Posting your first fic: an FAQ and community navigation and tag system guide

[isi]

I've been asked about how to post fic here, so I suppose it's a good idea to get this topic out there for any newbies. So here it is, your quasi-official guide to making your first post.

If you want a more general introduction to this community: go here.
If you want to see the community rules: go here.


Fanfic FAQ

So I have a fic I want to post...

That's great! Fanworks of all kinds are welcome here, and we're always interested in seeing new examples of fan fiction or whatever else you may have.

I want to post a fic, but I'm too nervous

It's okay. Sharing your work for the first time can be scary, but no one's going to tear you apart for doing so. We're pretty accepting around here, so go for it if you want to share something you're written.

What about beta readers?

While there is currently no official way to get a beta reader for your fic, it is recommended to have someone proof read your work before posting, especially if you're nervous about your writing. Go ahead and ask around if you need a beta; there's probably someone willing to help you out.

What kind of stuff is acceptable to post?

This question is best answered by the official rules, so make sure you're familiar with that. But it boils down to basically anything, so long as it's tangentially Mindcrack related. Also as per the rules, please do warn for major triggers and NSFW content.

Is there a certain format I have to follow?

Aside from warning for triggering and adult content, we currently don't have any requirement for how to present your fic. For convenience sake for the rest of us, we do recommend giving some indication of what pairings your fic contains (eg: Kurt/Zisteau, Guude/Pause, etc), or if your fic is non shippy (gen fic).



Making your first post

This section is about how to make a post to the community, since it may not be immediately obvious if you're using Dreamwidth for the first time. This will apply to whatever topics you want to post to the community, not necessarily fan fiction. The only requirement is that you need to be a member of the community to post topics. If you have something you want to post anonymously for whatever reason, contact the moderator, mindcrack_love.

So if you're ready to post something, you'll need to find the magical "Post to community" button.



Horray, my first real experimentation with Paint.net! Anyway, you should be taken to a page that looks like this:



Obviously the username and icon will be different on your screen. I'm assuming you can figure out how to format your post yourself, but try searching the Dreamwidth FAQ if you're not sure how to do something. If you are posting fan fiction or other fanwork, you will have to hide it behind a cut, which you can learn how to do here. Use your own discretion for when to cut posts that are not fanworks.

The bottom of the screen will look like this:



Most of this stuff is extra and you'll probably never have to mess with it, so don't worry about it. You might mess with the age restriction if you're going to post adult content, and the "Preview" button is helpful, but the main thing to pay attention to is the Tags section, which I'll get to in a second.



The tag system

Please tag your posts! You can familiarize yourself with the tag list (accessible through the community header or sidebar) to see what tags are available. Normal members don't have to ability to create new tags, but you can request new tags if you think something is missing.

To tag your posts, you can type them into the relevant field while you're composing a new topic, but there's another way that I find much quicker. After publishing, you should find a row of icons at the end of your post.



Hit the "Edit tags" icon to be taken to a new screen where you can select the tags you want from the full list. Scroll through the list and select the tags you want.



You can also do this for other people's posts if they didn't use tags, but it's much easier if everyone just tags their own posts. If you're unsure which tags to use, you can just leave a question at the end of your post or ask mindcrack_love directly.

Comments

[guiltyshirts]

Good summary. :)

Things

[scaredykitty]

Thank you for all the help! When I finish tinkering with this...thing, I'll post it, eep.

[mindcrack_love]

Thanks for this!

[crystalllized]

This is excellent. It's easy for me to forget that not everyone here has been posting fic on Livejournal-type sites for nearly ten years - this kind of primer, while completely unnecessary for me, will surely help some of the people here.

[theropod]

Perfect :D

[placeblocks]

Very nice! Can we maybe think about having a rule where we post the pairing (or list it as gen if there isn't a pairing) outside of the cut? I'm really used to having full headers on fanfics outside of the cut, but I'd settle at least to just know which pairing / non-pairing it is so I don't have to click and skim the fic to see if it's even something I really want to read.

[isi]

I think that's a good idea. I'm just not the person to tell everyone else how to do things; I'm just going by what's already in the rules. But I could add it as an unofficial recommendation in the bit about formatting.

[yaoi15]

Thanks for this!

[alexai132]

This is amazingly helpful,tnx!