, and his story was merely one part
of a series that he'd been thinking about for over two years. Jon and
Rena took longer to post their first drafts; they had only just joined
the project at that time, and had spent some time focusing on writing
and publishing the first chapters of their storylines. Jon's story first
appeared in draft form in February, and Rena's in June.
Then came the revisions. Because of his experience with the project
and the fact that he'd had time to kick his ideas around for a couple
years, Dafydd got his revisions out of the way quickly, going through
four versions on his way to declaring his story "RTP" in May. Jon and
Rena both went through five revs, only finalizing their stories at the
end of August, when the Editor was clamoring for new stories to print.
The issue was assembled during the first two weeks of September,
and was distributed on September 16th, after these stories has seen more
than a year of work.
While some stories take less time and some take more, these
examples are pretty typical. Our writers put an awful lot of hard work
into every story that you see, and there's an incredible amount of
activity and discussion that take place behind the scenes in order to
bring these stories to you. But it's something that we're passionate
about, and we hope that you enjoy the results as much as we've enjoyed
going through the process of creating it and bringing it to you.
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