Tales from the Restricted Section

The library accepts donations of original work. This is announced by the spectral librarian in the tone other institutions reserve for disclaimers, and it is a genuine offer: you write a tale, the library files it, the staff decide whether the world is ready for it, and if it survives all three it gets published, shelved in public, and paid for. The library considers this a complete publishing industry and does not understand why anyone would need more buildings.

Submitting a Tale

Where: the village the library haunts (the same place the Haunted Library appears). The village nav carries a "Contribute a Tale" link, right under "Restricted Section". Both doors are in the same building; only one of them asks for your soul back.

The rate: one tale per calendar day. Calendar means the server's calendar, a date on a wall, not the in-game newday. The ledger opens to a fresh page at midnight and does not hear appeals about 11:59 PM. Submitting at 11:58 and again at 12:01 is allowed and is nobody's business but your own.

The form: a title (up to 100 characters) and the tale itself (200 to 5,000 characters). Both are stripped to plain text before the library will touch them: markup is removed on arrival, along with the ambition behind it. The length window is inclusive. Exactly 200 counts as a tale. Exactly 5,000 fits on the shelf. 199 is a scribble and 5,001 is two tales, and you only get one.

Original work only. The Restricted Section shelves things people actually wrote. The forum's etiquette rules apply to everything published here; see Forum Etiquette.

What Happens Next (The Review)

Every submission starts on the pending shelf. Staff review it in the same library (they see a "Review Tales" notice with the pending count) and make one of two decisions, because the form was designed by someone who understood that a third option only invites committees:

  • Approve: the tale is shelved as a thread in the forums' The Restricted Section: Fanfiction & Creative Writing category, appears on the public shelf (see below), and the author is paid.
  • Reject: the tale is not published and nothing is paid. That is the entire consequence. The librarian has processed rejections for centuries and reports no backlog of complaints, which he attributes to the mail.

The payment: on approval the author receives 100 gold and 2 charm (the defaults; staff can adjust both), delivered by owl along with the news. The owl does not accept tips.

The decision is final. An approved tale cannot be un-approved and a rejected one cannot be un-rejected. The ledger has strong opinions about time travel and none of them are favorable.

Where to Read

The public shelf: tales.php lists every approved tale. It is public, needs no login, and shows 20 tales per page, newest first, each linking to the full text on the forums. The shelf is also linked from every Restricted Section page (the desk, the lobby, and the staff review ledger), so nobody has to remember a URL; the URL is here anyway. The shelf refreshes from a cache that turns over every 60 seconds, so a freshly approved tale appears there within about a minute. If your tale is not on the shelf yet, that is the cache. It has been the cache every single time.

The forums: the tale's full thread lives in the forum category named above, where readers can reply. The category is ordinary in every respect except its clientele.

The Inkwell

Writing here is paid in more than applause. The Inkwell notices yesterday's ink on your fingers:

  • Post a thread or leave a comment on the forums on one calendar day.
  • The next newday you take pays +1 forest turn (an admin setting; one is the factory default).
  • Once per calendar day. Post again the next day, get paid again the day after. The ink must dry between payments.

Strictly: "yesterday" means the previous calendar day on the server clock, not the previous game day, and the newday that pays has to land on the day after the post. A comment counts once the forums display it; one hidden as spam pays nothing. A thread counts from the moment it is posted. Disputes about posting at 11:59 PM are calendar disputes, and the calendar wins those too.

Fine Print

  • One tale per calendar day. The quills are unionized.
  • Plain text only. Every tag you include is removed before filing, so the shelf you eventually appear on is exactly as unformatted as the ledger.
  • Rejections are quiet. Approvals are loud (owl, gold, publication, strangers). Plan your risk portfolio accordingly.
  • The librarian is not accepting corrections to his filing system. He is aware of the filing system. The filing system is the point.

Tales from the Restricted Section: you write it once, the staff read it once, and then it belongs to the public shelf, which is what the library means by "shelved" and what the forums mean by "nowhere near finished with you."