Scene Stormers is a d/b/a and operating division of Wistful Tiger Incorporated (the “Company”). This Code of Conduct sets specific, enforceable standards for the Scene Stormers community. Part I governs the Company’s officers and the independent contractors engaged for the division (“Team Members”). Part II sets community standards for the writers who purchase our services (“Writers” or “Clients”). Part III is the content policy that applies to everyone. Part IV covers reporting, safeguarding, and enforcement.

This Code implements the Scene Stormers Code of Ethics. For Team Members, compliance is a condition of engagement and this Code is incorporated by reference into each independent contractor agreement with the Company. For Writers, the community standards and content policy are incorporated into the service agreement or enrollment terms. Where a Writer is under 18 (a “Minor Writer”), the stricter provisions marked below apply without exception.

Part I — Standards for Team Members

1. Scope

Part I applies to all Team Members in every interaction with Writers and prospective Writers, in any setting or medium: live workshops (in person or virtual), asynchronous feedback, email, messaging, learning platforms, social media, and informal contact. It applies regardless of a Team Member’s role, seniority, or location, and regardless of any other title a contractor may hold with the Company.

2. Communication with Writers

2.1 Approved channels only. All substantive communication with Writers occurs through Company-approved channels: Google Classroom, Zoom, and Discord. Team Members may communicate with Writers through personal social media accounts, personal phone numbers, etcetera; however, all official communications must come through official channels.

2.2 Minor Writers. Scene Stormers does not accept Minor Writers as clients nor support any workshop with the intent of inviting or including Minor Writers. We screen all Writers to be 18 years of age or older at the time of admission.

2.3 Transparency. No Team Member may ask any Writer to keep a communication, meeting, gift, or relationship secret from parents, guardians, or the Company. Any such request by anyone must be reported under Part IV immediately.

2.4 Hours and tone. Communication stays within professional subject matter and reasonable hours. Team Members do not discuss their own romantic or sexual matters with Writers, and do not solicit personal information from Writers beyond what the program requires.

3. Professional boundaries

3.1 Romantic or sexual relationships, advances, or communications between a Team Member and any Writer are prohibited. This prohibition is absolute for the duration of any workshop the Writer attends in which a Team Member works on behalf of the Company.

3.2 When meeting face to face, Team Members do not meet Writers alone in private, non-observable settings. In-person events use open or observable spaces. When meeting privately in a virtual setting, meetings should be recorded and the recording provided to the Writer within three business days.

3.3 Physical contact with Writers is limited to what is ordinary, public, and professional.

3.4 Team Members do not give individual Writers gifts of more than nominal value, and do not accept gifts from Writers or their families above $20 without disclosure to a Company officer.

3.5 Team Members do not provide Writers with alcohol, drugs, or age-inappropriate material, and do not share or discuss sexually explicit content with any Writer in any context. Workshop treatment of mature themes follows the content policy in Part III.

4. Writer work: ownership, confidentiality, and AI

4.1 Ownership. Writers retain all rights in their writing. Nothing in any Company form or workshop practice transfers ownership of a Writer’s work to the Company or any Team Member.

4.2 No reuse. Team Members must not reuse, publish, excerpt, adapt, or incorporate Writer work in any Company or personal material — including marketing, teaching examples, and portfolios — without the Writer’s prior written consent. Consent requests must state the exact use and be filed with a Company representative.

4.3 No AI training or ingestion. Writer manuscripts and workshop submissions must never be used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any AI model, and must not be entered into third-party AI tools except Company-approved tools operating under a no-training, no-retention configuration. This mirrors the prohibition in the Company’s contractor agreements.

4.4 AI disclosure. Generative AI may not be used to evaluate Writer manuscripts for any reason. Writer intellectual property must never be used for AI training or provided to third parties other than in accordance with the Scene Stormers privacy policy. Team Members are free to use generative AI for research purposes, fact-checking, communications, marketing, and other lawful purposes so long as no Writer personal information or intellectual property is involved..

4.5 Confidentiality. Team Members do not share a Writer’s unpublished work, identity, contact information, or personal circumstances outside the Team, and within the Team only as needed to deliver services. Workshop drafts are not forwarded, posted, or discussed identifiably outside the workshop.

5. Feedback and instruction standards

5.1 Feedback addresses the work — craft, structure, technique — never the Writer’s intelligence, worth, or potential as a person. Sarcasm, ridicule, and public humiliation are prohibited.

5.2 Team Members deliver honest assessments. Inflating praise to retain a paying Client violates this Code.

5.3 Feedback is delivered within the committed turnaround time of three business days, or the Writer is notified of the delay and given a new date.

5.4 Team Members do not ghostwrite or substantially rewrite a Writer’s work presented for external evaluation (contests, school submission, publication) in a manner that misrepresents authorship.

5.5 Team Members moderate peer critique so that the standards of this Section — and the Writer community standards in Part II — apply to Writer-to-Writer feedback as well.

6. Conflicts of interest

6.1 Team Members do not solicit Writers or their families for personal business ventures, paid services outside the Company, investments, or donations.

6.2 A Team Member with a personal relationship to a Writer (family, close friend) discloses it to a Company representative and is recused from that Writer’s assessment where practical.

6.3 Arrangements between the Company and any contractor who also holds an ownership or governance role in Wistful Tiger Incorporated are disclosed and approved by disinterested decision-makers, and must never reduce or distort services delivered to Writers.

Part II — Writer Community Standards

Scene Stormers workshops are shared creative spaces. By enrolling, each Writer agrees to the following standards. They exist for one reason: so that every Writer can share unfinished work without fear.

7. Respect in critique

7.1 Critique the page, not the person. Feedback to fellow Writers addresses craft — structure, prose, character, clarity — and never a fellow Writer’s intelligence, identity, beliefs, or worth.

7.2 Disagreement with feedback is welcome; hostility is not. Writers may decline to adopt any suggestion, but may not attack those who offer suggestions in good faith.

7.3 A Writer’s choice of subject matter within the content policy (Part III) is not grounds for personal attack, even where other participants find the material uncomfortable.

8. Respect for fellow Writers and the Team

8.1 Harassment, discrimination, bullying, unwelcome sexual attention, and hate speech directed at any participant or Team Member are prohibited, in session and in any program channel.

8.2 Writers communicate with Team Members through official program channels and respect the boundaries in Part I — including not seeking private, off-platform contact with instructors.

8.3 Writers do not record sessions, screenshot fellow Writers’ work, or share anything from a workshop outside it. What is shared in the workshop stays in the workshop. A fellow Writer’s draft may never be copied, distributed, posted, or entered into any AI tool.

8.4 Writers do not use Scene Stormers programs to solicit fellow participants for commercial ventures, services, or causes.

8.5 Writers arrive prepared, submit work by stated deadlines where a cohort depends on it, and follow the scheduling, payment, and cancellation terms of their service agreement. Chronic no-shows in cohort programs affect fellow Writers and may result in removal from the cohort.

9. Honesty about the work

9.1 Work submitted for critique or instruction must be the Writer’s own. Plagiarism — presenting another’s work or substantial passages as one’s own — is grounds for removal.

9.2 Writers must disclose material use of generative AI in any submission. Undisclosed AI-generated work wastes the critique time of fellow Writers and the Team and is treated as a violation of this Section.

Part III — Content Policy

This policy governs material submitted, shared, or discussed in any Scene Stormers program — by Writers and Team Members alike. Its premise: serious fiction and memoir often walk into dark territory, and we will never mistake the depiction of difficult subject matter for the endorsement of it. Violence, abuse, addiction, war, prejudice, and grief belong to literature. The limits below are about safety and law, not squeamishness.

10. Permitted with care

10.1 Mature themes — including violence, sexuality handled non-explicitly, trauma, substance use, and strong language — are permitted where the content has other substantive literary value.  The Team may direct a Writer to bring a different piece to a given group.

10.2 Writers are encouraged to flag intense content (graphic violence, sexual assault, self-harm) when submitting to a shared cohort, so facilitators can prepare the room. This is a courtesy norm, not a censorship mechanism.

11. Prohibited in all programs

• Sexually explicit depiction of minors, or any content that sexualizes minors, in any form and regardless of framing. This prohibition is absolute, and material of this kind will be reported to authorities where the law requires.
• Pornographic material or erotica without other substantive literary value in any program.
• Content advocating or providing instruction for real-world violence, terrorism, or criminal activity, as distinct from depicting such acts in narrative.
• Hate propaganda — material whose purpose is the degradation of a real group of people — as distinct from fiction that portrays prejudiced characters or examines prejudice.
• Threats, harassment, or defamation aimed at real, identifiable people, including fellow participants and Team Members, in fictional dress or otherwise.
• Another person’s private information (doxxing), or another writer’s work submitted without authorization.
• Content that provides instruction for suicide or self-harm, or that glorifies these as desirable, as distinct from honest literary treatment of them.

12. Sensitive disclosures inside the work

12.1 Writing that depicts self-harm, abuse, or danger is often literature — and sometimes a signal. A Team Member who reasonably believes a submission discloses actual abuse of, or risk of harm to, a Writer treats it as a safeguarding matter first and a manuscript second, and follows Part IV. Writers should know this: we will always err on the side of a Writer’s safety over the privacy of a draft.

12.2 The Company may decline, pause, or reassign review of any material at its discretion, with a fee adjustment where paid review is declined per Scene Stormers refund policy.

Part IV — Reporting, Safeguarding, and Enforcement

13. Reporting and safeguarding

13.1 Duty to report (Team). Every Team Member must promptly report suspected violations of this Code, suspected abuse or neglect of a Writer, or a Writer’s disclosure suggesting risk of harm to self or others, to David Reed or the cohort designated safeguarding contact, regardless of who is involved — including a Company officer or owner.

13.2 Legal reporting. Where applicable law requires reporting to authorities (including mandatory child-abuse reporting laws in a Team Member’s or Writer’s jurisdiction), the Team Member complies with that law. This Code never authorizes delay of a legally required report. Team Members work from multiple jurisdictions; each is responsible for knowing their local obligations, and the Company maintains its obligations under the jurisdiction of Texas law.

13.3 Writer-risk response. A Team Member who becomes aware that a Writer may be at risk of harm responds with care, does not promise secrecy, notifies the safeguarding contact the same day, and follows the Company’s response protocol, which includes referral resources. Team Members do not attempt to provide counseling beyond their competence.

13.4 Writer reporting. Writers may report concerns about any Team Member or fellow Writer to David Reed (dave@bookshaman.com). Reports may be made confidentially, and no Writer’s standing in a program is affected by a good-faith report.

13.5 No retaliation. Retaliation against anyone who makes a good-faith report is itself a violation of this Code.

13.6 Records. Reports and their resolution are documented and retained per Company policy, with access limited to those who need it.

14. Screening and training

14.1 All Team Members complete safeguarding and Code training at onboarding and annually.

15. Enforcement

15.1 Team Members. Violations are reviewed by the Company board of directors; where that person is implicated, by disinterested decision-makers. Sanctions range from written warning to termination of the contractor agreement, for which material violation of this Code is cause. Conduct involving potential harm to a Writer results in immediate suspension of Writer contact pending review.

15.2 Writers. Violations of Part II or Part III by a Writer are addressed in proportion: a private conversation for a first lapse in critique etiquette; removal from a session for disruptive conduct; removal from the program — with refund treatment per the service agreement — for harassment, plagiarism, content-policy violations, or repeated breaches. Violations involving the safety of any Writer, threats, or unlawful content result in immediate removal and, where required or appropriate, referral to authorities.

15.3 Nothing in this Code limits the Company’s rights under any contractor agreement, service agreement, or applicable law.

Adopted by Wistful Tiger Incorporated for its Scene Stormers division on Monday 07 September 2026. This Code is reviewed annually. It supplements, and does not replace, obligations in contractor agreements, Writer service agreements, and applicable law.