Story Guidelines and Writing Rules

Story Network Guidelines

1. The mission of the Story Network is to provide a warm, inviting community where people can read stories of hope about children and teens living well with an ongoing health condition.
2. We post stories that are hopeful, positive, and offer examples of children and teens living well with a special need.
3. Your story will be available on the internet on the World Wide Web. Submit only materials that are respectful of yourself, your child, your family, and others.
4. You may write a story or poem about a topic of your choice related to your child’s special need, or you can choose a topic from our list.
5. Stories or poems should be limited to approximately 550 words or 3,000 characters including spaces.  This is approximately one, single-spaced type written page.
6. Submission of a photo to accompany your story or poem is encouraged.  If you are uncomfortable with images of your family on the internet, you can photograph artwork, stuffed animals, pets, or other meaningful images.  Images must be a JPG, BMP, or PNG file format, under 5 MB in size and must an be image for which you own the license to distribute.  We may crop submitted images to fit the appropriate space.  If you choose not to submit an image, we will assign an image of children's art work to your story.
7. You may choose to post your real name with your story or you may pick a different name that you would like us to use.
8. Not all submitted materials will be posted.
9. Your story will be read by Parent Reviewers and staff at the Center for Children with Special Needs.  Your material may be edited.
10. Your materials will be posted for a variable amount of time determined by the Center for Children with Special Needs. Once removed from posting, stories may be available in an accessible Archive.
11. We encourage stories from diverse populations, including non-Native English speakers, but we can accept only stories written in English.

Writing Rules
Avoid the following pitfalls which will automatically disqualify your story from appearing on the web site:

1. Untrue statements that have potential to harm individuals or organizations (libel).
2. Personal attacks, insults, or threats.
3. Commercial product promotions.
4. Information taken from another source without permission.
5. Private, personal information relayed by a third party without the person’s consent.
6. Comments unrelated to the subject/spirit of the Web site.
7. Uploading, posting, e-mailing, transmitting, or otherwise making available any content that is considered unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.