To remain members in good standing, all OWWW members must:

• Crit six times before subbing anything of their own
• Crit or sub at least twice each month as a minimum
• Take note of the 2:1 rule (crit twice as much as you sub)
• SIGN ALL POSTS with your first and last name. No email handles, no nicknames. Don't assume the admins know who you are. Improperly signed posts will not count for participation credit.
• Leave all Subs up for at least 30 days before stopcritting or posting a rewrite. Not everyone has time to instantly leap onto your post and crit it.
• Never post crits to Files
• Specify the type of crit desired when you sub
• Participate! Members who crit exclusively for years will be bounced. Likewise, members cannot sub exclusively. Members who do neither will be bounced in a few months. We expect all members to be writers as well as readers, and lurkers are not welcome.

What We Expect

1. No flames, no sniping. If someone is annoying you, please tell the admins immediately, not after weeks of harassment. 
2. If you hate a genre or a piece, don't crit it. It's really not our job to eradicate some genre or other by pointing out how stupid it is. It is our job to help our fellow authors build the story they want to make, not the stories we would write. No one is required to critique any one piece.
3. We ask you to crit the story, not the writer, or the politics, or the philosophy in it, unless it's flawed as world-building. If you just can't handle the setting or point of the story, don't crit it, since you likely not a buyer in the intended audience. If you hate romances, you're probably not the best judge of whether a sub hits the requirements for the genre or not.
4. We are not here to be clever at someone else's expense. People get cut from the list if they can't stop being unpleasant.
5. Thank-you notes for crits are a nicety everyone appreciates, even if it's a post to the list where you thank all seven critters by name. Please don't send thank-you notes to the list unless discussing specific points of the crit.
6. We expect activity every month from members. If you don't sub or crit for two months, you will get axed the third. Discussion posts (DISC), Reference posts (REF), and shortcrits don't count toward participation credit.
7. You should keep track of your own credits and debits: the admins, while brilliant, really can't do it for fifty to a hundred people for all eternity.

SECTION II: Critiquing

Overview

Because you are required to crit before subbing, we will cover that first. If you are uncertain how to begin critting, we suggest reviewing the Turkey City Lexicon to discover what you should cover in your analysis. In general, all crits should cover the basic elements of plot, characterization, pacing, tension, hook, denouement, worldbuilding, etc. It is well to point out authorial quirks in the writing as well, such as overuse of a pet phrase, passive voice, wordiness, and the like.  

Here at Other Worlds we look for in-depth rather than the quickie "postcard" crits found on some many other workshops. Such crits will most likely be deemed "shortcrits" and will not count for credit. With that said, there are a couple of different ways to critique:

• Overall analysis with line crits: usually applied to short stories
• High-level analysis without line crits: applies exclusively to novels

Now then, let us be clear. When you crit a novel, you are agreeing to crit the WHOLE novel. You may not sub chapter by chapter; you may not crit chapter by chapter. To get a valid analysis of the plot and the relevance of every character to the novel as a whole, you must read the entire book, otherwise you are guessing at how things fit together, and that is not helpful to the author. Likewise, detailed line critting of a first-draft novel subbed to see if the plot hangs together is just a waste of everyone's time. You can point out egregious writing habits, but breaking out the blue pencil is premature.

Short stories, synopses, and works in progress (WIPs) are all subject to high level analyses. However, you can also add line crits to these if you choose. We will disallow full-novel crits that are nothing but line edits.

Shortcrits

Very short or shallow responses, i.e. "postcard" crits, get shortcritted. Attaboys, that are basically "I like this!"  make the writer feel good, but they aren't crits. We post them, but they don't count for credit.

The best way to avoid being shortcritted is to read “Avoiding Shortcrits” in Suggested Reading at the Files section of OWWW/Yahoo. If you really can't find anything wrong with a piece, post a shortcrit yourself just to let the author know your general impression.

Posting Crits

1. Never post them to Files. They will be removed without credit.
2. All crits must be posted to the list either via email or directly by using the Post function at Yahoo. Keep individual emails to 4000 words or less. That means a 7000-word crit should be posted in two parts (we get five parters). 
3. All crit posts must have a subject header of CRIT in the email to the workshop, i.e. CRIT: StoryName
4. Do NOT put your name or the author's in the subject line; it gets confusing.
5. DO put your full name (first and last) at the top of your crit: Crit by: My Name. This ensures that the admins can properly give participation credit at the end of the month.
6. DO put the word count of the piece you are critiquing, so the admins can properly assign credits.
7. Always change the headers before hitting "Reply". Improperly labeled posts may be missed by the admins and not properly counted. 
8. Make sure you intended this email to go to the entire workshop, because it will. Don't join the Red-Faced Brigade.
   

SECTION III: Subbing

• A finished short story or novella draft (anything under 20k words)
• A finished novel draft
• A WIP novel (25k chunks of your rough draft with all the bark on)
• An S&3, synopsis and three chapters. This proposal type is the way most unsolicited mss get solicited, therefore almost as important as the actual mss. You can also post your cover letter for critique.

• In order to submit your own work, the general rule is 2 crits per sub of the same type crit you're asking for. You can't crit two short stories and blithely drop your whole novel to the list. 

To sub your own work, you must have completed your initial six credits, which earns you a short story sub. After that, you will need:

Short story = 2 crit credits
WIPs = 2 credits for each 10k words subbed
Synop/3 = 8 credits
Novels = Crit credits equal to the words subbed. If you have critted a 100k novel, you are entitled to sub a 100k novel. This is in recognition of the time and thought required to critique an entire novel. Be aware that we expect really good crits for this consideration.

• An S&3 counts the same as four short stories or line-edited chapters.
  

• WIPs must be subbed as: