Chapter Summary

This chapter has no summary.

Questions


Reading

Commenting

Beta Reading

AO3 Etiquette

This is at least partly a recap of other notes in other chapters. Trying to formalize and increase awareness of traditional fandom etiquette, e.g. comment/review norms, YKINMK. Cf. three laws of fandom.

Navigating AO3: Finding Works

Filtering and searching for fics. Ways to narrow down your search results. Keywords and symbols for the "search within results" field.

Comfy-fy Your Reading Experience

Caveat Lector

You are responsible for your own consumption of media. The Archive of Our Own is more modular than many other websites – not only can you read a work's tags in order to decide whether that work is right for you, but you can even use a site skin that hides works with a given tag, so that you don't even see them in the first place. Assuming that the work's creator has properly tagged their work, they are not responsible for any bad feelings that may arise.

Site Skins

Navigating AO3: Reading Works

What the Buttons Mean

Bookmarks

Difference between private and public bookmarks. What recs are.

Navigating AO3: Your Personal Pages

Section 1

Dashboard

Profile

Pseuds

Preferences

Skins

Section 2

Works

Drafts

Series

Bookmarks

Collections

Section 3

Inbox

Statistics

History

Subscriptions

Section 4

Co-Creator Requests

Sign-ups

Assignments

Claims

Related Works

Gifts

Posting on AO3

Useful tools for formatting stories on AO3 with a minimum of fuss, to avoid weird spaces and extra line breaks.

Story Meta

Tagging Guide

Guidelines on when to use non-story related tags.

Chapter Summary

If it's been more than a couple of weeks since your last update, then consider including a short recap in the chapter summary or opening notes. If it's been more than a month since your last update, then definitely include a short recap.

Opening / Closing Notes

If you think that it would be a good idea to make a content warning but you don't want to spoil things for people who don't want to be told about anything, then you can give the content warning in the chapter's end notes, and mention the presence of the content warning in the chapter's beginning notes.

Formatting

How to format with HTML.

Fanfiction.net is a dying nightmarescape held together by duct tape and Faustian bargains, whose founder disappeared years ago when the Devil came to collect his due for reasons that are a mystery to us all. I will speak of it no further except to say that, if that site is dying, then Ficwad is undead. Furthermore, I know nothing of Wattpad or whatever else the kids are posting on today.

All of this is to say that my formatting advice is exclusively for posting on Archive of Our Own. If there are other guides for other websites, then I may add them to this list if you let me know of them.

Work Skins

How to use work skins, including a list of work skins that are neat or just plain useful, like work skins for emulating social media.

Writing

Chapter length, foreshadowing, writing visual descriptions, other general advice.

Navigating AO3: Exchanges, et cet.

[Organizing Your Work]

Collections, series, etc. How to Anonymize your work, how to orphan them, difference between them.