So you want to add a story! That’s great. Here’s what you need to know.
Stories need to meet a few minimal guidelines:
- Stories must be in English. I hope to change this eventually, but for now English is the only language I know, and I will not post anything I can’t read to be sure what it is. Brief quotations will probably be fine, but may slightly delay the story being posted since I’ll need to find someone to check the meaning for me. (If you’re multilingual and would like to help with this, feel free to contact me.)
- Stories should be anonymous. If names or specific locations are used, I will change or edit them. Names will be replaced with a fake name (even if you’ve already done that), and cities (or other specific locating details) will be replaced with [City] (or similar). States/provinces and countries are fine. Celebrities will probably be an exception; for example, “I was watching an interview with P!nk, and…” would be left alone, as it’s not identifying. You may or course identify yourself outside of the story, such as by sharing it and telling people that you wrote it, but within the story itself everyone should be anonymous.
- Stories must be about your own personal experience as someone with a marginalized trait or identity. Describing people that have been important to you or that are relevant to your story as part of your story is of course perfectly fine, but stories should be about “my experience as [a marginalized identity],” rather than “my experience as the [friend/family member/significant other] of someone who is [a marginalized identity].” There are a lot of things that people can be marginalized by; chances are you have a personal experience with something. (This is not because I think the second type of stories aren’t worth telling; they are! But I think there should be a distinction, and if I’m only including one, I think personal experiences are most important.)
- There is no “reverse” marginalization/discrimination. Yes, some marginalized people can absolutely be complete and utter assholes; that’s a fairly common trait among the human species. And yes, encountering someone who treats you badly because you have a privilege that they do not can ruin your day, and even occasionally have a lasting impact on your life. However, it is not on the same systemic scale as marginalized people experience. Therefore, if I receive stories about “reverse racism,” “heterophobia,” or anything similar they will be deleted.
There are also a few things that are not necessary, but useful for me:
- While stories should be anonymous, a little bit of context can be useful. As such, if you’d like to include your age at the time you write your story and/or where you live (country, and state or province; no cities), I’ll include them.
- If you would like to tell me what tags and/or trigger warnings would be appropriate to your story (that is, what traits or identities it’s about, and/or the general locations you experienced this in), I’ll use those.
And that’s it! There are no other limits to your story, except that (for now) it needs to be text. It can be in any form you want.
Once you have a story, you can email it to addanotherstory@yahoo.com, or use the Contact Me form.
Add Another Story 