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takaraphoenix · 6 years

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Hi! I don't to sound annoying, but I think my last ask may have fallen into the void so here goes: do you have any tips for starting an AO3 account? Sorry if you got the last one and just didn't feel like answering

Oh no, sweetie. Not annoying at all!

And while I do usually not instantly get around to answering and the asks might lay around for a day or two... yeah, I don’t have any other ask from you, so, good you send it again ;)

Tips? Mh.

1. The Basics!

Let’s start with the most basic thing. Your name.

Is your name a “brand”? That is to say; do you already have a recognizable name? Do people know you from other sites? Tumblr, DeviantArt, Fanfiction.Net, Wattpad, other sites I don’t know?

Then maybe pick the same name, if available. People who already like you might recognize it! They will also have an easier time finding you.

Not to mention, the human brain can not remember that many names and if you make them remember that oh, your name on this site is XYZ and your name on another site is ABC but on the next site they can find you as A2C... that might be asking a bit too much of them.

So make it easy for people who like you to find you! ;)

But don’t make it too easy for people to find you.

That is to say; don’t put personal information on your profile. Don’t link to your facebook, best not put your real name on there. The internet is not exactly a safe place, there are bad people, there are creepy people and there are also dangerous people. So always stay safe.

Now that you got your name and a profile that, instead of leading to personal information best leads to your other accounts, such as tumblr, you’re all set to post your first fic!

2. Write a decent summary.

If you move to AO3 from a site like FFNet, you are used to a pathetically short character limit that doesn’t allow much freedom.

Your summary is your window into the fic. It’s supposed to be the hook. Nowadays, tags take over parts of that job too but in the end, the summary is the final sell.

It’s tricky to find a good balance between explaining your story in an intriguing way and not spilling all the beans. Because you don’t want to spoil the ending, you want them interested in reading more and not left with the feeling that they already know everything that’s going to happen.

The same as with the tags apply; include what you think is truly important. What do people need to know about this story before going into it? Think of it as a trailer to a movie. What’s the best pitch?

3. Tagging makes fandom life easier.

Tagging is the one important feature about AO3 that makes it so beautiful and special. And tagging seems to be the hardest task for authors.

There are those who undertag and those who overtag.

You don’t have to literally tag everything - like “kissing” and “hand holding” and the sexual orientation of every single character that will as much as be mentioned in the fic. If readers face a literal wall of tags, chances are they just won’t read it and skip the entire thing.

Undertagging isn’t good either though. If things are too vague, many might also feel like it’s not worth wasting time on checking it out because the risk of running into something they might dislike is too high.

My personal approach to it is to tag everything I see as relevant. Things that, if I see them tagged in a story, instantly make me click it. Like, if I write a story that is centered particularly around the angst and feels of a certain character; tag it. There might be people desperately looking for a fic that centers on that character’s emotional turmoil.

And be on the safe side with smut too. Tag what you’re doing; there might be certain things that are uncomfortable for readers and that they are trying to avoid. That can be as simple as the what, or even as the who does what. For example, if I see a tag for explicit content but the author did not bother tagging who tops and bottoms, I generally don’t even bother clicking on the fic anymore, because despite the fact how most authors claim that topping and bottoming has “nothing to do with the character”, 90% of fanfiction authors still have it hard-wired in their brains that fics are more bottom-centric, that the bottom is portrayed as the shyer one who needs to be fussed over and comforted while the top is the brash, brave one. So to avoid running into literal fuckery where the roles are reverse to how I view the characters, I just don’t even try anymore.

Which means that tagging top and bottom can a) cause people who are looking for specific fics with a specific character as either of those to find your fic and be happy about it and also that b) someone who doesn’t enjoy the order you enjoy not to run into something they dislike.

Which actually summarizes the way I apply tags anyway. Don’t tag everything, but tag everything you think someone might be looking for in a fic, or might be trying to avoid. It’s both a lure and a warning in once.

Also, trigger warnings. You plan on writing heavier subjects? Murder, self-harm, torture, abuse, rape? Definitely put it in the tags. There are people who might just be really squeamish about it and don’t like it, which should already be reason enough to warn, but there are also people who have a serious history with such issues and might be triggered by them. So if you tag such things, they might already be filtered out by having been blacklisted by the users and you might have just made some people’s lives a little easier.

Tag your pairings. Maybe best in order of importance; many might just look at the first listed pairing, used to authors sorting them by importance and thus dismissing the fourth, fifth or sixth ship you tag as just random side-pairing. So if you have a main-pairing, always tag it first.

Also include character tags. I was recently told that there are apparently actually people who filter by character tags. News to me, though I do check the character tags too to see if my faves are in it.

4. Use the features AO3 offers!

This starts with something as simple as the fact that AO3 sends you mails about Kudos and comments. It’s a great way to stay up to date with how much love your fics gain.

Now that we’re at it; comments. Reply to them, if you have the time. Those are people who are interested in your work, in something you evidently love enough to put it out there. Engaging with them is a brilliant feeling. Getting feedback on your things and getting to know what they expect of your work or want from it. Occasionally, it can even be very inspiring and give you an idea to include to your story that you hadn’t even thought about!

Another thing about comments however is that you can moderate them. It’s a feature I personally don’t use because I’m a veteran at this point and there’s nothing I haven’t seen in the comment section to I’m not that easily fazed.

But if you are still new to not just AO3 but fanfiction in general and if you might write a ship the so-called antis deem “problematic” - which, at this point in time, can literally be any ship aside from canon no, wait, canon too - you might do yourself a favor there. Because fandom life can be beautiful but it can also be hell. There might be shitheads who come to your fic and say nasty, bad things about your pairing choice, your fanfiction, your writing, maybe even you yourself as a person because they’re trying to hurt you.

Don’t let it get to you.

But if you are more sensible about such things, then maybe moderating reviews can be a useful feature for you because it allows you to delete spam and flames without them ever showing up in the fic. You can always flag reviews as spam or delete them, even if you don’t use the feature, but you’ll have an ugly “scar” on your comment section that says [this review has been deleted].

One of the most handy features AO3 has - after the tagging - is in my eyes the series-feature. It allows you to bundle multiple fics together under one umbrella. Personally, I really hate when people post oneshot collections on AO3 as one fic and there’s tags for like 20 fandoms, 30 pairings and 60 kinks in that one fic and you as the reader have no way of telling which of the additional kinks would now relate to which pairing. The far easier and cleaner solution would be to post oneshots seperately, so people can easier tell what they individually are, and mark them as part of a series for that collection. It’s, of course, a matter for authors, but I’m not the only one who simply scrolls past such oneshot collections because I don’t have the patience to go through it just to notice all my kinks are tags that would belong to a shot I’m not interested in (not to mention the ones that already tagged the collection as including a pairing but 20 shots in that pairing has still not been written, or the ones that don’t include in the chapter title what pairing and fandom the individual shot is... and you’d literally have to seep through 30 chapters to find that one pairing in the collection that you’re interested in. Yeah no, I got better things to do with my time and close the whole thing).

So yeah, the series function makes it far easier to gather things you want to put under an umbrella but still make easy to navigate for your readers, which, always nice.

Another handy feature about AO3 is that you can put links into the fic. So if a character starts singing a song in the middle of the fic for romantic mood... Not everyone recognizes a song by its lyrics and it just doesn’t set the mood as well; how about just putting a link to a YouTube video over the first line that the character sings? Your readers can open it in another tab and let it set the mood for your fic.

5. Don’t let haters get to you!

I know I mentioned it above already, that you shouldn’t let shitheads get to you, but it’s important enough to earn its own separate point on the list.

Fandoms are filled with hatred and mean, nasty, selfish people who will do and say everything to keep their fandoms “pure” and thus attack people who ship or like things they themselves don’t like.

That can, at times, be really drowning and hard, so you need to focus on the good parts. If you’re a first-time writer, you might not yet have the connections, or you already do from tumblr and other sites, I don’t know, but let’s say you don’t. Then make them. A point of that is the above mentioned “interact with your readers” advise I gave you; the people happy about what you write are the good people and the kind of people in fandom that you want to associate with - so just do it. Do it, make friends, find people who you can gush to about this thing you both love.

If you already got those contacts from other sites? That’s great! But hey, never too late to make more friends and meet more fellow fans.

But those people are incredibly important if you want to participate in any fandom, because they are what reminds you that the fandom can be safe, sane and nice. That it can be a beautiful place and that it’s worth loving.

Because otherwise the hate from the other part of the fandom might get to you and it might even make you dislike the show/movie/book itself simply by association. I’m sorry that I’m sounding like such a downer here toward the end, but I’ve already seen it and gone through it myself, that if you fall into the deep end of negative fandoms, they can ruin everything for you. So it’s a piece of advise that is very dear and important for me to give - find the safe, sane and nice part of the fandom, claim it for yourself and enjoy it and don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have the right to enjoy and love it.

And that’s it. That’s all I can think of, at least. I hope there was at least some useful stuff in it, but since I don’t know how experienced you are with fanfiction writing and posting, I figured I’d better be more thorough and more general about it. Better give too much advise than too little, I guess.

Now, one last thing: Enjoy writing and never forget to enjoy writing; never let it become a “task”, always love it, okay? ;)

#Fanfiction #Writing #Fanfiction Writing #Advise #or at least I tried #AO3 #thisblogisdeaderthanspacedaddy

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