These are the Quality Standards of the wiki - what we look for in a good story. Note that these are applied mainly to stories where the mentioned elements detract from the story itself.
Please note that while these are generally guidelines, passing these guidelines is, in fact, a requirement. Any story that fails these standards will be, without prejudice to the author or any other factors, deleted on-sight.
There are, however, a few standards that are basically rules - unless following them ACTUALLY detracts from the story. These are the minimum quality standards, and they are listed in the following section.
Minimal Requirements
- If you're going to write a story, then you must do it in your blog post first. After you're done creating your story, post it in the Writer's Workshop to have it reviewed by other people.
- Before you post your article to this site you MUST have proofread and spell-checked the document. This includes—but is not limited to—the proper use of capitalization, spelling, punctuation, spacing, and paragraphs. Most document editors, with the exclusion of notepad, have a spellcheck and a grammar check feature built in. Failing that, there's always SpellCheck.net. You may also use source mode in the wiki editor to spell check.
- If you upload a pasta that is terribly unedited or is a massive wall of text, you acknowledge that it can and in most cases will be deleted as soon as it is uploaded. You will then be warned about this and given a link to SpellCheck.net and our simple Writing Guide for basic information on how to write better.
- Failing this a second time will result in a 3 day ban. First time or hundredth time making a pasta, you should be able to write in readable and correct English, unless of course English is not your first language. In this case, kindly leave a message on the talk page explaining that and one of our editors can surely help you out without penalty to you.
- Pages that are a single, massive block of text (Wall-o-Text) are uninteresting and impossible to read. All of the terrible spelling and grammar really make the site look uneducated and childish on the whole and will be deleted.
- This is not to say you must upload pages without any mistakes or you will be banned. This is to cut back on the kinds of pages that are either Each Word Capitalized, or where the author has some weird aversion to ever using a capital letter and/or spaces after punctuation.
Titles
Long story short, a title must be:
- Properly capitalized.
- Contain no periods. A title is not a sentence, it doesn't need a period on the end. A question mark or bang is fine, however.
As this is a literature site, all titles must be properly capitalized. If you do not have no clue on how to title titles properly, please use this link or look at our writing guide for help.
Main Parts
- All stories should have a consistent, and continuous plot. The plot of each story should be decent and formulates a sequence of events.
- Spelling that the reader cannot understand is not allowed here. It's not suggested for you to use a spellchecker, but if you're not from an English speaking country, then you may use spellchecker.
- Also, know the differences: "Your" (possessive) "You're" (You are). "There" (A place) "Their" (possessive) "They're" (They are.) "It's" (It is) "Its" (possessive)
- There should be a good level of description. Not too little so that the story comes out vague/bland/boring, not too much so that it doesn't halt the story line.
- All stories should have some sort of hook, or something to grab hold and attach the reader to the story.
- All stories must make actual sense. It cannot be a "Huh? I... I don't understand the plot..." It can follow a weird setting, like this, but it can't be something like this.
- If your story has formatting that is hard to remove, it will be deleted with no questions asked. If the article just changes the text of the layout, it will have the formatting removed from the article.
- All articles that contain a Cliché will be deleted automatically. No questions asked.
- There are no exceptions to your story being a massive wall of text. If you upload a wall of text your story will be deleted by an admin/RCaDC discretion. A user/Admin/RCaDC can feel free to read your article and see if it's qualitative or not, and remove your wall of text.
Theories
A theory, by definition, is a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
Theories should not contradict the whole meaning of the thing that you are doing the theory on. For example in this, which talks about Roadrunner and Wile Coyote:
"Suddenly, a tall, slender, smiley, bird-like creature we knew as "The Roadrunner", came out of the gates of Hell. But the tribe feared him, called him "The Speed Demon". Outside of un-natural speed, the Speed Demon is capable of altering reality into its favor. It was always tributed with birdseed, and the virgins of the indians. It is viewed, as the spirit of suffering and punishment to those who would wrong them. The Shaman presented a scared Wile and construction workers as special tributes in return for protecting their land. The beast only replied with a "Meep Meep", but it sounded demonic. The Roadrunner became a hellish, bird beast. Sort of like a Pteradon-like creature. Wile panicked. He escaped into his limo and drove away, but the monster was not far behind. The inevitable happened. The Speed Demon kidnapped Wile, as both are surrounded by a dark magic. And as quickly it came into existence, both the speed demon AND Wile are gone."
It contradicts the whole purpose of the Roadrunner cartoon, since Wile Coyote is usually the one that chases Roadrunner around, while Roadrunner beats Wile everytime.
- Theories should not feel unrealistic. What this means is that you can make your theory a fake theory as long as it feels realistic. It should raise a question to the reader's mind/make them look up what you say may be a theory. A lot of us really do not want to read this, where we can laugh at it.
Diaries/Journals
- It should read like a journal. I'm not going to update my blog/write in my diary when there's a murderous beast/evil plushie/someone I owe money to outside my window trying to kill me.
- People have this odd habit of acting like a journal is going to get read by someone else. Please don't. A journal is the opposite: Personal. On the other hand, a blog post would be a more public thing read by an audience.
- People aren't going to explain to themselves who people are. Dropping hints can be fine, such as events where a person is engaged with something they like, but full on saying it is unrealistic.
Poetry
- It must have some depth and complexity. Stick to the same subject and do not jump around.
- It must have some kind of meter and prose.
- It must tell SOME kind of story.
Original Characters/Jeff-Inspired
- We do allow original characters on this site. We also allow Mary Sue/Gary Stus/over-powered characters on the site. Just as long as they are not clichéd, they are perfectly fine to upload onto the site.
- This might sound like it's being repetitive, but this wiki does not allow child's play in Jeff-inspired articles. What this means is articles that are Jeff-inspired having poor grammar, awkward wording, ending in an anticlimactic way, stuff that is unrealistic (as in, your Jeff-inspired character falls off a roof of a hospital and a police officer catches him/her), ect.
FAQ
Why do we have these standards?
The reason why we have these standards is to prevent terrible articles from entering the site. Would you rather read something good like this, or would you read something terrible this?
Do I have to spell everything correctly in a dialogue area? I want to intentionally misspell a certain character's dialogue.
Sort of. It depends upon the character's dialect. If it's a southerner, what words do they commonly mispronounce? "Your" would be acceptable as "Yer", "Get" as "Git", so on, so forth. A stereotypical Russian badass will occasionally leave out words such as "an" or a "the" every now and then, because they don't fully know the English Language or it's not their first language. That character's dialect determines whether the intentional misspell is bad, good, or in between.
How are these standards enforced?
These standards are enforced in many ways. If there are a few errors, a user/admin/RCaDC member will edit and remove those errors. Sometimes it can mean adding on to stuff to make it actually be worth something. If it's something like excessive grammatical errors, excessive spelling errors, missing plot holes, and/or the plot is crappy, the article will be deleted.
What do you mean by must make sense? Isn't this Roblox Creepypasta Wiki where stuff isn't supposed to "make sense"?
The story has to make sense, not the elements.
There's nothing about "creepy" or anything. Is there some kind of guideline towards unnerving the reader or something?
Not really. Creepy is more of a subjective term here - that is, an opinion. We look at more objective approaches toward the acceptance of a story. That being said, we aren't expecting your first story to be a Suggested Reading worthy thing - just that you put effort into it.
These are way too strict! You're all just a bunch of corrupt assholes who delete stories for fun! You deleted my pasta that my second grade teacher liked even though it was riddled with grammar errors, plotholes, and was a wall of text! I'm going to Deviantart!
Cool story bro.
Helpful Links
- Roblox Creepypasta's Guide to Writing - A basic rundown of general needed grammar.
- Writing Advice - Blog posts that users have made on the Creepypasta wiki.
- How to Write Creepypasta - Title says it all.
- Writer's Workshop - Go here to have your story reviewed and revised.
(Note: Some of these are from the Creepypasta wiki, but they are relevant here also).