Authors – Rules and Q&A

The Quantum Bang has secrecy rules; most bangs do. Here are ours before you delve into the other challenge guidelines.

You should never reveal any portion of your story, and no part of your story should have been published prior to the go-live date on the QB site.

Before Art Claims

Do not talk about your story outside of your intimate, trusted circle. That circle cannot contain any artist participating the Quantum Bang.

When you’re talking about writing for the QB, you should not discuss any details we use to build the Art Claims page.

That includes:

• Title
• Fandom
• Relationship (or that it’s Gen)
• Length
• Novel vs. Series
• Genres
• Warnings
• Summary

After Art Claims

You can reveal any of the above if you wish, but you should not reveal any of the actual content of your story to anyone who is not part of your close writing circle. Writing circles are people like alpha readers, beta readers, sensitivity readers, bounce buddies, etc.

Do not reveal anything in any public or semi-public forum. Semi-public would be any social media community, regardless of how restricted the membership is, and that includes Discord servers.

Regarding Discord servers: Unless your server is private to just you and your writing partners, we consider it semi-public and you cannot reveal any part of your story on a Discord server ahead of your publication date.

If you think you have a reason to have an exception to these rules, please contact us. It’s always better to talk to us ahead of time and work out a problem than to have us find out.

If you’re on board with the culture of participating in a Bang, please be sure to read all the rules…

• The first rule is don’t be an asshole. It’s the golden rule. You don’t have to like everyone, but you do have to be respectful and civil.
• You must write your own story in its entirety. No one else is allowed to write on your behalf. (This rule clarification was added in April 2024)
  • We do allow co-written works (check the Q&A tab), but both participants must be signed up, and other rules of co-written works must be followed.
• Plagiarism is, of course, against the rules and will result in you being banned from the site. Probably every site any admin has access to.
• All stories must be part of the art claims in March to eligible for the challenge. (As of 2023)
  • The art claim is anonymous, so please do not discuss your story publicly until after the art claim in March. That means, do not reveal identifying information listed above. After art claims, go wild.
• All stories must be complete by 5/20 to be posted on the site. We do not post works in progress on the Quantum Bang.
• Sequels/prequels or works related to another story off the site are allowed provided they stand on their own and satisfy the fix-it element.
  • Starting in 2023, there’s a Quantum Challenge for sequels to prior Quantum Bang works. This challenge has slightly different guidelines. Since this is only for returning participants, those details are available under the Members section after sign up.
• Do not post any portion of your story publicly prior to the go-live date on Quantum Bang. (As of 2025 Bang, this rule is clarified to mean public or semi-public, and that includes social media spaces and Discord servers)
• You may post the story wherever you choose after it has been posted to the Quantum Bang site.
  • June 30th is the official end of the challenge period. Most people wait until after the end of June to post elsewhere, but we have no specific rule about when you can cross-post other than it has to be after your posting date.
    • It would be polite to wait until the challenge is over.
  • Setting your story to post minutes after it goes live on the QB site is honestly rude and gives us no room to have technical glitches or a server outage. A day would is the absolute minimum you should allow, especially since the rules say “after the posting date” and that hasn’t changed since day 1 of this challenge.
• There are no restrictions on genre (other than no RPF) or rating, but you must warn and rate appropriately. There are content restrictions. Please see the appropriate tab.
• Check-ins are optional, but please reach out to the community if you need help.
  • The March 1st check-in is strongly encouraged because we need to know how many people will likely be submitting a rough draft for art claims.

Our rules have evolved since we first began, and below are our current guidelines for story length, along with minimum and maximum submissions.

• The minimum length is 50,000 words for projects submitted to the QB.
  • A “project” is defined as a stand-alone story or a series of connected stories.
  • If you’ve finished your project and aren’t quite at 50k, please use the contact form or communication system to contact the admins and see if your story is eligible. We don’t want to exclude people who were only a little short.
• The minimum length for any story is 17k, provided the whole series is at least 50k.
• The maximum length for any story is 200.
• You may submit up to 5 stories.
• Novels and novellas can be combined within a series (new for 2023) as long as nothing exceeds the 200 max or 17k min.
  • 17k is the general minimum for a novella. If you’re hitting it on most of your novellas, but one is coming up short at 15k, we’d allow 15k.
• The absolute maximum any participant may submit is 500k across all works for that challenge year.

• Theme
  • The theme of the Quantum Bang is Fix-it. That could be as minimal as a canon interrupt where you change an event to get the desired outcome or as major as time travel.
  • If you cannot discern if your idea qualifies as fix-it, please use the contact form.
•  Beta
  • Beta reading is a good practice for many people, but it is not required for the challenge.
  • If you cannot get a beta, please use spell check and a grammar checker to ensure basic quality. Stories that are obviously not spell checked will be returned to the author until this is done.
  • We recommend Grammarly or an equivalent, but Microsoft Word’s built-in grammar checker is fairly robust. Using both can’t hurt.
  • Even if you have a beta, spell check is required. Final stories submitted that have obviously not been spell checked will be rejected until this  basic quality control is completed.
• RPF or fandoms that focus on real people are not allowed, including: bandom, reality TV shows, or the RPF version of any standard fandom.
  • You may use real people as minor characters in their real-life role. Meaning, you can use the president, reference a known reporter, talk about getting an autograph from Michael Jordan, or be interviewed by Oprah. But none of these people can be significant characters in your story.
•  Warnings
  • You must warn for the following triggers: Rape/Non-Con/Dub-Con, Major Character Death, Incest, Cannibalism, Bestiality, Hate Crimes, Slavery, Torture, Graphic Violence, and Domestic Violence. Note: Incest for our purposes is defined as first cousins or closer. We do realize that first cousins aren’t considered incest in all regions, but they are in some.
  • Any other warnings are considerate and appreciated.
  • Do not warn for slash/het/ace or any type of preference, orientation, or gender. It’s offensive to make sexual orientation/preference or gender a warning.
  • A list of reasonable warnings will be made available as we near the posting date.
  • Please take warnings seriously. This is about warning the readers what might upset them. Gag warnings about fluff or excessive cuteness or cat videos are not acceptable. Put it in your author notes.
  • While we don’t prohibit any kinks on the site, the following kinks must be disclosed in the additional warnings: golden showers, scat, erotic asphyxiation, daddy/mommy kinks, felching, knife play, cock/pussy torture, and any other kinks that could be considered edge play.
  • A note about bestiality. Bestiality is sex with an animal, not a sapient being who happens to have fur or tentacles. Han/Chewie is not bestiality. Timmy/Lassie is. Fred Kwan banging Laliari in her natural form is not bestiality. Beauty/Beast fics are not bestiality.
• Forbidden Content
  • On-screen necrophilia is not permitted, and your main characters cannot engage in this activity. But if your story is about prosecuting someone guilty of this crime, it can be mentioned, but you should warn for it. It cannot be presented as an acceptable erotic act.
  • Snuff is not permitted. That means a character being killed as part of a sex act or for sexual gratification. Unless it’s not graphic and it’s being presented as a crime. If it’s being presented to titillate the reader, it’s a no-no. Be careful about how you write vampirism that it doesn’t come off like snuff.
  • Racism, sexism, discrimination, or hate crimes cannot be presented in a positive light by the main characters. Having a villain be a racist isn’t an issue, but you should warn for racist speech and/or actions.
  • Sex with characters under 16 is not permitted. Can one of your characters mention they lost their virginity at 15? Yes, but no flashbacks and no graphic description of it. If you need clarification of this policy, please use the contact form.
• Note: Most places in the world set the age of consent at 16, but that’s not all places. Generally, adulthood is considered to be between the ages of 18-21. The admin team’s preference is that 16 or 17-year-olds be in relationships with people no more than 5 years their senior, but it’s not a rule. However, if you have a character who is 16 or 17 and their romantic partner is over 21, you must warn for an adult having sex with a 16-17 year old.
• AI-generated writing is generally prohibited. You have to do your own writing, but see the AI-Generated Writing tab for further clarification.

The following will be explicit rules for 2025 and onward.

As is traditional with Big Bangs, all story information should be kept secret until after art claims is complete.

The following are the explicit guidelines for keeping the stories confidential.

• You may discuss your story with your personal writing partners in confidence.
  • These are people such as alpha readers, beta readers, bounce buddies, or other writers who assist in your process. All of whom understand, and who you trust, not to reveal details of your story.
• If you wish, you may reveal story basics after art claims, but not actual story content. Every sentence outside of your summary should remain between you and your intimate writing partners until your posting date
• For our purposes, secrecy means no reveal of any of the following in any public or semi-public forum:
  • Title
  • Fandom
  • Relationship
  • Anything uniquely identifying (some warnings or genres could be considered uniquely identifying)
• Semi-public includes private communities on sites such as Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, Facebook, etc, as well as private Discord servers.
  • Note: If you have a truly private Discord server  or social media community with, say you and just a couple other people that no one else can access, I’d consider that a private writing group and would satisfy the secrecy rules, but if there’s a single member who is not part of your intimate writing community, then it’s semi-public and you’ve broken the secrecy rule.

You have to do your own writing; you can’t have an AI engine write your story. This really should go without saying.

However, you certainly can use AI for some things…

You can use AI as a tool in whatever way you can figure out how to stretch its use… research, note taking, organizing. Anything but the actual word craft is fine.

You may also use it to write short technical blurbs for you, such as legal, medical, or scientific jargon. This must be a very, very small percentage of your story. If you turn in a medical procedural story with 30% blurbs written by AI, it will be disallowed. The AI exception would be for someone who needed a few paragraphs over the course of 50k that they wanted to sound realistic.

Art Claims are required for all participants. If there’s a reason why you think you’ll be done on time but just don’t want to do the art claims part, you need to talk to us well in advance. This is part of the whole Big Bang challenge, and we’d need to understand why you’re wanting to opt out before we’d okay it.

• To participate in art claims in March, your story needs to be 80% complete. That means at least 40k, or 80% of your projected total, whichever is larger.
  • If you’re writing a series, you need to be at 80% of your projected total for the series, so the first story (or stories) should be at 100%. For instance, if you write a 3-novel series, with each story being 80k, you’ll need to have 192k completed to submit for art claims. That means, the first two stories need to be at 100% and you’ll need 12k on the third story.
  • Alternately, you could be at 80% on each of the 3 stories if you write in parallel (gah!).
• The art claim is anonymous, so please do not discuss your story publicly until after the art claim in March. That means, do not reveal identifying information such as title, fandom, or pairing (all categories of identifying information are listed on the first tab).
• All story art on the Quantum Bang site should be made by your artist or one of the site artists in a pinch-hit situation.
  • If an author does not have a story banner or cover art, (meaning, the primary art was for a scene in the story rather than cover art) a banner with the title and name of the author will be provided by a site artist. This will not cross the line into story art.
  • If the artist does not provide a chapter spacer, the author may provide their own simple chapter spacer provided it doesn’t cross the line into art. This should be a single image that can be used to separate each chapter, not separate images for each chapter.
  • Cast collages may be provided by the artist or author or created by a third party. Artist-created collages will be included in the artist’s gallery.
  • Author-created cast collages are subject to the same image size rules, so please consult the Art Rules/FAQ for more information.
  • We do not allow any art or images as scene separators because they may interfere with accessibility tools like screen readers for the visually impaired. They also create a ton of work for the mod team. Chapter banners and spacers are fine, scene separators are not.
  • Document formatting guidelines will be provided on the Fixer, this includes how to handle scene separators. (Short form: you must use one, white space is not okay, simple is required. This is related to accessibility for the visually impaired.)

New for QB2025

Relating to the art phase of the challenge: as is stated elsewhere in the rules/FAQ, the art is ultimately up the artist, however, as of QB 2025, there are some more concrete guidelines about the collaboration model.

The art is the artist’s part of the challenge. This is not work for hire, it’s not a gift to the author, it’s the artist’s creative vision.

The level of collaboration is ultimately up to the artist. Some artists want a highly collaborative model and some want to read the story and then submit a near-final product that just needs some final tweaks.

(Note: High collaboration must work for the author too, becuase some authors don’t have a feel for art and being asked to collaborate is a nightmare. The model ultimately has to work for both parties.)

A few things to be aware of:

• While the final art is up to the artist, not the author, the artist is not allowed to offer choices to the author and then take back those choices in the name of their “creative vision.”
  • If the artist, for example, offers the author a choice between Image A and Image B, and the author chooses Image A, the artist can’t then decide to go with Image B.
  • The only reasons to back out of a choice are:
    • author and artist renegotiated and came to a consensus about the new direction
    • the artist couldn’t make the choice that was offered work at a technical or skill level, which should be explained clearly to the author.
• If the artist doesn’t want to work in a highly collaborative model, this is fine and it shouldn’t be offered. If the author requests more collaboration, they need to respect the artist’s no in this matter.
• The artist is supposed to be in creative control, so please keep that in mind.
• There are things the artist absolutely should take into account, such as if the author has vision issues and how that might impact their ability to perceive the art.
  • for instance, if the author is red/green colorblind, and the artist makes art that is primarily red and green, this wouldn’t be against the art rules, but if the artists knew they were making art the author would basically not be able to see properly, the admins would consider it breaking the Don’t Be an Asshole rule, which is the main rule of the challenge. No one is saying the artist would have to leave out red and green entirely, but to use colors primarily that they know the author can’t see would be a total dick move.
  • Authors, please bear in mind that you bear some of the burden for communicating these sorts of things to the artists! Many artists would be devastated to have completed their work for challenge only to find out long after the go-live that their author couldn’t even perceive the words or colors due to a vision issue that was never communicated. Please be forthcoming about these sorts of things.
• Finally, if you and your artist just cannot collaborate in any fashion and the working relationship is falling apart in a detrimental way, it’s better to let the admins know. We don’t penalize good communication. Even if we had to split up the author&artist pair, we wouldn’t penalize you for communicating well and looping us in on a problem as early as possible. Waiting until it blows up after weeks of strife could potentially be an entirely different issue.

*There are things in the art that the authors have complete control over. Such as: spelling, capitalization, character ages, and which characters go on their cast images.

• Re: capitalization – an author may reject, say, an all caps font if they have an all lower-case title, or if it’s important to them that their title be capitalized in a specific way that’s lost in an all caps or small caps font.
• Re: spelling –  If there’s a misspelling submitted by the author to the artist in terms of title and/or character names, the request from the admin team is that the author be notified of this misspelling. this is not a “beta” type situation; it’s basic spelling and respect for your fandom and keeping work off of everyone’s plate at the end of the challenge.
• Re: character ages – if the author says the character is 21 and the images used are obviously of the actor in their 40s, this could be a source of contention. If it comes down to an image availability or technical issue, please discuss with the admins. It’s fine for author to help out with images for characters if the artists is hitting the wall on this.
• Re: cast images – this is all assuming the artist is providing the cast images, and many of the cast images the artists have provided over the years have been incredibly artistic.
  • The author has to be reasonable in the size of the cast. Meaning, you can’t turn in a cast of 50.
  • Otherwise, the author has complete control over the cast.
  • An artist can suggest the significant/likely cast after reading the story if the author is ambivalent for some reason, but if an artist puts someone on the cast that the author wants off, that’s entirely up to the author. A cast choice might be a spoiler that the author doesn’t want to give.

• Artist not replying to emails:
  • If it’s been more than a week without a response, contact the admin team via the contact form or use the communication system. This is a vital as a breakdown in communication can create a crisis later on. We need to address it early.
• Artist can’t read your story:
  • The intention is that the artist who claims your story will read it and provide art inspired by your work. However, various things can prevent an artist from being able to read a story completely. If this should occur, you may be asked to provide a more in-depth summary of the story so they can complete the artwork. The artist may approach you directly or ask an admin for help. This not a slight. The nature of the mostly-anonymous claims makes it impossible for an artist to ensure they’ve selected a story that’s suitable for them to read. For instance, a warning for miscarriage isn’t required, but it may be a trigger for an artist and they may not want to read the story as a result.
• Deleting the story:
  • The site is intended to archive all the Big Bang stories together. However, if, after the publication, you decide to take your work offline, contact an admin to have your story deleted.
  • If your story is removed, the artist may choose to still have their art displayed in a legacy gallery as their challenge participation still occurred. This is their choice.

Q: Can I write a crossover?
A: Yes, as long as the crossover fandom(s) meet the fandom criteria. You will be asked to pick a primary fandom or possibly 2 fandoms when you submit your story. All other fandoms can be listed in your header. The “primary” fandoms are what the story is indexed by on the site.

Q: Can I write original fiction?
A: No. You can’t “fix” something that’s original.

Q: Do I need to use more than one fandom?
A: No. Multi-fandom means the bang isn’t restricted to any one fandom. It doesn’t mean you need to use more than one.

Q: Can I write more than one story?
A: Yes. Please see the guidelines about additional stories and novel series above.

Q: Can I submit a story I posted somewhere else?
A: No. If your story was posted on another site, it’s not eligible for the Bang.

Q: Can I submit a story I’d already started?
A: We don’t care when you started your story as long as it hasn’t been posted online already.

Q: The Bang I was participating in imploded, but my story fits this theme. Can I sign up?
A: As long as you never posted the story, we welcome you to the Quantum Bang. Sorry your other challenge didn’t work out. If you revealed details publicly about your story, please don’t advertise that you switched bangs until after the art claim.

Q: Can I submit this to another bang after the Quantum Bang?
A: We don’t care, but the other bang probably will. It’s kinda bad manners.

Q: Can this be my NaNo project?
A: Yes, as long as you aren’t posting your NaNo project online at a site such as Rough Trade.

Q: Is there a penalty for dropping out?
A: Probably not, but it depends on whether your drop out results in the wasted effort of an artist. And it may also depend on extenuating circumstances. The penalty could be being prohibited from participating the next year. Assholery could get you banned for life. So if you’re going to drop, don’t drop like an asshole. Please note that there is no need to drop out if it’s prior to art claims. If you don’t submit a story, we’ll consider you dropped out. If you go through the art claims and drop, that’s when you might get barred from future challenges.

Q: Does the story have to be completed by the rough draft due date?
A: No. You need to have completed 80% of your story by the rough draft due date. That means 80% of 50,000 words OR 80% of your projected word count, whichever is larger. If your story is looking like 100k, you need to submit 80k. If your story will likely be 50k, you need to submit 40k.

Q: My final word count was way off my estimate for art claims. Will I be in trouble?
A: Probably not. We recognize that it’s difficult to estimate final word counts accurately, so if you turned in 45k for art claims but your final product was 80k, it may have been your best estimate that your story would be about 60k. And that’s fine. We’ll take your word for it. But if you turned in 45k and your final is 200k, we’re probably not going to believe you that you were truly ready for art claims.

It’s unlikely we’re going to have anything to say about you being off unless it’s created a problem, but if you were way off, we may ask way. It’s always good to analyze why your word count estimate was seriously off for your own benefit.

Q: I’m close to the minimum/maximum word count on my story. Do I have to edit up/down to hit the target?
A: Probably not. We’re going to give everyone a little grace on this. Writing a big story that’s 200k is rough, and if you’re a little over, we’re not going to expect you to comb through and edit it down to exactly 200k. If you’re 20k over, however, that’s a problem. If you’ve got a big story, and you’re really worried about being many thousands of words over, you should consider splitting it into a two-part series.

On the other end, as mentioned elsewhere, if you’re writing a novella series, or one story in your series is a novella, and one part is coming up short, then we’re not going to fuss if one part is as short as 15k. Just do your best and communicate about what’s going on, and we’ll try to work with you.

Q: Can I submit a story in another language.
A: No. We wrestled with this and, at one time, agreed to it, but have decided to restrict the site to English only. The issue being if we can’t read it, we can’t assure the content meets the guidelines we’ve set forth. You’re welcome to post the English version here and any translations on whatever archive site you use. You may also link to your translations.

Q: Is co-writing acceptable?
A: Yes. Both authors would need to sign up within the signup period and one of the pair must send a note through the regular contact form letting us know you plan to submit together. If either plan to participate as a solo author, we would need to know that as well. (A co-written work would count as 1 submission for each author, which means you could could each still do up to 4 other works, and the total of co-written work would be reduced from your word count. Meaning, if the story was 50k, you’d each still be eligible to submit 450k to the challenge as individuals.)

Q: RPF is not allowed, but in a fandom like Highlander or in a time travel situation, can the characters interact with real, historical figures?
A: In general, yes. The only time it would be an issue is if a fictional character were in an on-screen relationship with a real person (historical or otherwise). That would cross the boundaries into RPF. If someone were to mention in passing that they’d been the lover of Alexander the Great, that’d be fine. But for the story to be about an immortal in a relationship with Alexander the Great…that’d be pushing the rules.

Relationships aside, the rule about how to use real people would mostly apply to historical figures, though it’d be more lax. Meaning, they should function in the story as they functioned in real life. The farther back in history you go, the less that is often known and so conjecture is all you have.

The issue with RPF is that it treads into a murky legal area. We definitely don’t want people crossing the line into defaming living people. Use good judgment when it comes to historical figures.

Q: Does the Quantum Bang host the art for use off-site, such as posting on AO3 or other sites?
A: No. Hotlinking to images on the QB is not allowed as it becomes a bandwidth issue for the site. A hard link to the artist’s showcase is fine (and appropriate), but not to the images themselves. Part of the tacit agreement in participating in a Bang is that the artist is agreeing to let the author use the art with their story. Please be prepared to discuss the logistics of off-site image hosting. Some artists prefer to do all their own image hosting, and some authors prefer to have all the images on their image service of choice.

Q: I’m posting my story elsewhere. Should I link back to the art?
A: Yes. Even if you’ve arranged off-site image hosting and are placing the art in the story, If the site allows a way to link back, you should link to their art showcase on the QB. Suggested format:

• The art gallery for this work can be found on the Quantum Bang: LINK

If you are not using the art on your external post, you need to reference your artist. If there’s a problem with external links (such as on fanfiction.net), please do your best to provide direction, such as give the site name and the artist’s name.

Linking to your own story on the QB is fine, but not as a substitute for linking to their art showcase.

Q: Can I use art created by another artist?
A: not on the QB site, not unless it’s allowable art provided by a site artists such as chapter spacer or cast images, as mentioned elsewhere in the rules. Main art must be provided by your QB artist. However, off of the QB site, we don’t care what you do. It’s not uncommon for people to receive art gifts, and how you use or display those is entirely up to you. They cannot, however, be submitted to the Quantum Bang for hosting.

Some people are also very attached to unique chapter banners, and they may create their own to use off of the QB site, wherever else they may post. We have no control over this, nor do we have an opinion about it.

• We no longer create “anonymous” accounts on the QB site. It’s very simple to create a gmail account to use anonymously, and the process was causing more confusion than anything as people didn’t understand what it was for.
• If there’s a reason you need an anonymous account, please reach out to us using the contact form. We will accommodate you, but we’ll need to understand why you’re unable to handle your own anonymity, and then make sure the site is set up properly.