It's been a few days, but things have come together and I can present you with the new way the Writer's Corner will work. Please read through them and see the benefits - you'll get more reviews and a fairer adjudication of length compared to others as well as greater flexibility in layouting your story.

Everything that was sent in between Feb 1 and today has been entered into the process this morning and you should see reviews soon if they have not already happened.

1) Every work you send in will be reviewed twice by two different people. These are all accomplished writers and have been winning multiple DB competitions. The current staff consists of

Alanna

Anshar Khan

Arania Lawakiro Palpatine

Dark Sabre

Jonaleth Isradia

Muz Keibatsu Sadow

and of course myself.

Please note: It is appreciated if you don't request specific reviewers (any such requests will be ignored). You'll get the best results and most impartial comments when reviewers rotate and are random. If you want a specific person's opinion, ask them personally after you have received the two "official" reviews.

2) You may request your review to be private or public. A private review will be seen only by you and the reviewers while a public review will appear on the messageboards under your story. The choice of private or public is made when you submit - no checking the review first and then deciding :)

3) You can send your stories and poems in .doc (MS Word), .rtf or .txt formats. No .wps or other formats please. If you cannot write any of these formats, post the story in the Writer's Corner message board area and mail a link - we'll take it from there in that case.

4) If you want to request a private review, the procedure is as follows:

a) You send your contribution to writerscornerstaff [at] darkjedibrotherhood [dot] com.

b) You will receive your two reviews

c) After receiving the reviews, you may want to edit the story to improve it. Afterwards, or if you choose not to edit, post the most current version on the Writer's Corner messageboard area.

d) Mail the link to your post to the above address.

5) If you want to request a public review, the procedure is:

a) You post the story on the Writer's Corner messageboard area, including "for public review" in the subject. This is an invitation for everyone to critique, even outside the staff.

b) You send your contribution to writerscornerstaff [at] darkjedibrotherhood [dot] com and include the link.

c) You will receive your two reviews, both in the mail and on the messageboard

d) After receiving the reviews, you may want to edit the story to improve it. Repost it under the reviews if you do so - do not edit the original!. You do not have to send a confirmation mail in this case.

5) Mailings of stories/poems should contain some information about what it was originally written for. Include the name of the competition and the placement if applicable. Do not submit a work before judging is completed!!!. Include your ID line or at least rank, DB name and PIN in the mail.

6) Important change: I am no longer requesting any specific formatting. You can write in any font, size and spacing you consider most fitting. This closely correlates to the next point...

7) Since even under the old formatting guidelines, works can vary significantly in length per page (in fact, prose works have 30% and poetry even 60% of variance for "one page"), I am changing the judgement of "pages" to be based on characters of text as follows:

One page of prose is 3,500 characters.

One page of poetry is 1,400 characters.

This applies regardless of how many actual layout pages your text occupies - you are being credited the length measured in average pages (as measured on a variety of DB authors, topics and styles). You will also receive partial page credit as is due from now on - a third of a page will actually be given to you as such. If you want to exactly know how long your text is, the "Extras" menu in Word contains a "Word count" entry, from there you can get an exact character count.

Any existing page credit as reported to me is kept intact and converted by these numbers. You can of course mix poetry and prose towards your ten pages, it'll all add up correctly.

So - everyone now gets the same credit for the same amount of writing.

Credit is applied as soon as you have made both the messageboard post and sent your submission for review. This means public-review stories will be credited immediately, private-review only after the reviewing process (since that's when you publish it).

8) Once you accumulate the required number of pages (10 standard pages), you will be given the Dark Side Scroll you deserve. Any excess will be kept in your account and count towards the next one.

Lastly: I am not now nor in the future accepting any staff applications for the Writer's Corner. If you want to be on staff, prove your worth by providing good critique on items posted for public review. If I see you consistently add constructive opinions, you'll be contacted to join the review staff.