If you wish to archive a fanfic at the Teaspoon then it must meet the requirements of the Submission Guidelines. We do not moderate story content or style, save where they conflict with the Terms of Service, but we do expect a minimal standard of spelling, grammar and formatting. If there is an area which you are unsure of, there is a list of helpful websites listed below the guidelines.

What is a story, anyway?

We do not allow transcripts or stories which heavily feature song lyrics ('song-fics'.) Nor do we allow stories that are about the actors rather than the characters (also known as RPF). We also ask that you don't make stories, or chapters of stories, out of inquiries, requests, rants, or other such discussion-type material. If you don't have a title for your story, or you really want someone to write a story about Rose's pet cat falling in love with K9, or you want to gripe about the plotline for "Keys of Marinus," there are more appropriate places online to do that. (We recommend Gallifrey Base's discussion boards and the numerous communities on LiveJournal.)

Summaries

A good summary means more readers. It should be short, to the point and entice a potential reader into clicking on your story. In order for your story to be accepted to the Teaspoon, your summary must adhere to the following rules:

• Keep it short. A few sentences at most and no line breaks. If it's longer than a paragraph, then your fic *will* be rejected. (If you feel your readers require more info than a paragraph summary of the story, use the Author's Notes section.)
• Acknowledgements/disclaimers/dedications and so on should be put in the Author's Notes section.
• Do not beg for reviews.
• There should be no spelling errors; it's only a couple of sentences. Use a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence and a full stop at the end.
• Keep it about the story. Sugar, daydreams and other such inspirations, if they must be mentioned, should be kept to the Author's Notes.
• Your summary and story title should be suitable for all ages. (You may replace letters with dashes or other characters if your title contains adult language.)

For examples of good summaries, please take a look here, here or here.

Spelling, grammar and formatting

• Spelling and grammar should be of an acceptable standard. We do not expect perfection, but we do expect you to start a sentence with a capital letter. Misspellings should not be common, and you should know the difference between it's/its and there/their/they're. You should know how to punctuate speech. Essentially when reading your fic, it should give the impression that an effort has been made to make sure that the spelling and grammar is correct.
• Each paragraph should be separated by a single paragraph break; that is, a single blank line should be between each paragraph, as well as lines of dialogue spoken by different characters. This makes reading your story a lot easier.
• Capitalise your title sensibly.
• For examples of fanfiction where the spelling, grammar and formatting is of an excellent standard, please take a look here or here.

Other reasons your fic might be rejected include, but are not limited to, the following:

• There are author notes within the text of the fic.
• The fanfiction has no connection to the Doctor Who universe.
• It has no narrative structure (eg. lists, random words.)

If your fanfic is rejected, you may resubmit after edits. If it has been rejected more than once and you are unsure of what the problem is, please email help@whofic.com.

Helpful Links

If you don't have access to spell checking software, here are some links where you can get the same sort of information:

• http://www.spellcheck.net (American English only)
• http://www.m-w.com (Online dictionary and thesaurus.)Primarily American but also lists British usages and spellings where different)
• http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html (A site listing words that are commonly misused or confused with one another. We suggest everyone take a look at the list and see what items surprise them.)
• If you use Firefox 2, it has a spell checker built in to work within web forms, which you can use when posting your fic.

We also have some handy links to some grammar websites, in case you get confused about where to place quotes and whether you need an apostrophe or not:

• http://www.refdesk.com/factgram.html (Links to a lot of grammar info sites)
• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar
• http://silvablu.skeeter63.org/HMG/00-Introduction.htm

In case you're American and you need to know the proper usage of the word "bollocks" (or other such sterling examples of the fine English language) here are some sites to help you out:

• http://www.effingpot.com
• http://www.bg-map.com/us-uk.html
• http://community.livejournal.com/dw_britglish

And just in case you've forgotten in which story Five explains what the heck his celery is all about ("Caves of Androzani" for all of you playing at home), here are a few places where you can check your canon:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who
• http://community.livejournal.com/dwcanon_fodder/profile
• TARDIS Wikia