Cemetery Dance Writing Contest

[portrait in flesh]

I'm still somewhat fuzzy on the character requirements. 10,000 with or without spaces? I've pared my story down to about 9400 without spaces. Would this be suitable for submission?

I'm going to be erring on the side of caution and am including spaces in the 10K-character limit. Using single spaces between sentences, though.

[onipar]

I'm still somewhat fuzzy on the character requirements. 10,000 with or without spaces? I've pared my story down to about 9400 without spaces. Would this be suitable for submission?

The character requirement is with spaces, but he said it's okay to single space sentences to cut down on the number of spaces.

[Dan Hocker]

Character count is with spaces. The best way to test if your submission is short enough is to see if it fits in the post window here. Obviously don't actually post it though. As far as when we will open the submissions it'll be Wednesday morning. We will probably send out a newsletter informing everyone submissions are now open and a more detailed explanation on how to submit them.

[portrait in flesh]

::SCREAMS AND HOWLS AND TEARS OUT HAIR::

OK, now that's over with.

I did a trial run of my post. In Word, it comes out to 9,978 characters (including spaces). But, since my story includes some italicized words, I had to add the html tags to the post to get it to look correct. This bumped the count up to 10,230 characters, which obviously won't post.

Is there any way to get around this? For example, could I capitalize the words that are meant to be italicized? Or do I need to make a mad cutting edit to my piece?

Edited to add: the italicized words are foreign words and phrases, not words italicized for emphasis. I guess technically I could just drop the italics, but that sort of thing makes my fingers itch a bit.

[Dan Hocker]

I'll just bump the allowed word count on the forum software up a little bit to allow for that. Ok added a buffer zone, should be more than enough extra to account for italicizing and what not.

[portrait in flesh]

I'll just bump the allowed word count on the forum software up a little bit to allow for that. Ok added a buffer zone, should be more than enough extra to account for italicizing and what not.

Thankee kindly, sir.

[JJ Holden]

I'm about three-quarters of the way through and I reckon I'll probably hit the absolute character limit. Not much time left, but no pressure, right? ~~also screaming and howling etc.~~

[Ben Staad]

Allright! Just finished my trial post and everything looks great. All I need to do is change some formatting and I will be good to go.

[RJK1981]

I'll just bump the allowed word count on the forum software up a little bit to allow for that. Ok added a buffer zone, should be more than enough extra to account for italicizing and what not.

That's great. Is there an exact amount? Almost finished with the story I started just for this since the other work in progress isn't close to being finished, but finding myself at over 10,800 characters now with at least a few hundred more before the ending. Will have to finish it up and make some cuts to it tomorrow and probably the next day as well, I just need to know how much, lol.

Maybe if I'm lucky it won't be much though, since I currently have the proper 2 spaces between sentences, lol

[Dan Hocker]

Still shoot for 10,000 characters. I didn't really bump it up that much, just really enough to accommodate for the extra characters added by italicizing things in this forum software.

[RJK1981]

That's what I thought and what I'll be doing over the next couple days. Thanks

[C.W. LaSart]

Will you explain how to get italics on a post?

[Dan Hocker]

Just high light what you want italicized then click the italics button. It then surrounds your post in I tags which is an [I*][/I*] without the astrix of course.

[Nik Houser]

I've been doing a trial run, and have found that pasting into the post wipes out my indents. Do I get around that by adding some extra spaces, or is there a way to do indents here? Probably a stupid question with a simple answer, sorry, but thanks for answering anyway.

[Ben Staad]

Nik...I think if you go to the button titled "Go Advanced" you will see an increase or decrease indent button. Hopefully this will work for you!