Draft Swap: Spring 2019!

The Rules

The concept is simple - every entrant into the draft swap will submit one of their unfinished drafts¹ to an organiser, and on the first day of the swap, those drafts will be shuffled and redistributed - the entrants then have until the closing date to submit a first draft to the organisers from what they were given. This does NOT need to be a final polished draft ready to post, you simply need to produce something that can be read as a story and ready for critique. Of course, if you want to polish or even post it, that's allowed.

Once a draft has been given to you, it is yours. You may rework it as if it was your own idea, add and subtract elements, change the entire format, whatever works best for how you want to adapt it. Within the bounds of common sense, anything goes. This also extends to showing the drafts to whoever you want, collaborating with others, whatever - the draft swap is not a closed system, and you are encouraged to do whatever you want in order to make your entry shine. You should be in mind of the fact that this goes both ways - whoever gets your submission will likely take it in places you didn't expect, and that can be good or bad in your opinion, but you need to accept it as part of the experience going in.

This is not a competition. This is about community spirit and helping each other out, there will never be a winner. The only thing you're aiming to do is produce a finished draft - if you want to post that, awesome. If you want to give it back to the original author to reconsider, also awesome. Ideally, everyone finds a wonderful new interpretation of each draft and we end up with as many posted skips as we do entrants, but realistically it's totally ok for you to have had a good time participating in an interesting writing exercise without having something big and shiny to show the world.

For the sake of writers being confident that their draft will not end up in bad hands, all participants must have at least one article of any kind posted on the site, with a rating of at least 50. Individual cases will be considered.

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The Chat

The Draft Swap has a dedicated IRC channel on synIRC, #draftswap. Any participants who use IRC should add this channel to their autojoin, and within their limitations should participate in brainstorming, crit and general discussion there for the duration of the swap.

Standard chat rules apply - if you're a douchebag, you'll be kicked. Common sense applies. Assume there are minors. Beyond that, try to carry a spirit of positivity and collaboration within the chat - you won't be kicked for being snarky or skeptical, but it might bum people out.

Memes are banned and we will report dabbing to the police.

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Current Round Information

Status: Writing Period!

Next round starts: Ongoing!

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+ FAQ

I want to get involved! I have a draft all ready, where can I send it?
First off, make sure submissions are actually open - drafts aren't accepted until a week or two before each round, so be patient. Once the draft is open, there should be a link above to submission guidelines for specific rounds.

What qualifies as a draft?
Drafts should be more than simply an idea: you should already have put some work into developing the idea, figuring out rules and structure, writing some parts out etc. You don't have to have a lot done, but we won't be accepting anything that's nothing more than a title. Drafts should not be of a work that would need to be very long to work (say 7000+ as a guideline), as this places unfair amounts of work on the person receiving it in the time given.

My draft is kind of hard to write without my perspective/knowledge, is that ok?
Nothing that requires specialist knowledge to write (high level science stuff, deep fandom lore, a leaning toward complex historical accuracy etc), or if you do you should be committed to sticking around in chat to help out and provide information.

If I want to post what I wrote, do I need to credit the original author as a co-author?
Before posting, you should ask the original author what they would like, and go along with that.

I've put a lot of thought into my draft, but most of it isn't on the actual page. Is that ok?
If this is the case for you, I'd suggest including a note to the recipient explaining ideas you'd had for the draft, what you wanted to get across with it etc. They're not beholden to it, but it might help them.

If you're active in the IRC chat, you can also just talk directly to whoever gets your draft and chat/brainstorm with them about it.

Current Drafts

User	Draft
Uncle Nicolini	How Janitor Worth became a deity
magnadeus	The ████-████ InfoSec Division
PeppersGhost	Perfectly Legal
HotColes	Where have the Teletubbies gone?
plaguebearer	Unnamed Draft
JackalRelated	The Faceless Live in Evanholly
MacWarren	The Machine Under the Mountain
Rat Lord	Mayor McCheese
DrAnnoyingDog	A Lonely Road Along the Coast
Ayers	The Clock Struck Midnight
MaliceAforethought	Stickmonster

Swap Results

User	Received Draft
Uncle Nicolini	The Machine Under the Mountain
magnadeus	Stickmonster
PeppersGhost	How Janitor Worth became a deity
HotColes	A Lonely Road Along the Coast
plaguebearer	Mayor McCheese
JackalRelated	Where have the Teletubbies gone?
MacWarren	The Clock Struck Midnight
Rat Lord	Perfectly Legal
DrAnnoyingDog	Unnamed Draft
Ayers	The Faceless Live in Evanholly
MaliceAforethought	The ████-████ InfoSec Division

You have until the second of June (3 weeks) to work on your drafts!

Footnotes

1. In previous rounds, this has been restricted to SCP drafts. I am hoping to incorporate more formats in the next round.