Winter Companions strongly encourages its authors and artists to use beta readers and viewers - and in fact, our Fests specifically require them. We know, though, that sometimes a good beta can be hard to find. So welcome to the Winter Companions Beta Volunteer post!

We're calling all intrepid, community minded individuals who are interested in helping out fellow comm members by betaing stories or art for our authors and artists. Can't fit in writing your own fic or creating your own piece for a particular challenge? Help a fellow creator out instead!

Please leave the following info to help writers see what you can offer:

Fic, art, vids, or all?
Willing to help with: (This may be characterisation, canon knowledge, spelling & grammar, Brit-picking (or other place/language knowledge), pacing and so on - whatever you think your strengths are or what you are prepared to do.)
Probably can't help with: (As above, and whatever else you can think of. Please also include any squicks, so if you really can't cope with character deaths or certain scenarios, please do let us know here.)
Peaceful Ood or Merciless Dalek? (How tough are you as a beta, or do you have a range of ferocity settings?)
Your LJ username
Best contact method: (Provide a contact email address - not your default LJ one, please. Alternatively, please indicate that you prefer to be contacted by PM.)

( Sign-up form for c&p-ing: )

On behalf of the comm, thank you!

A note to beta-seekers: Proper care and feeding of volunteer betas is very important! When you contact a volunteer beta, please remember to ask if they have time before sending your fanwork to them, and do let them know what you would like them to look at if you have particular expectations. And please remember to thank them and give credit (in your header) where it's due.

This post will be linked in the sidebar, so you can easily find it when you need it. Any problems, please contact one of the mods.

This post should give you all the information you need to submit your stories and artwork for the Doctor/Jack Gift Exchange.

The basics

All stories and artwork will be posted anonymously by the mods, so please keep your assignment secret! Don't tell anyone other than your beta(s) who you're writing/creating for.

Like all wintercompanion challenges, prompts should be used as a point of inspiration, but since this is an exchange, you must incorporate at least one of your recipient's requests. Please respect your recipient's stated "do not wants".

Please read these submission guidelines before sending your entry to help keep things running smoothly.

Deadlines

Please take the deadline - Friday 5th April - as the actual deadline, and not the date where you start wondering if you can get an extension. We strongly recommend aiming to get your story or artwork in early to avoid those last minute disasters that happen to us all at times. Obviously you're free to submit your contribution as early as you like, starting right now - in fact, two people already have done so. (Thank you very much to those early submitters - you know who you are!)

We will be sending out a reminder email approximately one week before the deadline as well as posting to the community.

Should you run into any real problems with the deadline, we'll do our best to help, but because it's a gift exchange, our most important job is to make sure everyone receives a gift in April. Because of that, all extension requests must be accompanied by a partial draft of the story or artwork. This is the important bit: If we don't receive either a completed entry or a draft with an extension request on the deadline day we will start looking for a backup to take your place.

If at any point you are sure you won't be able to complete your story or artwork for the fest please comment here or email one of us to let us know. We understand that life has a way of happening, but we can't help fix the problem - or find a pinch hitter! - unless you let us know.

Submission guidelines

Please submit your entry to either wojelah@yahoo.com or trobadora@gmail.com - we'll respond as quickly as we can to let you know we received your entry, and we'll check it over to make sure everything's in order. :)

Your entry can be any rating, but it must involve Doctor/Jack in some form.

( Headers )

( Author or artist notes )

( Artwork )

( Fanfic )

For reference, the rules for the exchange can be found here.

(As a gentle reminder, when stories and artworks are posted, please take the time to comment on your gift - someone has worked hard on this! If you feel your author/artist did not fulfil the terms of the exchange, please email your mods before you comment on your story.)

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Still have questions?

Please comment here or e-mail us at either of the addresses given above.