Submissions

The Basestar is looking for well-written reviews, features and essays to appear on the homepage.  Here are the guidelines:

The site has a focus on science fiction media, but not as a rule.  We've reviewed comedy series and family films in the same week as Star Trek or Lost, so the best thing to do is read a range of articles before submitting.  Don't constrain yourself, but do try to get a feel for the site and its style.

As of yet, we are not accepting news stories or 'up-to-the-minute' content.  There is just not enough staff to keep that consistent, reliable or competitive.  As the site grows, that may change.

One of our niches is obscure science fiction or horror from the past few years.  Read our reviews of Stuck and Restraint to get an idea.  Browse your Netflix queue.  Find a movie that looks cool, extra points if it's recent and you've never heard of it.  Then write a killer review.  Keep in mind that this is only one aspect of our Reviews section, although it is one we're trying to expand.

Guidelines by Section

Reviews
Short reviews are 750-1000 words.  Long reviews are 1500-2000.  Anything longer than that becomes an essay, which you can submit using the guidelines below.  Anything shorter is a 'brief', and as of now we are focusing on full articles.  But please, don't sit on your review because it's 695 words.  If it's a solid piece, we'll take it no matter what.

If you're reviewing a TV show, make sure to keep perspective.  Whereas the first few episodes of a show are great material for a review, a follow-along in the middle of the season is more of a feature or commentary.  There should be a solid, tangible scope for television reviews.  Pilots and/or entire seasons on DVD are perfect for this.

Reviews can be positive, negative, neutral, or anywhere in between.

Features
Our features are 750-3000 words.  Our focus is on witty humor and/or anything particularly interesting.  "Shark Week Movie Pitches" is an example of a comedy piece, whereas "A Webisodic Future" is almost a short essay.  Features can be about anything you feel is relevant to the site.  Want to talk about the state of television in general?  Movie prices or general trends in Hollywood?  Foreign vs. domestic, old vs. new, obscure vs. well-known?  Go for it.

Have the first five script pages for a bad movie you want the SyFy channel to produce?  Totally go for it.  Just understand that your brilliant movie will likely die here.

Essays
These are college-level papers on just about any topic you feel is relevant to the site.  They could be anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 words (longer essays will be broken up and spread out as serials, usually in two or three parts).  Make sure you do a lot of research and please, make sure you're not full of shit.  If you are, submit it as a feature so at least it will be funny.

Submission Process

E-mail your submission to submissions@thebasestar.com.  Either copy your submission into the body of the e-mail or send as an RTF file.  Please use a monospaced font such as Courier and keep the lines double-spaced.  Write the name of the article and your byline before anything else.  The subject of the e-mail should read: "Type of Article - Name of Article".

Please use proper grammar and plain, down-to-earth style.  Also keep in mind that this is the web, and the average visitor will lose interest after the first paragraph unless you give them a reason to stay.

If you have images in mind, please describe or link at the end of your submissions.  We have a capable Photoshop staff that can pretty much make anything happen.

What Happens After

At this time, we are unable to pay for submissions.  However, we are looking to change that in the near future.  If we do accept your submission, we will alert you by e-mail and send you any editorial changes we might want to make.  After that we'll add you as an author and you can upload the submission.  Our posting is still based off of Blogger, so it's pretty easy to use.

If we run more than one of your articles and we think you'd make a good columnist, we'll invite you.  Otherwise, if you think you have a good idea for a weekly column that you can reliably update, please submit at least two entries (no more than five).

On all submissions, we'll get back to you within three to five days.  If you're reviewing a movie that just came out or is about to come out, precede the subject line of your e-mail with "T/S" (for Time Sensitive).

That's about it.  Looking forward to reading your submissions.