Saturday, March 30, 2013

Donation request

HASA is in its twelfth year of providing ad-free, fee-free JRRT fanfiction that is operated by the fandom, not corporate interests. There are no tests to take to join, and has all genres, characters, ratings & story lengths. HASA depends on fan funding.

If you become a member, your contact information is not for sale to marketeers. We get hundreds of readers a day, which makes HASA a great place for readers and writers. To do this HASA depends on donations from members and readers, both one-time gifts and subscriptions. If only a small percentage of our members and readers donated every year or got a monthly subscription we would be in good shape.

Our PayPal account has three ways to donate:
• Monthly subscriptions - set up a monthly recurring donation in amounts from $5 to $25 dollars.
• Yearly subscriptions - set up a recurring annual donation in amounts from $15 to $50 dollars.
• "Just because" donations of any amount.

If you're a little short on spare change at the moment, donations of time are always appreciated. There's an archive full of stories just waiting for comments, authors who would dearly love an email complimenting them on their work, challenges that need entries, playlists that need to be created, and forums begging for discussions. If you are a reviewer, check out a story today. If you aren't a reviewer, no better time than now to sign up. If you are an author, please consider donating a new story.

Thanks for enjoying HASA!

Julie

Saturday, March 16, 2013

HASA How-to March 2013

How do I...

... create a Playlist and put stories in it?

Playlists are lists of HASA stories put together by authors and readers, just as music lovers put together lists of their favorite songs.

Examples:

  • Stories in a series put in reading order.
  • A collection of similarly themed stories, such as Hobbit romance or critical essays on Men.
  • A reader's "favorites" list, complete with explanations of why the reader likes them.
  • A collection of stories by multiple authors.

There are three types of playlists, each featuring a slightly different set of perspectives.

The first type, Reader Lists, is for readers to put together collections of stories that you like, for whatever reason, in the order you like, and by as many authors as you like. Put together a reading tour of HASA!

You can add playlists as follows.

If you do not yet have any playlists, you can make one first:

  1. Go to the Playlists section.
  2. If the Main Menu is not open, click the header to unfold the menu.
  3. From the menu, click on "My Playlists", and choose "Playlists I share" from the righthand column.
  4. You will now see a form for creating a list.
    Type in a title. It cannot be more than 50 characters, including spaces. Make the title distinctive. Do not use double quote marks!
    Type in a description of the list. Use key words like your screen name, characters featured in the stories, and so on. Each one of these words is searchable. Click "Add new playlist".
  5. The playlist is created and you end up on the "Playlists I have created" page. You are now ready to add stories.

Or, when you are in Stories (and this works both for creating a new list and adding a story to a playlist you made earlier):

  1. While you are reading a story you like, click on the "Add to Playlist" button in the Readers Toolbox located at the top and bottom of every chapter page.
  2. If you do not have any playlists at all, you will immediately see a form like the one described above. Follow those instructions to create a playlist.
  3. If you already have playlists, you will see a drop-down list of your Reader playlists, plus a link to "Create new Playlist."
  4. Once you have either created or selected a playlist, you will be prompted to add the story to the list.
  5. Provide a brief explanation of why you are adding the story to the list and click "Add".
  6. The screen refreshes and you can see the story in the list. It is added at position "0". You must set the story to a number other than "0" for it to show on your list.
  7. Use the small ordinal drop-down boxes to put the story in position.
  8. Click "Reorder List" to update the order.

NOTE: When a playlist is created, it is set to Inactive. This is because when it is created, it doesn't have stories in it. After you add stories to it, you must set the playlist to Active to allow others to read it.


The second type of list is the Author List. If you write multiple stories that should be read in a particular order, or if you have different sets of stories (these are my Dwarf stories, these are my Hobbit stories, etc.) you can group them together. The only limit here is that any story included in the list must be Beta, General, or Reviewed status.

Creating an author playlist is also a great way to promote your own works. The most recently updated playlist appears on the home page of HASA, which is a good way to bring a set of stories to the notice of readers.

  1. Go to the Playlists section.
  2. If the Main Menu is folded up, click the heading to unfold it.
  3. Choose "Playlists I Write" from the menu.
  4. On that page, if you do not have an author playlists yet, you will be prompted to create one.
  5. Enter a title and a brief description of the playlist, such as "This is my Legolas AU series set in chronological order."
  6. Click "Add".
  7. When your list is first created, it is set to Inactive. This allows you to put your list together before releasing it to the public. You must set your list to Active to make it viewable.

Now that your list is created, you can add your stories to it.

  1. Navigate to My Playlists-->Playlists I Write in the Playlists section of HASA
  2. You will now see the list of all Author Playlists you have created. If you don't have a playlist yet, you'll be prompted to create one.
  3. Click "Update List" to add stories.
  4. The screen will refresh and you will now see all of your Beta, General and Reviewed status stories in a drop down list.
  5. Select the story you want to add from the drop-down list and click "Select".
  6. Provide a brief explanation for the story. Use keywords that readers might use for searching, such as characters names or story genre. Take time to say something that will spark curiosity about your story and make a reader want to click. If you are putting together a thematic series, put that in.
  7. Click "Add".
  8. The story and reason are added to the list.
  9. Be sure to set the order of the list after adding a new story. Use the order drop-down numbers to do this. The stories that are left set to "0" will not show up in the playlist.

After you have added a story, you will need to reset the overall playlist to Active status.

  1. Click the "Edit Playlist" button in the top table.
  2. The playlist will open in a form.
  3. Make changes to the description if desired and change the status from Inactive to Active.
  4. Click "Edit Playlist".

Workshop Lists. These are the most specialized. These are lists of stories by authors who belong to a particular workshop. If a group of authors is conducting a writing exercise, they could gather the stories in a playlist. Or if the authors are jointly writing stories, they can compose the joint works in a workshop, then put the stories into a playlist with commentary about writing them.

Adding stories to a Workshop List works the same way as described for the other two types of playlist. The only other thing you need to keep in mind here is that only stories that are in a Workshop can be added.

Have fun!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Reviewed Stories March 2013

Since the previous Bulletin, no stories passed through review while there are currently 12 stories waiting for reviewers. Make an author's day and review a story!

Member participation is crucial for reviews. The more people are involved in reviewing, the more different opinions are represented. Having more people involved also means that stories pass through review more quickly – which is good for everyone. If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check out a story?

Or, if you are a writer, take the plunge and submit a story for review; and when you do, please remember: Put one in, take one out.

By submitting a story for review, you are asking nine other members to read and evaluate it. So why not do for the other authors who have a story in review what you'd like other reviewers to do for you: check out one of the stories already in review and give it a read.

Becoming a reviewer

If you're not an active reviewer, but think you can spare a bit of time... – even if you just review one or two stories in a month, every review is welcome. If you are logged in, you can sign up here if you've been a member of HASA for thirty days or more.

Daunted by the idea of reviewing? Don't be, reviewing at its simplest comes down to asking yourself: "Would I recommend this story to someone?" Then, whether the answer is 'yes' or 'no', you can make a choice from the capsule reasons to clarify your decision. If you want to, you can add a few more words to convey what you (dis)liked about the story, but just the capsule reason is perfectly fine as well.

And remember: even if you think you're too critical or not critical enough: your review is only one of nine, and all points of view are welcome. Not every reviewer has to review every story and in the end it does all level out to a balanced judgement.

 

 

Make an author's day, review a story or post a comment.

 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

HASA news - Birthdays, Challenges, Stories

March Birthdays

Is your birthday in March, and would you like a drabble about your favourite character or topic? You can request it here.

Not sure what the birthday cards are about? Have a look at the ones written last month.

Challenges

Just as Challenges come from Prospective Challenges, Prospective Challenges come from Nuzgûl, and Nuzgûl need attention to grow from tiny ideas into big stories. Step into the Nuzgûl hutch. The bunnies don't bite (much). And who knows what ideas you may come out with?

How about The Mouth of Sauron lives? If enough people want to write it, it becomes a Challenge...

The Nuzgûl of the Month!

The all-new March Nuzgûl, from Aruthir: Different Seasons – How did the races of Middle Earth deal with the changing of the seasons? Was there a Lossoth festival of Spring, for example... or an Orc one for that matter? How did the Fell Winter affect the Elves of Mirkwood? What do dragons make of Autumn mist? How do Hobbits celebrate Midsummer? ...

If you think you can come up with ideas for Nuzgûl of the Month later this year, please post to the discussion thread as well. Ideas are always welcome!

February Stories

All writers love feedback. It is the lembas and miruvor that sustains us as we write our story, and leaving a few words about a story you read is always a nice thing to do, whether the story is new or old.

Every fifteen minutes HASA highlights a story chosen at random from the Reviewed and General stories in the archive. Read the currently featured story on our front page.

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In February:

--- No Reviewed Stories were published or updated.

--- 36 General Stories were published or updated.

--- 1 Beta Story was updated.

(Please note, you need to be logged in to view beta stories.)

Thank you for reading at HASA. Enjoy!