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Submitting Pieces
Submitting by email
a)Please provide a valid email address where you can be reached when sending
us your submission. Let us know if you want your e-mail address included with
the final story.
b) Tell us your name and any pseudonym you would prefer us to use when the story is posted.
d) Make sure to include the title for your story
e) You can either include a story in the body of an e-mail, or add it as an attachment. Either way, please send your story to writings@koreabridge.com
f) Some e-mail programs (on the web or on your desktop) allow e-mails to be formatted with bold, italic etc. They do this by saving the text in html format (the magic behind Internet pages). An html e-mail is easy for Koreabridge to cut and paste.
h) If you send an e-mail attachment, it will probably have been formatted by some word processing program; (that is, it will contain hidden code symbols from that program). Koreabridge can read the most common of these word processing files. However, we often cannot read files made by Korean word processors, even if the text is in English. The best solution to this is to do a "save as" in RTF (rich text format), which is a common exchange format recognized by many programs. Your italics etc. will be preserved in RTF. For those in need of assistance, go to the file/save as menu and left-click your mouse; ii) you will see a button saying something like "save as type"; iii) left click this to see a list of file types. Select "rtf", then save the file].
Please read the guidelines below for more non-tech information about submitting Writings.
Contributions : Koreabridge welcomes contributions from everyone. Many of you may be new to Korea, seeing things with the fresh (confused !) eyes of an outsider. Some others will be longer term residents, while a few may now live in different parts of the world but still feel the pull of Korea. We especially welcome stories and comments from Koreans who feel able to write in English, and for that matter from folk of any culture who find themselves somehow involved with things Korean.
Themes : Koreabridge is pretty open about the sorts of topics its contributors can choose. Some themes are universal, but most of the stories which turn up are connected in some way with Korea, or at least with East Asia. At times you may feel strongly about your congressman in Dallas, Texas, or the state of garbage services in Ontario, or even airliners flying into New York skyscrapers. You may be brilliant and witty on these very important matters, but usually such things are best sent to any number of other Internet forums. A percentage of contributions to Koreabridge in the past have been "adult writings". So long as they are credibly within the law, this is OK, sort of, though we are basically interested in stories which have a Korean slant. If they happen to be a bit hot too, well so be it. Now and again culture shock gets to a visitor so badly that they want to slag off against everything Korean. Koreabridge has no illusions about life in Korea, but on balance we've chosen to live here with good grace. If we feel that a writer is likely to upset too many readers by being super-aggressive, we may occasionally draw the line.
Who writes and how? : Some of you will be quite talented writers, while others may be trying their hand for the first time. Within reason, we will try to give you all a showcase. There are countless ways to write well, but a few simple tricks help greatly.
a) If a story is interesting for your friends, it is probably interesting for lots of people. However, you might have to give the world in general (especially readers overseas) more background, more "word pictures", than your friends need.
b) The habits that bore people in conversation, like being completely self-centered and saying "I" all the time, are usually a turnoff in writing too. That said, a few giant egos can get away with being the center of the universe..
c) In a new culture, things can be upsetting, and you may have reason to be furious. Anger is energy, and there could be a story in it, but as in face to face talk, letting the facts speak for themselves is usually more powerful than a stream of bad language.
d) A big advantage of writing is that there is time to invent all the clever comments you can never think of in conversation. This is great, but don't let it become too unreal ...
e) Finally, when your masterpiece is done, it is the most important thing in the world and you want everyone to see it immediately. Experienced writers become wary of this halo effect. Usually it pays to bite your tongue, shove it in a drawer for a few days, and forget it. Then, when the fever has cooled, come back with the fishy eye of a stranger. There are almost always snippets to add or improve.
Layout, punctuation, and stuff ... Contributions to Koreabridge turn up in all kinds of disguises. However, we'll love you more if you follow a few simple rules; (the Koreabridge team are all volunteers, and you can save us sleepless nights).
a) All the layout on Koreabridge, including type size, is set to templates. The closer your submission looks to the template, the easier our life is.
b) Please, if at all possible, run your story through a spell checker before sending it in. A good free word processor with a spelling-check program is Jarte, which you can download from www.jarte.com
c) We HATE stories (and even titles) that are written in all capital letters.
d) Punctuation was invented to make reading easier, not to keep English teachers in jobs. Use it.
e) Except for poetry, we would rather you didn't put a carriage return (press the "enter" key) at the end of each line. The template will set the page width automatically.
f) Stuff on the web (stuff anywhere) is much easier to read if it is broken up into to fairly short paragraphs of one to four sentences. Look at any professional newspaper or magazine site if you don't believe us. If you want to be read, be nice to the readers. Paragraphs should be separated by a full line space.
g) Our ability to maintain highly formatted pieces (lots of bold and/or italics) is somewhat limited. Please use them sparingly. We'll do our best to maintain formatting, but make no promises.
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