Well hello and welcome fellow members of Displaced! I for one hope you are having a wonderful day!

So you've become part of our little family, and looking around you've noticed something.

Crossovers!

Crossovers as far as you can see! Seems every single story you like has been permeated by them. And by this time you might be wondering to yourself, 'How do I go about getting that one character of that story I like reading to crossover with my Displaced character?'

Well for starters, I would like to say one thing.

I am not advertising Personal Message crossovers as the preffered type of crossover to orchestrate. If you have access to a program or service like Google Docs, USE THAT. Skype, IRC, any other type of program you can use to communicate instantly with another author is leagues better than the Personal Message system.

That being said, some authors will find conflict with these, and that may even include yourself. We don't all live in the same time frame, and a lot of us have lives outside of the internet. Sometimes, you will come across situations where you both(or more, considering the size of your crossover) are quite literally incapable of coming online at the same time.

Just what is a pair(or more) of aspiring authors supposed to do in this situation? Well you're in luck, my brothers and sisters. It just so happens that Fimfiction.net has a mail system that works remarkable similar to Email. Without all the pesky spam, of course! And what does this happen to mean for you and that other author(s)?

Well that in turn means you can colaborate back and forth, and reliably build up a story between you in time!

All right. So you found another author that in turn expressed interest in crossing their story over with yours! Congratulations! First things first though, theres a few things you need to know, and consider.

1. Fimfictions PM system.
Fimfiction happens to have an exceptionably versitile email messaging system.

That being said.

-100 posts maximum.
Each Private Message can hold a maximum of one hundred posts. If you continue to send additional posts, you WILL find that the earlier posts from that message will be ERASED. An easy way to avoid this is to keep track of the '(??) more mesages' tab within the Personal Message. Once that number reaches 96, Ninety Six posts will be hidden with FOUR posts visible. This is an extremely easy way to keep track of the ammount fo posts you have risen up to.

-Interface warping due to enlongated strings of letters and numbers.
Example- Lhflwherlghvrlhlirwhvkfcsvihlbnsrgvlisbfnblvsknvkwfbivhfblkjnbf9uhlfdignfsdhvliu
If you type out an enlongated string of numbers and/or letters, you run the risk of making the message unusable to users of particular browsers. This can also be said of comprehensible words.
Example- IDON'TWANTTODIEIDON'TWANTTODIEIDON'TWANTTODIEIDON'TWANTTODIE-ect
If you stretch one of these lines out past the line cut, on certain browser interfaces this will cause the entire Personal Message to enlongate sideways with this string, without allowing it to carry over to the next line. This in turn will not give those same users a scroll bar to look over to the right at what you have written. If you find one of your messages corrupted in this manner, it is time to move onto a new Personal Message.
Be courteous of your fellow authors. If the unbroken string crosses over the line break for you, add in an enter, just in case.

2-Back and forth, the Proper crossover.

This is just in the case that both authors want a say in what their characters are doing in the crossover. If you want to give control of your character over to another author and let them write up the chapter on their own, well good luck and may it come out nicely.

So you both want direct control over your character. Congratulations! You have an agreement with your fellow author, and will take care of dialogue and story elements as best you can. But who should get to lead? Who gets to say where the story goes, or stops?

-Which world is the Displaced in?
A good way to decide who should be pushing story elements and who should be standing back and catering solely to their own characters dialogue and actions, is deciding where you want the crossover to take place. Once you figure out which world the Displaced are going to be predominantly in, THAT author is the one who should be calling the shots, dictating to the other author where the story should go.

-Draw up a line of events.
The Dominant author now has the responsibility of figuring out a storyline to take place in this crossover. This isn't a crossover RULE, but you may have noticed a couple crossovers seeming to meander around without purpose or direction. To avoid this wayward wandering as you try to think up a line of events for your characters to follow, this might be a better choice. Think about what you want to happen in the chapter, and write up a list of events to take these characters through.

Example-
1-Sterling Mallory Archer is summoned by The 3D Dot Game Hero

2- Introductions

3- Journey to location *B*, Dialogue from S.M.A. towards resident Twilight

4- Rainbow Dash screws things up

5- S.M.A. beats up RD. 3DDGH tries to patch things up

6- Fight breaks out betweenS.M.A. and 3DDGH

7- undecided

8to?- Things happen

?- S.M.A goes home

That's not to say you should write up a strict line of events and stick to them no matter what. If something doesn't work, CHANGE IT. Talk to your fellow author, and trade ideas back and forth. Have a plan, but be flexible.

3- Writing and editing.
Allright, so you have a plan and you've got a start. But oh no, what is this? Both of your stories are in first person! What are you to do?

You have at your disposal several options! Much choices, such wow!

-True first person (not what is really called. Basically, you each write out your posts, narrating as you would in our own stories per post. Then after the story is all written out, you each edit the other persons posts so that they fit with your own storys perspective. -usually changing him/her to I/me and so forth.-).

-Subservent (one of you writes in the perspective tailered to the other story -example, Applegate is in first person, if I was writing subservent to you I would write all of Wades lines and actions in third person- This tends to be easier for one author, and leads to a weekend of editing for the other author. If you go this route you should give your fellow author(s) a helping hand in editing for their own chapter. Coordinate with them to segment the chapter into chunks for you each to edit.)

-One chapter third perpective (to avoid editing heavily after the chapter is finished, some people prefer to have both -or more than two authors- write the entire thing in third person. This way, the chapter can be posted on both accounts with either minor or non existant editing)

So now you have a helpful little helper to get you started!

We here at Displaced hope this has given you some help for your colaborations, and wish you a wonderful day!

4492399
Just because you can't be on at the same time doesn't mean you can't use Google Docs, and leave each other notes in the form of comments.

4492467
Feel free to leave comments, observations and otherwise. The more help we can give to our members the better.

4492399 I skimmed this. You can break this psuedo guide down to two separate posts. 1:How to contact someone about a crossover 2:How to conduct a crossover.

2 can be further broken down into the ways a crossover can be conducted.

4492501
Would you like to elaborate on that? Any and all information we can spread on any given viewpoint will only help our members in the long run.

4492511 This post is very long. Shortening it and seperating it into parts would make it easier for people to find specific information. Since this is on a forum, It would also make it easier to answer questions.

I would also suggest that when talking about a crossover with another writer a third party may be present. A mediator, if you will.

I would also split this post into a third part, "Crossovers: Frequently asked questions"(or FAQ).