Rules
The rules for this particular game are evolving, but here’s what they look like at this very moment.
A FaceFic is exactly 420 characters in length. No longer, no shorter.
“Characters” means letters, digits, punctuation and spaces. Strip out _underscores_ and *asterisks* and all those other typographical oddities we use to show emphasis in plain text. Also strip out line breaks. And if you’re used to putting two spaces after each sentence, remind yourself not to for this: it’s not necessary anyway, in these days of proportional fonts, and it seems entirely too much like padding. But representing an em-dash as two hyphens is OK — what’s the alternative in plain text? — so feel free to do that.
You don’t need to post your FaceFic to your Facebook account. You don’t even need to have a Facebook account! But if you do, it’s useful because — at least until their somewhat erratic programmers change their minds again — posts are limited to 420 characters so you can see if you’ve hit the spot.
Finally, when you’re happy with your work, let me know here. Give it a title and pick a genre and give me an idea of what sort of image you think should go with it. And then behold as your FaceFic is released to a waiting world…
