BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / Secret Santa Fic Exchange 2015

**Posted by Schmiezi** September 10, 2015 4:07 pm

There are Christmas sweets in the supermarktes. That means it is time to start planing the annual fic exchange.

First question, who would like to join? So far, there are: (as of 12th October)

1 Ben'sGrizzie
2 BreathingIsBoring
3 disoscureantwins
4 Dorothy83
5 gently69
6 Kerkerian
7 kgreen20
8 Lilythiel
9 Mrshouse (maybe)
10 nakahara
11 NotYourHousekeeperDear
12 PenelopeW
13 RavenMorganLeigh
14 Schmiezi
15 SherlockHolmes (aka Boss)
16 silverblaze
17 SilverMoonDragonB
18 stoertebeker
19 SusiGo
20 Whisky
21 Yitzock

This is how it could work this year:

You will get a questionaire telling me what you would like to write about (and what not) and what you would like the fic written for you to be about (and what not). You can also include a prompt if you like, or give a heading or key words.

I'll match wishes and offers as good as possible and send you your tasks around mid-October.

Questions, suggestions, complaints?

Last edited by Schmiezi (October 18, 2015 7:19 am)

**Posted by SusiGo** September 10, 2015 4:16 pm

I like the idea with the questionnaire and would like to participate, always provided nothing unexpected happens.

One point though: last time I found it a bit sad that even people who participated in the exchange often did not comment on fics. I have no idea at the moment how to improve this but I would love to have more reactions than last time, not just for myself but for all of us who put a lot of time and effort and love into writing the stories. And thank you for starting this again.

**Posted by Yitzock** September 10, 2015 4:45 pm

Oh, God, Christmas already? (Mind you, at the end of August I saw Christmas stuff at the houseware store, but that's not chocolate or gifts)

Comments aside...
I agree that a questionaire is a good idea. We know a certain amount of what peope like and don't like from just chatting, but it's still good to make sure we have a good idea of what the person wants. Otherwise it can make for an uncomfortable reveal in some cases.
Anyway, Schmiezi, I'm assuming this is done by PM, at that if you're organizing then you can't participate? It's kind of hard to assign someone to write for you if you're the one doing the assigning. Either that or you're the only who isn't surprised.

I've never done one of these before, but it seems like fun. (Just as long as we don't have to write anything really lengthy...I don't know how much time I'll have because of other things going on, not that I wouldn't put in the effort).

Last edited by Yitzock (September 10, 2015 4:46 pm)

**Posted by Schmiezi** September 10, 2015 4:50 pm

Thanks for thinking of me. :-) Like last year, I will be the only unsurprised participant.

As for the length, last year we agreed on a minimum of words. Unfortunately that ruled out all kinds of poems. So I would like to suggest that we try and go without a limit this year.

How does everybody feel about that?

**Posted by Yitzock** September 10, 2015 5:01 pm

For me, that's OK, I was just hoping there wasn't some ridiculous minimum like "must be at least 2500 words" or "must be 5 chapters" or something. I'm inclined to think a 1000-1500 word one-shot would be sufficient, if that.

**Posted by mrshouse** September 10, 2015 5:01 pm

Awww, Schmiezi, I loved the fic exchange last year. For new participants: I'm definitely not a professional writer and had never tried to write fanfic. My hands were shaking when I sent it to Schmiezi. My heart beat the day it was published. And everybody is just so nice and supportive and friendly in commenting.
Till when do we have to decide, Schmiezi? Have to prepare for an exam and must think it over....

**Posted by Yitzock** September 10, 2015 5:03 pm

lol It sounds like it was a visceral experience, mrshouse, or perhaps one of horror?
But hey, if your heart's in it it's Ok if you're not a professional writer.
I'm not a pro, though I may be an aspiring one.

**Posted by mrshouse** September 10, 2015 5:51 pm

Not horror, no...
Just a bit... insecure maybe.
Yitzock, maybe you want to check last years fics. They are to be found in the fan fic section.
And may I mention that I rather enjoy late summer and golden autumn than having the old ginger bread, domino cubes and chocolaty santas.... Ugh.

**Posted by Yitzock** September 10, 2015 5:53 pm

lol Just teasing.
And yes, I have taken a look at the topic from last year. Just haven't gotten a chance to read very much, but I think I will at some point.

**Posted by Schmiezi** September 11, 2015 4:17 am

So right now it is in alphabetical order:
Mrshouse (maybe)
Schmiezi
SusiGo
Yitzock

Mrshouse, I haven't thought about a dead line yet. I would love to send the assignments in mid-October, so I guess you should be sure somewhen then. It would be great if you would take part again, btw.

**Posted by gently69** September 11, 2015 12:12 pm

Should I try it again? With having a writer's block for the sequel of my last santa fic at the moment? But it was real fun. Hmm... I really don't know...

**Posted by Schmiezi** September 11, 2015 12:57 pm

Yes, you should.

:-)

**Posted by stoertebeker** September 11, 2015 4:32 pm

I would like to paticipate again too. At the moment my head is full with wedding-preparations but that will (fortunately) be over soon, so I should have time to finally write again.

I will also try to comment each story again this year.

**Posted by tonnaree** September 11, 2015 5:05 pm

I look forward to reading everyone's creations.

**Posted by silverblaze** September 12, 2015 1:49 pm

Hi people, I've been off this forum for a long time and I came back especially for the Secret Santa. I enjoyed it so much last year: the prompt, the writing, the community and, not unimportantly, the deadline ;). I'd love to join again.

And for everyone who's new to writing and aren't sure whether to join: last year's Secret Santa was the first time I'd ever completed a full fanfiction story and I can absolutely reccommend it.

**Posted by tonnaree** September 12, 2015 2:14 pm

*waving* Hi Silver! Welcome back.

**Posted by Schmiezi** September 14, 2015 4:05 am

Bump.

**Posted by ukaunz** September 14, 2015 4:10 am

I look forward to participating in this as a spectator

**Posted by silverblaze** September 14, 2015 9:27 am

Hi Tonnaree *waves back*.

Wow, I'm so excited.

As far as organisation goes: I was completely happy last year. The questionnaire is great and as a writer and a reader I really loved the five words prompt.

Is it an idea that I go to the other thread and find Harriets post with the html bbcode converter and post it here? I thought that at least on page on or two we can still find it later on, rather than looking for it in the thread.

**Posted by silverblaze** September 14, 2015 10:13 am

Found it!

For anyone who's new: you can't just copy paste your word file (or pages or whatever you're using) onto the forum, it needs to be converted to bbcode, which is a form of shortened html. Otherwise, your formatting goes to the dogs; you'll have no line breaks, no bold and italics etcetera. Basically, it'll be unreadable. So last year, we had these converters.

This is the technical thread with a few options: http://sherlock.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=5799

This is the two step method, I used eventually, thanks to Susi:

What you do is, after you've finished writing your story (or while you're writing it) you make sure that you write all your bold, italics and underlined text with the html commands. Those commands can be found here.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_formatting.asp

Then you can convert to html here:
http://document.online-convert.com/convert-to-html

You save the html file and now you can convert it to bbcode with this converter:
http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/html2bbcode/
Note: do NOT use the source code to paste into the converter, you need the normal text from the html file.

The bbcode cannot be saved, it's the html that you need to send to Schmiezi, however, you need to convert to bbcode in order to check whether it works on the forum. This can be done as follows:

Start a new topic, create a title, and check your text with the preview function so no one can see what you're doing.

When everything looks as it should, you can send your html file to Schmiezi so she can copy paste it into the converter without having to do any editing herself.