HOW THE WORKSHOP WORKS AND HOW TO PARTICIPATE

THE BASICS:

The workshop is open to all writers of SF, fantasy, and horror. Writers improve here through the reviews and ratings given their works by other writers, and through reviewing the work of others. Trust us...it truly works. Or (if you don't trust us!) read our member comments.
We believe in free samples, so your first month of workshop membership is free. After the one-month free trial, membership costs a reasonable $49 a year (that's 94 cents a week). (More about membership fees and how to pay)
To join, you need to provide a valid e-mail address. Other than that, you can use your writing name, a pseudonym, etc., and you don't have to make your e-mail address public if you don't choose to do so.
Because of occasional adult content, people under 18 must get parental permission before joining.
Since reviews and ratings are what improve people's writing, we require that you contribute reviews in order to be allowed to post your own work. And because we want all members to have a good chance of getting their work reviewed, we have a limit on how many pieces any member can submit at once, and un-updated submissions are eventually removed.

Each month our Resident Editors select one submission in each of four categories and review it. These Editors' Choices are published in our monthly newsletter.
We provide three e-mail discussion groups for workshop members: a news-only announcement list for the newsletter and occasional other updates; a writing group for discussion of writing and writing-related topics; and a chat group for anything else members want to discuss. (More about our e-mail discussion groups)

Read our Member Agreement for all the nitty-gritty details.

MEMBER AGREEMENT:

The Online Writing Workshop for SF & F is open to all writers of science fiction, fantasy, or horror, both aspiring and professional. You need to become a member in order to participate. After a one-month free trial, membership costs a reasonable $49 a year (that's 94 cents a week). (More about membership fees)

We require a valid e-mail address, and because of occasional adult content, people under 18 must get parental permission before joining. Pseudonyms may be used. Multiple memberships are not allowed.

Once you sign up to become a member and choose a member ID, we send you a temporary password via e-mail, which you use to log in for the first time. You can then reset your password to be whatever you want. You can choose to add your e-mail address and other personal information to the member directory if you wish, or not--it's up to you. Your current submissions and the reviews you've done will be part of your directory listing.

After becoming a member, you may submit your work, review the work of others, and participate in workshop discussions. Other members will also be able to read, rate, and review your work.

Because reviews and ratings are what improve people's writing, we require that you contribute reviews in order to be allowed to post your own work. (Of course reviews help the submission's author, but our members report that reviewing also helps the reviewer improve his or her own writing by improving analytic skills.) And because we want all members to have a good chance of getting their work reviewed, we have a limit on how many pieces any member can submit at once.

Rules about submitting your work:

You need four review points to post a submission.
You're given four review points when you join the workshop, so you can post your first submission before contributing any reviews.
After that, you earn one review point for each substantive review you post, with a bonus point awarded if that submission has zero reviews.
Very short reviews are allowed, but don't earn review points.
Once you earn the points, they're yours until you spend them by posting a submission. Even if the submission you reviewed is removed from the workshop, you still keep your points.
You may post up to three pieces of writing at a time: three chapters, three short stories, etc. Three chapters from one novel equal three submissions. (Some browser configurations do not allow submission of long pieces all at once, so if your story or chapter is too long for the text window, you may use our "append text" feature to add the second part. Submit what you can, then go to your partial submission and click the "Edit this submission" link at the top. Scroll down to beneath the submission text box and click the "'append' form" link to add the rest of your submission. No extra points are needed for this.)
Editors' Choice submissions are exempted from the three-submission limit, so you may occasionally see some members who have more than three pieces posted.

Rules about the content of your submission:

It must be written by the person submitting it.
It must be science fiction, fantasy, or horror.
It must be no longer than 7500 words (about 30 double-spaced pages).
It must not use licensed worlds, universes, or the characters from those worlds or universes (including but not limited to those from Star Trek^(R), Star Wars^(R), Babylon 5^(R), and computer or role-playing games).
It may contain "explicit" material--swearing, sex scenes--as long as that material is comparable (in extent and explicitness) to that in SF/F novels you can find on the shelves of most bookstores. Use your best judgment. If you're in doubt, it's probably too much for the genre! (If your submission does contain a lot of "explicit" material, note that in the area for author comments.)
You must have read and agreed to our legal disclaimer before submitting. This protects you and us.

Online Writing Workshops, as owner and administrator of the workshop, has these rights regarding submissions:

We may delete a submission at any time for reasons including but not limited to inappropriateness for the workshop, obscenity, and plagiarism.
We may e-mail the author regarding his/her submissions for various reasons.
We may select a submission as a monthly "Editors' Choice" and list it as such on the Editors' Choice page and in the workshop's newsletter.

But we don't have the right to publish any author's work or submit it for publication, nor do we have an option on publishing that work, or any sort of claim to it, just because that work or a portion thereof has been posted in the workshop. Selecting a submission as an "Editors' Choice" does not give us any rights or options. All rights remain with the author of the work. In even plainer language, it's yours, not ours.

Rules about rating and reviewing:

You may not rate or review your own submission(s).
Reviews must contain some useful content for the author, not just "I liked it" or "I couldn't read this." Very brief reviews are allowed, but will not earn review points. Ideally, reviews should contain specific good and bad points. All reviews should include at least one positive comment.
Members who post contentless reviews in order to earn points will have those reviews deleted (and points removed) and may have their membership revoked if they do not mend their ways. Play fair!
The point of the workshop is to help SF/F writers improve their writing. Therefore, constructive criticism is encouraged; insults and put-downs are not allowed. Try to be clear but not harsh in your criticisms, and don't forget to compliment the good points. Put yourself in the writer's shoes before you slam a submission, no matter how poorly written it may be.
Flaming, personal attacks, and an aggressive, condescending tone are not allowed. Members who cannot follow this rule will be banned from the workshop.

Online Writing Workshops, as owner and administrator of the workshop, has these rights regarding reviews:

We may remove a submission and its reviews from the workshop automatically three months after its submission date or last update. This is to keep workshop members focused on newer submissions and submissions that are being actively revised. (If your submission is scheduled to be removed, you will receive e-mail notifying you two weeks in advance; you may then either update your submission to keep it from being removed, or save or print out the reviews and ratings for your submission before they are removed with the submission.)
We may delete a review at any time for reasons including but not limited to inappropriateness for the workshop, obscenity, and just plain unconstructive meanness. Flames and personal attacks will be deleted.
We may contact a member about a contentless review, request revisions, or direct that member to resources on how to review. We may also delete contentless reviews.
We may contact a member about an inappropriate review and request revisions. We may also cancel a person's membership and ban a person from participating in the workshop, with or without prior warning, if he or she seems incapable of participating in a constructive manner. We will cancel the memberships of reviewers who consistently contribute reviews that are aggressive in tone and inappropriate for the workshop environment. In those cases we may or may not refund a prorated amount of the member's membership fee, at our discretion.

Rules about information displayed on this site:

You may not use members' names, e-mail addresses, or other public information for any commercial purpose. This includes sending out commercial advertising via e-mail to members, creating commercial mailing lists from members' e-mail addresses, or any other commercial use. Violators of this rule will be permanently banned from the workshop. Members who suspect violation of this rule should inform Online Writing Workshops by using our contact form or e-mailing support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com.
Online Writing Workshops itself has a privacy policy as well. We won't give out members' names or e-mail addresses for commercial use, either, though we may occasionally send out a message on behalf of our sponsor partners about their books of interest to members, not more than 4 times per year.

We reserve the right to cancel your membership, with or without prior notice, if we learn that you have:

registered under multiple member IDs
made submissions that do not follow our guidelines
submitted reviews that personally attack or flame other members
consistently submitted contentless reviews
used member information for commercial purposes
or otherwise violated this member agreement.

In these cases we may or may not refund a prorated amount of any membership fee paid, at our discretion.

Your membership rights:

You may delete or update your own submissions and reviews at any time, and update the information in your member-directory listing, too, as long as you continue to provide us with a valid e-mail address.
You may terminate your membership at any time, for any reason you wish. Just log in, then click on the "Log in or join" button to get to the membership-management page, enter your member ID and password, and click on "Delete membership." Your submissions will be removed from the workshop as soon as you delete your membership. However, your reviews will remain in the workshop unless you delete each one before your delete your membership.
You may send us e-mail (at support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com) to clarify any workshop rules and rights, complain about a review, report a problem with the workshop, or make suggestions. We will do our best to reply to you within a day or two.

You may also find our Notice to Writers of interest, especially if you have not participated in a workshop before.

Read on for more about the workshop and what it has to offer.

EDITORS' CHOICES:

Each month our Resident Editors select one submission in each of four categories as an Editors' Choice and review it in the newsletter. Editors' Choices do not count against a member's three-submission limit, and remain on display, with reviews, in our Editors' Choice archive for about four months. (Authors may, of course, still remove these submissions from the workshop, in which case they will no longer be listed in the Editors' Choice archive.)

LISTS:

You can create lists on the OWW site to help you manage your workshop participation. You can create as many lists as you want, name them, and put them in the order you want on the Your Lists page. Use a list to keep track of your favorite writers or of the submissions you plan to review. Create a list for the members of your reviewing group so you can have easy access to their directory listings. Collect reviews you want to read and learn from. Save submission-selector searches you perform often. The Your Lists page is accessible from the bottom of the Your Info page or from the navigation buttons on the left of the site window. To add a page to a list, just click on the checkmark symbol on that page:

TELLTALES:

Telltales are opt-in e-mail messages sent to you from the workshop whenever a certain member submits writing or contributes a review, or whenever your submissions are reviewed. You can sign up for submission telltales when you read a submission or in the member directory (at the listing for the author you're interested in). Sign up for review telltales in the member directory or on the member's "reviewer history" page. Sign up for telltales on your own submission on your Telltales page, accessible from the bottom of the Your Info page. Watch for the bird symbol (as in "a little bird told me"):

REVIEWING AND THE REVIEWER HONOR ROLL:

Members who receive especially helpful reviews can nominate the reviewers for the monthly Reviewer Honor Roll, a listing of reviews/reviewers that is updated monthly in each month's newsletter. Use the nomination form in the Reviewer Honor Roll area or the nomination link at the bottom of each review.

WRITERS' RESOURCES:

We maintain a list of useful online resources for aspiring writers, including organizations, other workshops, writers' publications, advice, and contests. New resources are sometimes announced in the monthly newsletter.

NOTICE TO WRITERS:

Editors' Choice selections: The selection of a submission as an "Editors' Choice" does not mean that Online Writing Workshops or a sponsoring publisher, if any, will publish your manuscript, or even that a sponsoring publisher will request to see a complete manuscript. It means that the submission was chosen by our Resident Editors as one that could be reviewed in a way that would help the author and other readers learn more about the craft of writing.

Workshops: You may not have participated in a fiction workshop before, so let us just pass on a little advice. First of all, the point of entering your writing in a workshop is to improve it. You may get compliments, but you will almost certainly receive some criticism of your work. Some reviews and ratings of your work may seem harsh to you--and some may be, in fact, unfairly harsh--but most criticism will help you pinpoint the weaknesses in your piece of writing. It's then your job, should you choose, to eliminate those weaknesses as best you can. Keep in mind, as you read the reviews and ratings, that as a writer it's important for you to have a sense of who is the right sort of reader for your work. Some readers will understand what you are trying to do with your writing, and some will not. Listen to the ones who seem to get it--especially if they offer constructive criticism and good suggestions--and listen less hard to the ones who obviously don't get it.

Secondly, pay attention to the critiques your writing receives, but think for yourself. Editors, or readers, can often point out to an author what is wrong with a particular plot point or chapter or passage--but the editors or readers, can seldom come up with the best solution. The author is often the only one who can do that.

Agents: Many of you may be looking for an agent to represent your writing to publishers. Be aware that there are many "agents" who charge fees and do not actually send your book around, or misrepresent themselves and their services in various other ways. See SFWA's Writer Beware section for more information on this, or to check out the bona fides of an agent who has approached you.

So join the workshop armed with discernment, a relatively thick skin, a willingness to listen to constructive criticism, and--last but not least--a piece of writing you want to share and get feedback upon!