Campfire Story Guidelines

Campfire Stories Home

If you’re interested in participating in one of the campfire stories hosted by yours truly, read on. The point of having guidelines is not to stifle creativity or limit authors, but to provide basic parameters to help shape the story with some consistency. (Also, don’t forget to check out the Tips to Writing for a Campfire Story page).

• Who can participate?  Anyone who fancies themselves an author/writer of creative fiction. Ideally you would have a blog of your own to be able to post your chapter there, but it’s OK if you don’t; just let me know so I can post it on mine with your permission.
• How can I participate?  Simply leave a comment on THIS page letting me know you’re interested in writing a chapter. Make sure to read the chapters leading up to yours to be able to effectively blend in with the rest of the story.
• How long should my chapter be? No more than 500-700 words. Yup, short. We want to make this a fun and fast-moving writing exercise, not something that requires a lot of time commitment—we recognize that most authors have bigger projects they’re working on.
• How much time do I have to write my chapter? We will do our best to be flexible and casual about this. If it’s been a week and you still haven’t submitted a chapter, you can expect a nudge to see how things are going. If after a couple weeks you haven’t written it or we haven’t heard from you, we may move on to the next person and check back with you after that.
• How many chapters and how often can I submit? There’s really no limit set, but we do ask that you don’t write back-to-back chapters. If there’s a lull, Dyane or myself may submit a new chapter to keep the ball rolling.

I have finished my chapter—now what?

1. Know that I reserve the right to make basic edits (I’m talking copy-editing, and MAYBE some smoothening out if something you’ve written directly contradicts details from a previous chapter or what not. But in these latter cases, I would collaborate with you on any changes, as I have no desire to dictate where YOU choose to steer the story within your chapter). Since the chapter would be posted in your blog, I would ask you to make the appropriate changes (I’ll try to keep them to a minimum, as this is–again–a writing exercise).
2. Post your chapter to your blog with the title of the current campfire story followed by “A Campfire Story” (i.e., The Desert Marker:  A Campfire Story) and be sure to link to the chapters page, as well as the previous chapter. Have these links at the very start of your post.
3. Oh, and include your chapter’s word count, if you don’t mind. This is more out of interest and ensuring you kept it within the scope.
4. If you have the desire to set up your own chapters page, feel free. Just make sure to link to the various authors’ chapters—do not copy and paste their work.

Sound simple? It should be. Remember, this is a writing exercise.  Hopefully it proves to be as much fun for folks reading the end product as it is for the authors who write it.