Crossroads and Roundabouts & Fiction Contest

Hi guys,

As you all know, we're always looking for new stories and ways to challenge you all to write.

Back in the day there used to be at least one Fiction Contest a year. There was a set theme which had to play a role in your story but other than that you were free to write whatever. There was about 4 months to get the story written, then all the stories would be scripted and posted to the site for everyone to judge. The winner got featured in the sidebar and got to pick a new theme.
We would love to bring this back. Since it's been so long since the last contest, we're going to let you guys pick the theme. Have an idea? Post it in the comment-section below and we'll make a poll with the suggestions. Suggestions can be made till 21/6, then a poll will go up so that we can start the new season at the beginning of July.

Another favorite of ours was the Crossroads and Roundabouts. In this challenge you write on not one, not two but on four stories! But you won't be doing it alone, you'll get help from others willing to join in on the challenge.
All the stories will consist of four parts: beginning, middle part 1 and 2 and the end. You'll start with the beginning on fic 1, then you'll write middle part 1 on fic 2, middle part 2 on fic 3 and the end of fic 4.

If you want in on this challenge, drop us an email at neverland.fics@gmail.com putting Crossroads and Roundabouts as a subject.
But! Think before joining in. If you want in, you're in for the long run, meaning;
* You're able to write a minimum of 5-10 pages a month, four times.
* Your English is well enough for other participants to work with. They will be finishing what you've started after all.

Signing up for C&R starts now and is open till june 27. If there's enough participants by then, you'll be sent any info you might require before july 1st, the official starting date.
You'll be expected to send your part 3 days before the end of the month at the latest so that everyone can be sent their next part to work on before the new month begins.

Any questions can be put in the comment section below or on email of course.

We hope you're just as excited about these challenges as we are and hope you'll join in!

Neverland Staff

Did you know....

When I saw Lullu's message on the tag-board I decided to do some updating on Neverland. It had been some time since the 'Fiction-list' and 'Author-list' were updated. It's not really the nicest thing to do -copy, paste, error, kicking computer, more errors, snoozing and then some more copy-ing and pasting- It's much nicer to just feed y'all the stories. 
But it is a good thing to keep track on which stories there are to find on Neverland.

Did you all know that we've actually passed the 500 mark? Yup, that's right! There's well over 500 Westlife Fanfictions to find on here! Can I get a whoop whoop? And that's all coz of you, all you fabulous writers and all you loyal readers! If it weren't for you, it never would've happened!

The fiction list is now up to date again. If you go in there you'll find all those 500+ stories lined up for you. Go on, pick one and enjoy. You know you want to ;)
Got a favorite author and want to see what more they have written? Yup, the author list is also updated now so that should make it easier for all of you to find the fics you're looking for.

And did you know that you can easily search for fics using tags? Find the 'tag-section' by scrolling down this page. Each blogpost gets its own tags, making it that much easier for you all to search for something you like. Click on 'romance' for all romantic stories or '18+' if  you're looking for something steamy for instance.

Remember, we're only human. If you find any errors anywhere on the site, please do let us know! We're only too willing to fix it but if we don't know it's there, well... Just leave a little message on the tagboard or send us an email and we'll get to it. And if it takes us some time or you don't hear back from us, don't hestitate to give it another try. Sometimes life prevents us from taking immediate action and things get lost along the way. Reminders are always appreciated.

There's a couple of stories scripted and lined up for y'all so do keep an eye out!

And remember; we're always looking for new stories! Give it a try, write a little something or dust off some old stories maybe? Don't be shy! neverland.fics@gmail.com

Neverland staff,
Monique

Your stories!

Hello everybody,

it's so cool that so many of you write stories and share it with us here on Neverland, and we really like and appreciate it, but ... (there always has to be a but... :))
we are a community and that means that all of us have to work together to keep Neverland as good as it is. You don't have to do special things for the site (although we don't mind creative ideas etc.), only to watch out for your own stories.
Both, Noa and me, are very busy. I hav a full-time job, Noa has a job as well AND a baby to take care of and so our time is rare; too rare to check each single story of yours for grammar or if the script info is complete etc.

So if you send a story, please make sure that
- you send us a complete story in doc., docx. or open office or something similar
- you used punctuation in your story and checked the grammar etc. (word does help you with it)
- you give us the complete and only for your story necessary infos that should be scripted (We'll script most of the things you gave us with the script info, but we need you to double check it!)
-you give us a teaser, a photo (if you want one in your post), the cast, rating and genre.

Please note that you are responsible for your own stories. We don't have time to check everything; this is your task!

It would be perfect if (in case you really don't manage to script your fics yourself) to give us the necessary information like this:

SCRIPTING INFO

• Main lifer --- name: Shane / last name: Filan / eyes: hazel / hair: brown
• Main character --- name: Sara/ last name: Jones/ hair: brown / eyes: green
• Best Friend --- name: Brooke / pick a husband name, not one of the lifers name: Finn.
• Pet --- name: Honey / pick a name for a female dog
• Boyfriend --- name: Andrew
• Second Lifer --- name: Mark / last name: Feehily / this will also be your best friend fave lifer
• Third lifer --- name: Nicky / last name: Byrne
• Last lifer --- name: Kian

Maybe we won't script the dog or the best friend's husband in that case because Finn and Honey and also the ex-boyfriend Andrew do not really have to be scripted.
But if you use a nickname for any script-important person, please let us know, because sometimes it has to be quick and then everybody yells: "There is a Ki/Nick/Shay/Bry somewhere!!!! Waaaa!!!" :) so try and give us all info needed, best like in the example above not too prosaic for us to find the tiniest pieces of info in a long email.

Now that was long :) 
But we hope that it helps you to get your fics-info right and us to script properly.
Cheers,
Steffi and Noa  

CROSSROADS & ROUNDABOUTS

Hey everyone,

we proudly present the first story of our C&R-project!
A special thanks to our participants Monique, Bex and Lia! Although it was a bit chaotic, as always, we're happy with the results and hope you are, too.
Now enjoy reading as we enjoyed writing (mostly) and leave us some feedback, alright?

Happy weekend everyone!

Noa and Steffi with Bex, Monique and Lia

Announcement: Wonderland

Hey everyone,
as you might have already noticed, both Noa and me aren't only Westlife-fans, we fancy Sunrise Avenue as well. As Noa started to write SA-fanfics, I'd like to read that ones and mainly write non-fanfics and German stories atm, we planned to open up a new blog for Sa-fanfics and general (non-fanfic) stories.
Voilá: We are proud to announce today that it is done and we have besides Neverland a new blog where we can read and share stories:
Wonderland-stories.blogspot.com
Not a very creative name for the site, I know, but we thought it's fitting as there's a song from SA, called Wonderland, and it's easy to remember.
But you should know that Wonderland-stories means in no way that we're giving up Neverland! This site stays as it is and will go on as usual, of course!

But if you're interested, pay us a visit there as well, and if you've written some non-WL-fics you're welcome to share them on Wonderland.

Have a lovely Sunday,
Noa&Steffi

COMMENTS!!!

Hey peeps,
just one more thing that I find necessary to mention AGAIN.
Someone who writes a story and sends it to us to have it published on Neverland wants to have feedback; everyone of you who writes knows how important it is to know what the others think about their story, BUT only to rate without leaving any comments isn't helpful.
For example, look at Noa's story, she has 9 brilliants and 2 alrights, but only 3 comments. She has no clue why people rated her story brilliant or alright. It is alright to give only rates if there are already some comments who mentioned things that you found brilliant/good/alright as well, they don't have to be repeated a thousand times, but if not, please, take some time (30 seconds!!) to let the author know why you rated her brilliant/good/alright, what you liked about the story or maybe would have liked more and what she could improve on her writing or whatever.
Comments on this post are appreciated too :)

Have a lovely day and enjoy reading and commenting,

Steffi

CONTEST

Hey everyone,
we hope you slid happily in the new year and had a cool New Year's Eve!
We'll start the new Neverland-year with a fiction by Bex who wrote it for the contest. As she is the only one apart from Noa (who is not allowed to participate as she's a staff member) who sent a fic, Bex is our winner of the tattoo-story-contest which means that it's her turn to choose a new theme for the upcoming Contest Season IX.
Congrats Bex! Now enjoy the story, peeps, it's a really good one and please, leave many comments!!

Contest Season IX: Theme

Season IX
.
I'm leaning towards a crime/criminal type of theme. So the fic could revolve around the favourite lifer being in law enforcement or actually committing the crime. Or they could just be an innocent bystander forced to act out of character, or the victim of a kidnapping... anything goes.
Bex

Final submition date: July, 2012.

General rules for the contest, such as dates and story size, you can find here.
If you still have some questions, write an email to: neverland.fics@gmail.com

Have fun and good luck!!

A little Christmas inspiration for you

Hey everyone,

some days ago we talked about Christmas presents and remembered some gifts we got the last Christmases... many good things, but also some things... well, to be honest the biggest rubbish :)

We had the idea now for a little mini Christmas challenge with the theme "TERRIBLE CHRISTMAS GIFTS". Everyone who wants to can write a bit about it, a little story (1-5 pages), a poem or just an essay in which you can rant about your most terrible gift you got for Christmas. If you can, make a comedy out of it that we can have a little funny Neverland christmas party with your fictions.

You should send us your works at the latest by the 20th of December (if we must script something, please make it a bit earlier?).

Have fun and enjoy the pre-Christmas season!


Noa and Steffi

BACK ON!!!

Dear Neverlanders,

on a night out, when we got pushed to the avenue of the rising sun and Noa fell in love while Steffi was swept off her feet, we came to a decision...:) (just kidding)

Closing the site was never really an option for us as we love Neverland and all of the fics we host here far too much, but keeping it like this, where any random internet surfer can copy and paste our beloved stories and sell it as his/her/their own is not a good solution as well. As already mentioned we want to protect our writers from plagiarism, and there are three options that we discussed:

1. Lock the site and give only the honest readers an access to it, BUT... who is an honest reader, who is not? And if someone wants to join us, how can we test her honesty? That's not possible and we'd never permit a person the access who'd ask friendly if she can join us. Also some internet surfers who pop by on our site won't read the stories and we think that would be a pity.
2. Put a copy-stop in every fiction, BUT... many of you didn't like this suggestion as they put their names in the stories, copy and paste them and make a pdf-file or whatever out of it to read it on their e-reader etc.
3. Put in every story a "do-not-steal-respect-the-author's-property"-note BUT... it doesn't stop a person from stealing the fiction who really intends to do it, but we think that it maybe gives the person second thoughts, if she gets reminded that the story is property of the author and may not published elsewhere without the author's permission etc.

We decided for option 3, although we won't put that note in every story we host here as we have more than 400, but we'll do it from now on.

All of you who send us fics must be aware of the risk, that her fic can be taken from someone and be published elsewhere. But what can be done, by all of us, is that we keep our eyes open, communicate with the webbies/staff of other Westlife-fanfic-websites and look for fics from time to time, for example on google (copy and paste one or two lines and let google do the search).

We'd copy this note on top / below the fictions (see Steffi's latest fic):

All Rights Reserved. This story may not be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. All storylines are the property of the author and your support and respect is appreciated.
The characteristic features of the portrayed persons in this story are fictitious. The author is not related to Westlife, their families nor record company.

Please, let us know what you think about that!

cheers,

Noa&Steffi

Troubles...

Hey everyone!

We had a little unfortunate incident with some of our readers who took some stories and published it somewhere else without permission of the authors. Sadly we cannot do anything against it. If any of you wants to share a good story you've read on Neverland with some other people, it is no problem to give them a link or even the story IF YOU HAVE THE PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. Anything else is LITERARY PROPERTY THEFT and we don't want those kind of people, who do not respect the author's property, here on Neverland.

I made a note in my latest fiction and I'd suggest that from now on we'll put that note in every story. 

What do you say? Do you have anything to say concerning this topic or any better suggestions to protect our writers?

Steffi

FINDING FICS

Hey everyone,

as there are so many of you who ask for a specific fic and can't remember the title or the author we've made a new topic in the forum.

Go to Fiction Talk, then to Find Your Fiction. 

It'd be great if everyone of you checks it from time to time, even if you're not in search for a fic but maybe to help others with it!

Now good luck in finding yours :)

Steffi

Autumn 2011 - Challenge is up!!

Hey peeps!

In spite of heavy technical difficulties we finally have succeeded in creating a super-cool new Challenge for you!!  :)  Have a look and maybe let it inspire you to write a good story!

Challenge Autumn 2011


cheers,
Noa and Steffi

a little update for the challenge:
Bex asked about the "You-Are-option". It is new, we came up with it to keep it a little more exciting for you guys :) Now you have to deal with a lifer and a location, als well as characteristic features and "you are", meaning your job/occupation. Some of you made a nice pick, e.g. being sophisticated and XXXX but also chance gave them university as a location. But be aware, you might as well be a till girl and your location might be a sock factory (I am making these up btw ;) )
So mail and get your challenge, if there are any more questions, just let us know!


And also: please don't ask over and over for new challenges just because yours is not about your favourite life, ok? Just give it a try with any of the lads, make a story up, it does not necessarily be about yourself, make up a girl, give her a name and let her fall for/marry/divorce/hate/kiss/beat up the given lifer! It is called CHALLENGE  for a reason, otherwise we would have it renamed "bed of roses" or "children's birthday party"
go ahead, peeps, be creative!!

Writing and submitting of stories

Dear Neverlanders,

the last few weeks we received so many new fics from you, which’s a great and fantastic thing. We have so many stories now that it won’t be enough to update just once in a week, so we will have Thursday as an update-day as well and we’re so glad about that, because more stories mean more fun!!

As you can imagine well, keeping the site alive and scripting all of your stories isn’t always an easy task. It takes time, a lot of time, and neither Noa nor I have much of it. Noa has a little baby girl and a job as well, I am terribly busy with my studies since I’ll do my final exams in March next year.

Nevertheless we do our best and we love to do it, because besides the hard work it’s a lot of fun and makes us happy. But we both noticed that there is one thing which takes most of the time and it’s something all of you could help us with: the revising of your stories.

None of us is perfect as English isn’t the mother tongue of most writers here, but we’ll do our best and so should you. We don’t want you to write in a perfect English without any mistakes, that’s not possible, but there are just a few general “rules” (story-writing) that all of you could follow quite easily while writing your stories. Please read them carefully and check your writing on them. We will keep checking your stories for little mistakes as typos and stuff, but if there is too much of it and we got the impression that you didn’t do your task properly to revise it yourself, we’ll send it back to you.

After you have revised your story and want to send it to us, please note these issues about submitting your story. It would help us a lot and save time if you could at least give us the information about your main characters…

Additionally Noa and I had the idea that all of us could comment stories more critically on the style of writing. Not to annihilate authors with that, but to give them the chance to get constructive criticism (if requested), because very often the author doesn’t notice the things on his/her story, which are good or not that good (things as multiple repetitions of a word or a phrase, switching of tenses, boring/exciting plot etc.).

It only should be a chance to improve your writing and can be done by each of you if the author requests it.

Okay, that’s all, if any of you have questions or problems, please contact us!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a good time :)

cheers,

Steffi

C&R (I) participants and staff holiday!!

Hey everyone,

as you already knew only 4 writers can participate on "Crossroads&Roundabouts". As there were a few more who wanted to participate we had to draw lots and finally the four writers for our first C&R are:
Bex, Krissy, Lia and Monique!
Today is their starting shot and by the beginning of the next year we can enjoy the fruits of their work :)
Until then we keep ourselves amused with your stories. We have a few more from JemsD, Bex, Delane, Monique, Fran,.... and are expecting your challenge fics as well. I'm really looking forward to them, so write, people!!! :)
Currently Noa is on holiday for a few weeks and she doesn't know if she can be online. I'll be in London for the next few days, accompanying my little brother to his new stay for the next year.... Don't know if I can be online to give you the weekly update in time, but on Wednesday you'll have it, promise!! :) Hope you're looking forward to it already; it's the sequel story of "Out of control" by Monique! I'm cruel, I know :)

So stay tuned and have a lovely time,

cheers,
Steffi

Hey everyone!

This weekend we received the first story of our summer Challenge. It's by Delane. Enjoy reading and please rate or leave her some comments!

Oh, and check out our fantastic, extraordinary, brilliant, cool, hot, sexy, great, awesome, new twitter-background, made by Monique!!

Have a lovely week and enjoy the nice weather,

cheers :)

New Challenge!!

Hey everyone,

Challenge XIX is up!

The theme and the rules you'll find here.

Have a look and get inspired to write a good story!

This week's update is a fic by Bex, go read and rate :)

A lovely week to all of you,

cheers

Update

Hey peeps,

here's the update. Part 2 of You Can't Have My Heart (Chapter 7-12) is up!

A nice week to all of you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOA!!!!

Hey dear Neverlanders,
it's Noa's b-day today!


HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOA!!

We wish you all the best!! Love, health, success and luck in whatever you do! And that you stay as cool, nice, humorous and lovely as you are!!!

On this way also a huge thanks for everything you've done to keep Neverland alive!!
Let's keep on rocking!

Enjoy your holiday and have a nice week with your family!

Lots of love,
Steffi and all the others :)

The new dream-team

Hey everyone!! :)
Many sites are closing down by now, which is indeed a sad fact.
But luckily our Mi was willing to let someone else take over so Neverland will continue to exist much to our amusement :) I am chuffed to bits and I will put my heart into keeping Neverland alive. Gladly, fortunately we have Steffi on board for this, my special thanks goes to her and her enthusiasm for this site. I'm really thankful for your support and your humor!! Kolibri, you are my number one! A big thank you to Dora, Lia and Anja for their support! Thank you to all the scripters and helpful hands we found online during these last months (Aileen, Bex, Danielle... there are so many of you!)
Thank you all for the last years of Westlife-mania and let's keep on rocking!!
Send fics, join in, participate!! I want our site to be a blast!! :)

Cheers everyone!
Noa