Short Story Participation - Rules and expectations discussion thread

[Prish]

When the industry was still buying unsolicited scripts in the 90’s, someone on the buying end told me they had gotten five identical scripts from five different people. Just saying…

[YellowSuspenders]

@jhull

I’ve worked with professionals and amateurs alike–the one striking difference: only amateurs care about Non-Disclosure Agreements or keeping their stories private.

I believe that ideas are a dime a dozen. They are cheap and don’t deserve an NDA. An actual -story- is an act of labor (“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead,” Gene Fowler) and does deserve ownership in the exact same way that anything produced by any other act of labor deserves ownership.

[mlucas]

@YellowSuspenders

and does deserve ownership

You wouldn’t give up ownership – anything you create is still yours and you own the copyright. However, I’m not sure if everyone realizes that posting a story on a public forum means giving up most of your rights to submit it for publication later (like in a short story contest or a magazine).

The easy solution is this – if you want to keep first publishing rights, post it somewhere private (Quip, Evernote, Google Docs, etc.) and PM people the private link. Or just post it in a private message within Discuss – you can add multiple users to the same private-message thread easily, so that would work like a charm.

It would take away from the open sharing & learning community aspect, but in the spirit of openness, maybe everyone should be free to make their own choice.

[YellowSuspenders]

@mlucas

Or just post it in a private message within Discuss – you can add multiple users to the same private-message thread easily, so that would work like a charm. The easy solution is this – if you want to keep first publishing rights, post it somewhere private (Quip, Evernote, Google Docs, etc.) and PM people the private link.

Thank you. That’s what I plan to do.