Submission guidelines · Private alpha
Reader-ready—not immaculate.
Lantern is not asking for perfection. We are asking for intentional work, honest attribution, and enough care that another human can enter the story without having to excavate it.
It must be a story
Experimental work is welcome, and it does not need to be perfectly polished. It does need intentional characters, events, or ideas a reader can meaningfully follow. Placeholder text, prompt fragments, scraped text, and generated nonsense will not be published.
The work must be yours to publish
No plagiarism, copied passages, unauthorized continuations, or fan fiction using worlds and characters you do not control. Moderation is a good-faith screen—not a legal guarantee of originality.
AI assistance is allowed; spam is not
Writers may use editing, brainstorming, accessibility, and generative tools. The submitting author remains responsible for every word, the rights to the work, its coherence, and its effect on readers. Mass-generated, barely reviewed uploads will be declined.
Name the content honestly
Use accurate genres and content notes. Mature and difficult subjects can belong on Lantern, but surprise is not a substitute for consent or reader care.
No exploitative or illegal material
We will reject sexual content involving minors, instructions facilitating serious harm, targeted harassment, hateful dehumanization, doxxing, or material that violates applicable law.
Moderation is a doorway, not a copyedit
Moderators check basic coherence, rights red flags, reader safety, and fit with these guidelines. They are not certifying factual accuracy, correcting every typo, or endorsing every view expressed in a story.
Authors keep ownership
Submitting to Lantern does not transfer copyright. Authors may publish elsewhere. By approving publication, the author grants Lantern only the permission needed to display the submitted work until it is withdrawn under the platform terms.
Worlds and story extras follow the same rules
Maps, portraits, illustrations, audio-visual material, and World guides must also be yours or properly licensed. Public World fields should be spoiler-safe; private canon notes stay inside moderation and are never shown to readers.
Serials come with an ending promise
Submit with a genuine intention to complete the story, a realistic episode estimate, a target completion date, and a cadence readers can understand. Estimates may change. If illness, emergencies, or the story itself disrupts the plan, communicate rather than silently abandoning readers.
One open serial per author during alpha
An author may have one serial actively publishing at a time. Mark it complete before opening another. Moderators may approve narrow exceptions for coauthored work or an author with a demonstrated release plan; exceptions are not automatic and do not turn Lantern into an upload race.
Our promise in return
Rejection will not be public humiliation.
Submissions stay private until approval. If something needs work, the author receives a clear reason. Decisions will never be turned into engagement bait, public rankings, or a pile-on.
Open the submission studio