Fan Fiction: Tools and Documents

You are a writer or would-be writer? You would wish you try your hand on "Captain Scarlet" fan fiction? Read our Fan Fiction Submission Guidelines for information, or write us, and we'll be happy to answer your questions! Send your story to spectrum_hq@hotmail.com.

IMPORTANT: All the stories on this website have been set for 1024 X 768 or 800 X 600 pages. If a decorative border appears over the text on the right side of your page, simply adjust your Explorer window.

FAN FICTION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES. You're wondering how you should submit your fan fiction story to the Spectrum Headquarters website? You don't know where to begin with? Here's the 'all you need to know guidelines' that will help you present your first or next story to our website! Read them before submitting, you'll have the answers to all your questions. Added March 9, 2009

With our submission guidelines in full view at the top of our page, the rest of our tools and documents have been divided in seven categories, listed below. Click the category to be taken directly to your needed section, or browse down the page to check all topics! Some of these documents are located on this website, but many of them are links to outside pages, with information that might be useful to you. The consultation of these documents are not required, of course. These tools are only listed here in an attempt to help you in your writing of Captain Scarlet stories - or any kind of writing, for that instance. You might also find some of this information rather entertainment and fun to read!

SUITE101.COM, a very insightful website that writers might find interesting to search through. It gives various articles and tips on many aspect of the art of writing, such as punctuation, grammar, character development, viewpoints, how to build paragraphs, etc. Use the "What interests you" Search box to find what you need.

THE THREE POINTS OF VIEW IN WRITING. This particular page on the Suite101.com website mentioned above gives well-written and simple explanation of what are the different points of view (or viewpoints) in writing. Basically, there are three, although the Third Person's Point of view is subdivided in four variants, and the page briefly mentions the "Mixed Points of View" option. The page also contains links to other pages to learn more about Points of View, where you can learns techniques and tips, and even how to chose your point of view.

NARATIVE MODE, on Wikipedia, gives definition of the various mode of narration that an author can chosoe to convey his or her story. It mentions not only the Point of View of writing, but also, the definitions of the various narrative voices, structures and tenses available to a writer.

PUNCTUATION MAKES THE DIFFERENCE. Punctuation is an important aspect of writing. A bad punctuation might sometimes lead to your story not being understood as you would have wanted it. There are many articles on Suite101.com for punctuation, and you might as well start here. The page contains many links to other such articles, and you can still make a search to learn more about the subject.

LIBRARY ONLINE: GUIDE TO PROPER PUNCTUATION. Another website on valuable punctuation tips on how to implement the basic rules of punctuation into your every day writing (and fanfiction writing!)

THE ABERRANT APOSTROPHE. Written by Hazel Köhler, this document details the use of that most abused piece of punctuation - the apostrophe. also available in PDF Format for easy download.

WORDREFERENCE.COM - Online translation from English to French, Italian and Spanish. Other dictionaries available. A toolbar is also available.

LEXILOGOS - Like WordReference.Com, Lexilogos could be used for online translation as well as for webpage translation, for many langauges. French and English dictionaries are also available.

AUSTRALIAN SLANG - Self explanatory. The Captain Scarlet universe does have at least one official character (Doctor Fawn) and some unofficial (Captain Brown, mainly fanfic; and President Younger, according to TV Century 21 magazine). Words from this 'dictionary' could be useful, but as with almost every slang - at small doses, so you won't lose your readers!

DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALIAN SLANG - From Australia Travel Search, another small dictionary of Australian slang that might be useful to writers.

RANDOM NAME GENERATOR - Useful to create names, the Random Name Generator uses data from the US Census to generate random male and female names as well as surnames.

BEHIND THE NAME - RANDOM NAME GENERATOR - Another generator you can use if you have difficulty naming a character. You even have the choice of a nationality if needed!

DAFONT.COM - One of the best free fonts archives you can find online. Although it is suggested to write a story with clear type, common, easy to read fonts (Arial, Times New Romans, Calibri, Comics, etc... - See the Guidelines above), it might happen that you would want to be creative with your title art. Just don't forget: if you use WordArt to create your title, you need to transform the said title into an image for it to appear as you want it onto every computer's screen. If you don't know how, at least inform us of your need and of the name of the Font used, so it might be possible for us to do the transfer to image for you.

ANDERSON FONTS & DINGS COLLECTION - Download directly from this website, and straight into your PC, the entirety of our "Gerry Anderson Fonts & Dings Collection". This compressed file contains font from the original Captain Scarlet title, various Eurostile fonts (the end credits from the original series), Sofachrome (the New Captain Scarlet font), various fonts from other Anderson series (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Supercar, etc.) as well as Anderson-related dings. Note that these fonts and dings, as they're not installed on all PC, will demand the same requirement as described above. Enjoy this free gift from us!

MUSICAL TERMS FOR ANGELS CODENAMES - You can actually find A LOT of musical terms online, with a little research! I came up with a few pages that you may find interesting... And for those who are looking for names and cannot think of any (or at least of enough of them...) here's a few links to keep handy:

WORST-CASE SCENARIOS - For step by step instructions on how to fend off a shark, break down a door, jump from a moving train and other situations Scarlet and co have come to expect of a normal day's work. Good for research, plot bunnies or possibly shadenfeude.

GOOGLE EARTH - Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. It can help you get a geographic and photographic views of where you want to set your action, calculate distances between spots, and gives you multiple other details you might find useful. You can even set the height of viewing to see how a specific spot looks from Cloudbase or Skybase. A very interesting option for science-fiction writers is the fact that you can also view the sky, the Moon... and Mars. Google Earth is free to download, so why hesitate?

GOOGLE MAPS - Useful for plotting the route characters would need to take if they're going to be travelling from A to B. It also gives an idea of the journey time.

WIKIPEDIA - Although admittedly, some information might not seem all that reliable, since the website is open for all to updates with information, Wikipedia still presents a wonderful research tool for any and all subject imaginable. Its content is endless. Also, it comes in many, many languages. And if you're unsure of your information, you can always double-check elsewhere on the net! Wikipedia is your friend. Go for it.

COLOURS CHART. A chart of various colours (not exhaustive) with examples of what they look like. The list contains characters from the original series, as well as in other media (such as comics), but mostly of fan fiction characters, bearing the colour-coded name (when available). Note that you are in no way obligated to use the character associated with the colour of your choice, if already used by another fanfic writer. Added March 3, 2009

SPECTRUM ORGANISATION CHART. Created from the collaboration of many writers, this organisation chart suggests a possible, but not official, view of how the Spectrum organisation is built. You may have your own ideas, of course, but if this only helps to inspire you, you'll welcome to consult it. Added March 3, 2009

WHO, WHAT AND WHERE - A list of characters, places and institutions created by authors by authors for their fanfic stories on the Spectrum Headquarters website. A combined work, made by various authors from the website, this listing is meant as an informative sheet. ff 368 Added September 25, 2008

A FANSPEAK DICTIONARY - Okay... maybe not a dictionary in the traditional sense; but helpful to figure out what all those particular fan fiction terms and abbreviations mean when they come up in discussions.

THE TEN FANFIC COMMANDMENTS - Although coming from a Gargoyles fan website, this is a very pertinent set of rules - very cleverly put together and fun to read! Things to do and not to do while writing fan fiction.

FAN FICTION - A USER'S GUIDE - On the BBC website. An article with a description of the Fan Fiction phenomenon, and a glossary of Fan fiction terms.

BAD FANFIC! NO BISCUIT! - Here you can find descriptions of common errors made in fanfic - and how to avoid some of them.

HOW TO WRITE AN ALMOST READABLE FAN FICTION - Written with humour, this page is a fun guide to writing fan fiction - or rather, how to avoid the obvious mistakes. Many other links are also available.

HELLO MARY SUE! - from thehumorwriter.com, a fun view and description of Mary Sue.

OPEN OFFICE - An important tool of the writer is her/his word processing software. Not everyone can afford a word processing software like Word, Word Perfect, or even Works. In Windows, you can always use WordPad, as it is a good substitute, albeit, without many of Word's features. A good option, though, is to download and install Open Office. It's offered online free, and contains most of the features presented by Word and/or Word Perfect. You don't need to install all of its features - Writer, the answer to Word, is the one you mainly need for word processing - but the other options effectively replace many of the other features from the Office Suite (like Excel, PowerPoint, Access). The only requirement is that you have Javascript installed on your computer. If you don't have it, it's not a problem: you can also download Javascript with the Open Office software!