#How to Customize Your AO3 HTML Writing Format/Navigate AO3

[kassandras-one-braincell]

hi!! i was wondering if you have any general advice for someone who wants to start posting their work on ao3? or i guess if you would advice me to do that at all lol! i saw your recent post about it in relation to the ai stuff and found it so useful since i don't usually see people talk about that, thank you for sharing <33

Hi love! Please don't let the current AI situation on AO3 dissuade you from joining the platform. In all honesty, I think the scrape was a cheap attempt at obtaining credentials for identity theft using the illegitimate DMCA forms, rather than something done for software training purposes. I'm pretty sure Cloudflare, its hosting platform, has taken action against it.

My humble advice is contained below the cut, because it's quite long, but there's a bit of a learning curve with the posting page and a couple of unspoken customs:

The bulk of everything you need to know about posting on AO3 is contained in the ToS, which hopefully will help you navigate the "post" menu. If you're unsure whether a warning applies, select "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" just in case.

There's no algorithm, so all that readers have to go by is the (excellent) tagging system and the summary you provide.

If you struggle with summaries - most of us do - then a snippet of the work is perfectly sufficient. Ultimately, the summary is a preview of your writing, and if you opt for the excerpt approach, your style, which is your only chance to attract readers.

Tagging is a little bit intimidating the first few times as a writer, but you'll get the hang of it soon enough! Asides from central characters and pairings, this is the place to disclose the genre of the work, any key/polarising themes and/or triggers. You're not obligated by ToS to disclose these, but it's a gesture of goodwill if you know it might upset someone. If there is a disturbing theme present, include the tag "Dead Dove Do Not Eat" - this is the colloquial indicator for the reader to very carefully reread the tags, because they're to be taken literally.

When you begin to type a tag, you'll be given suggestions of the most widely used tags that match what you've typed. If the shoe fits, use these. It makes the site easier to navigate for readers. If you're spawning a tag into existence though, it will begin to appear in that little drop down after there are three works on the archive containing the tag. I know this because I was the first (and second, third and fourth lmao send help) person to upload "Soma (Assassin's Creed)/Reader" to AO3 :)

You have the option of uploading your work in the designated editor as Rich Text or HTML. The only significant difference between them is how page and paragraph breaks are formatted. If you're copy-pasting from a word processor, slap it in Rich Text, and then if you want to do anything fancy after that outside of the scope of the Rich Text editor, you'll be able to make adjustments in HTML.

While you can save a draft, the text editor is not designed to be a substitute for word processing software. There is no editing history or backup feature, so it's ill-advised to develop your work directly on the platform.

Finally, with all the technical stuff put to one side, try not to fret over metrics like hits and kudos. It's lovely to receive kudos and comments, but smaller numbers aren't indicative of your work in any way, shape or form. There are so many factors at play there, and sometimes just the time of publication can have a huge impact on reader engagement, precisely because there's no algorithm to bolster or suppress.

Take pride in your work, and keep the dopamine as isolated as possible from the thought of big numbers. I promise you, it will keep the passion alive for longer :)

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[sephhaa]

AO3 GUIDE II

Hihi! I’m here with another ao3 guide but this time I’ll be talking about some more editing features for your html writing and a little more in-depth guide on how to navigate ao3 as a reader! I’ll also be touching on the new ao3 update and how it affects your tags! If all of that interests you, keep reading!

So far after doing my first guide I was able to include everything about the ao3 html formatting and all the common errors you might run into when publishing on ao3! 

But I ran into one text feature I couldn’t quite figure out/I didn’t even know what this feature was even called:

As you can see, there’s a border almost beside this group of text and this border alone has been the cause of extensive research of how the actual fuck do I put that in my writing!??

Well now I know wtf this border is even called and what it’s many purposes are. 

Ladies and gentlemen (and my beloved non-binary hoes) this border is called:

(Did I actually type that out and screenshot it with sparkle emojis? Yes. Yes I did.) 

Blockquote is a text feature used often on ao3 to indicate to your readers that 

a) They’re speaking on the internet 

 b) Texting 

and:

 c) To make your summaries look a little more refined (that’s at least how I interpret it and how many others have according to my research.) 

There isn’t one way—or a correct way to use blockquotes (if we're talking about novel writing/journalism than that’s a whole different story.) But the premise is, here’s the coding format to implement blockquote to your text.

<blockquote> TEXT </blockquote>

It’s going to look a little something like this in your Holy Grail Google Docs page:

But there’s a catch.

For some reason, the holy grail google docs website I first recommended to you guys in the first guide, doesn’t register the blockquote text. Therefore, you’d have to manually implement it into your writing. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you cannot do blockquote on your text (adding the border on your own) onto your word doc. (Google docs, to my knowledge, does not have a border option that will just feature itself to the left of your text but they do have a citation feature. The only issue with that is, that you’d have to implement an actual source to that text.)

But anyway, that is how to blockquote your writing! If there’s a new update to the little blockquoting code to the holy grail docs (which I highly doubt it but eh) then I’ll be sure to make a new guide and include it there! 

Alright! I’m not sure if any of you were aware of this but—ao3 updated!!

There wasn’t extreme changes, just ao3 fixing any glitches or cleaning up some formatting but the one change that I would say is extreme and has affected me as a writer—is the tagging system.

As you can see above (I’m going to use @ edema_ruh fic as an example)(if you haven’t read her stuff I HIGHLY recommend, she’s a phenomenal writer!)  she has a very long tag list for this particular story. 

That’s because before the ao3 update, the tagging system for your story was almost infinite? (I’m pretty sure there was a limit) but the point is that you as the writer can put as many tags on your story as much as you want. If you wanted 100 plus tags underneath your story, go for it! If you want a solid 50, you can do that too! 

Of course, when you find a story with too many tags, it usually pushes readers not to click on that story because it hurts their eyes trying to track all the tags or because you’re telling too much of your story through the tags without letting the reader experience it through reading the actual story. Tags also had a way of taking up too much screen space, hence, when your stories are uploaded to the fandom page where people can find it in the explore section of ao3 (the front page of your fandom tag) those long tags can take up almost the whole page making other stories move onto the next tab. 

Which comes to my theory that ao3 had placed a limit to how many tags a story can have so that all stories can be featured on the front page of a fandom tag without just ONE story taking up so much space. I also believe ao3 placed a limit to the tagging system so it doesn’t affect tags for stories within a series and tags within your bookmarks. 

The current limit to how many tags you can have for your story is 75. And this is including placing character tags, relationship tags, and additional tags. There has to be 75 in total in order for you to publish that story. 

While I believe ao3 updating the tagging system is a good thing (to avoid redundant tags) I do believe they should have placed the limit to the character tag section and the relationship section. For additional tags, I believe the 100 tag system worked for me, especially with works that were on a larger scale (like stories with huge world-building elements) and just for us as writers to write a comment here and there (those are always fun to do!) but alas, I’m not really mad about the update on the tagging system and it gives you space as the writer to think hard on how to simplify your tags to tell your readers what your story includes then just telling them what’s its about. 

I also want to preface this by saying that stories that were already published with those long tags won’t be removed! It’s only if you’re editing through that work and changing the tags around that you’d have to abide by the new update to have 75 tags to be able to publish that work again!

Since my first ao3 guide, I didn’t entirely go into navigating ao3 as a reader! While this may be straight-forward for some of you, it’s not that straight-forward for new readers going onto read on ao3 for the first time! Or maybe even seasoned writers and readers on ao3 who don’t bother to go the extra mile to look for a story that might have specific things they want to read but don’t bother looking! 

So! This is what my fic explore page looks like on ao3. (I’m just going to go on the MHA fandom tag since that’s what I’ve been reading a lot lately)

As you can see, there’s a separate box (gray box) listing a bunch of things you can do to filter through stories. 

In this box is where you can customize your search for specific fics that you’re itching to read. I’m just going to go through how I filter my tags when I’m itching to find a new story and give you an idea of what you might want to look for when filtering through stories. 

First! I always filter through the “Date Updated” tag. By default ao3 has everyone’s search page surf through stories that have either been published that same day or a couple of days from the date that you are searching through stories. I always click on the drop down menu and select, “Hits,” or, “Kudos,” and sometimes, “bookmarks.” For today tho, I’m just going to click on “Hits.” 

Once Hits is selected, I start to scroll down to the Ratings drop down menu. 

Now ratings are important to me! My personal favorite ratings are either Explicit or Mature. And that’s primarily because I find writers that are adults like me (or much older) and I just personally find that they write the story in a very realistic way or semi-realistic way. (Also I find that I love reading smut with heavy plot, like I enjoy reading smut but I can’t just read smut)(my ace ass can’t I’m sorry LOL I mean—I don’t mind one good smut oneshot but lord) 

Anyway, here you can click on a rating that’s best suited to your tastes and if you’re unsure just go through all the ratings and see if you find a story that fits to what you’re looking for!

Now let’s move onto the relationships tag:

Now the relationships tag is just a long list of popular ships within the fandom. If you’re looking for a specific ship I believe you have to use the search engine to find stories within that ship. Either way, if the ship that you’re looking for is within this list, click on it and then move onto the next tag!

Here we are with the additional tags! This is the list of common additional tags many writers use for readers to find their stories very easily and for you as the reader to find a story with a very specific feature to it. For example, I tend to click on the Angst tag or the Hurt/Comfort. Sometimes I switch it up and just click on any of the tags and look through the stories there to see if there’s stories I like within that tag. A lot of the time, this list doesn’t always have an additional tag I want so I’ll use the search bar underneath the additional tag listing:

Here I would put a tag that I can’t find on the listing above! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, it’s very hit or miss but it’s worth a shot in the event that you do end up finding a story you really enjoy!

More options is a tag listing that I don’t find myself using often but I can see why someone would! 

Personally, I’ve only used it for the “Completion Status,” tag listings because sometimes I don’t want to keep waiting for updates and just reading works that are still updating (though the best fics are usually still ongoing) 

So here I’ll go ahead and click “Completed Works Only,” and then after go right on ahead to “Sort and Filter.” 

Now here is what my explore page on ao3 underneath all the tags I had personally placed start to appear. 

Fair warning: sometimes there will be a story or two that have nothing to do with the tags that you placed in your sort and filter listing. It just happens. If you’re really picky about it, I suggest going to the “Exclude,” box and marking off things you don’t want in a fic. Again, this is a hit or miss but I do see that it does work to a certain extent, especially after going through at least the second to third tabs on ao3.

^ This what your Exclude tag box should look like and ranges from the exact rating you don’t want to read to other additional tags you don’t want to include in your search for a fic. You can even type out a certain tag you don’t want included in your search as well!

Bookmarks is pretty self-explanatory but I’m here to dive deeper into the realm of bookmarks (and then collections right after this)

This is what my bookmarks currently looks like. Now, bookmarks can be separated into two different “tags.” By tags I mean you can either place the story that you’re bookmarking in into a “rec” tab or into a “private” tab. 

By default, everyone I know puts their stories in the “rec” tab. And as you can see, when you bookmark the story you can also add a reader’s note or place it into your collections folder. You can also add tags of your own that are very specific to you as a reader that the author didn’t include. For example, “Izuku is super whiny in this” or something like that. I find that a lot of readers say a lot of cute/super nice things when they bookmark a story they like! 

Yes, we writers can see what you write in your bookmarks and a lot of the time I just find myself blushing at what y’all be saying in those bookmarks, yall cute for that. 

Here you also have the option to add the story into a private bookmark, this way other readers and writers won’t be able to read the stories you like/added to your bookmarks. I think a lot of ppl use this tag so that others don’t judge them for the stories they like or they read a bit of a controversial ship or concept. 

As you saw above, when you click on your bookmarks tab you’re able to see another filtering system there too! This is primarily if you’re a more avid reader and you find yourself adding a whole bunch of stories, you can filter through them by searching the specific tags that that fic had. 

You can also find this filtering system when you click on other readers/writers bookmarks and you can filter through their bookmarks to see if they happen to have a story that you may like. Which is another thing I want to get into:

I’m not sure if this is hugely common but I believe it is if ao3 has you searching through bookmarks on the main fandom explore page. 

Now typically I don’t tend to find stories through the bookmark tag on the fandom explore page but it is an option and I’m sure a lot of you can find stories you personally like by using this little system. I personally just search through all my favorite writers bookmarks or I go onto readers pages and see what they’ve added to see if there’s a story there that I like. Mainly because I can find a story better suited to my interests if I search through another reader’s bookmarks knowing they’ve bookmarked the same story as me. Or I go onto my favorite writer’s bookmarks because if they write all this amazing material, I should be able to find a story that they took inspiration from or enjoy by all the tags that they write. (Sometimes that’s not always the case but it’s always worth a shot in my book.)

Anyway, this is how to find stories using the bookmark method!

Collections, in my opinion, is the best way to find really amazing stories!

I call it a level up from bookmarks.

What I tend to see when it comes to collections, if your story ends up in multiple collections, it’s a huge compliment because not only does one reader think your story is worth being in it’s separate folder but multiple readers think the same thing. Here I’ll be explaining to you how to create your own collection and what to look for when searching for stories through a collection folder.

As you can see on the left side, you’d find collections right below bookmarks. This is just a short list of collections that I have separated by fandoms. On the top right, you’re going to click onto “New collection.” 

Just like when you’re getting ready to either publish a new story or add a new chapter, the window for the collections page is formatted in a similar way.

Collection name and Display Titles are very important here. Since collections are very common, naming said collections are very common. Therefore, if you want to name your collections a specific thing, 9 times out of 10 that name is already taken. I just wanted to warn you guys in advance so that when you’re making your own collections that you’re not married to a name. 

Everything else to edit through on the collections page is self-explantory but I wanted to highlight the preferences window for a bit because I find that this is important to readers and how they would like to manage their collections. 

Commonly, collections are a public and a moderated affair. Meaning, almost anyone (guests and users alike) can go onto your collections and pick a story from there, filter through them, (I believe leave comments as well?? Not too sure about this one so take it with a grain of salt) and just openly surf through your collections page. Others can also become members of your collections page and moderate it to their liking with permission. 

Another common occurrence is having to be invited into a collection page you believe will have stories you think will suit your reading needs! Usually I find that the moderators or owners of the collections are good with accepting invitations but there is a bit of a wait time in order to access said collection. If you’re not impatient, I suggest this option to you if you find a collection page you really like. 

Now, when adding a story to your collections page, you need to type out (word for word) the title of your collection page. This is primarily because there are so many collection pages that might have the same name that you don’t wanna risk adding your story into the wrong collection page. 

Now that your favorite story is added to your collections folder, you can start adding a bunch of other stories onto that same collections page or make different collection pages for specific fandoms that you read from!

Fair warning!!! 

If you’re adding stories too quickly onto your collections page or just cleaning out your bookmarks (deleting stories you never ended up reading etc) just know that ao3 will crash on you! 

This is mainly because ao3 is trying to adjust to those new changes as quickly as it can but it needs some time to adjust to those changes! So what I recommend is, after adding 3 to 5 stories onto your collections or removing them from your bookmarks, allow a 5 minute break for ao3 to adjust to those changes so it doesn’t crash on you’d end up waiting a solid 10 minutes just to load back your ao3 page!

I believe this is obvious but—! You need to have an ao3 account in order to add stories to your bookmarks or collections! If you are a guest reader, you unfortunately cannot make bookmarks or add stories to collections/make collections. 

To make an ao3 account is very easy, you just have sign up like how you would with any other website. The only unique thing about ao3 is that unlike other websites, ao3 isn’t an instant account making machine. Your sign up needs to be approved beforehand in order to be an avid reader/writer of ao3 and usually takes up to 2 weeks to get an invitation into ao3 with an official account. 

I find that you don’t end up waiting 2 weeks but instead like a couple of days (a solid 2-5 days) after you sign up. Make sure to look through your junk mail and stuff to know if you were approved or not!  I hope this little explanation helps and doesn’t deter you from making account and joining ao3! If it helps, you can still read on ao3 even after making an account and waiting to get approved!

I hope you guys enjoyed this little guide! I appreciate all of you who came from my first ao3 guide and reblogged and tagged it with comments telling me how you found this very useful and informative! 

I’m not sure why so many people like to gate-keep information, especially important information like this but I’m here to tell you how to navigate a pretty complicated (albeit amazing) platform that I believe everyone should have access to. Especially as a writer and a reader. I hope you find this just as useful as the first one and if there’s anything that you’re curious about or can’t exactly find the answers to, don’t mind reaching out to me through my ask box here on tumblr! I’m always ready to spread some knowledge or go through endless articles, videos and tirades of information to give you all and my readers the best reading experience possible!

That’s all for this guide! If you didn’t know, I am a fanfic writer and novelist! I’m currently writing for fandoms like MHA, Voltron and BTS! If you liked this guide and enjoyed me as a writer, go on ahead and follow my tumblr here and check out some of my work on ao3! 

Above you can see a couple of my links and my new ko-fi! (I finally made a ko-fi lmaoo) so if you want to support me on an even deeper level, you can now buy me a coffee 💗

You can reach out to me through my twitter and tumblr if you have any questions or just want to chill and talk to me! Twitter is the best way to find me and get updates to my stories! 

It’d be super helpful if you reblog this and spread the this information around, you never know when a fellow writer or reader needs it! 

Again, thank you to those of you who came from my first guide and found it very useful and helpful! I hope to keep creating content that can help other writers and readers in the near future!

Until my next guide! ✨

[starlightthemes]

THEME PACK: THE ARCHIVE

Styled after AO3, this pack includes a theme and matching pages, and was designed for writers and readers alike.

🖋️ Theme 11: Archive Of Your Own

Live preview | Static previews: index page, permalink | Code

Full-width posts in an AO3 work index page format

Sidebars with optional sections such as featured tags, updates, rules, progress bars, and more

Unlimited custom links (display on sidebar or in top navbar), plus several social links in the footer

Add a custom logo beside/replacing your avatar

Inbuilt tag filtering plugin by glenthemes

All fields editable directly in the Customize menu, no HTML required. See below the cut for a full guide

🖋️ Page 3: Archive Records

Preview | Code

A WIP page designed to resemble an AO3 work page

Add tags for ratings, warnings, fandoms, characters, and more, as well as statistics like start dates, word counts etc.

Spaces for summary, start and end notes, and the 'work' itself

🖋️ Page 4: Archivist

Preview | Code

A combined about/navigation page based on the AO3 profile page

Include user statistics or any data you'd like, plus a longer bio

Sidebar navigation with link sections - unlimited links and link groups

The theme and pages all include options for multiple color palettes (initially set to Default and Reversi), text styling (choice of Tumblr/Google fonts and casing options), and more. -

Each page includes instructions on how to edit it, and color/image variables have been gathered together to make customization easier. While not necessary, basic knowledge of HTML is helpful.

For help, check my codes guide, or feel free to send me an ask. Theme 11 customization guide and credits are under the cut.

Theme 11 customization

Regarding the simpler fields:

"Secondary title" refers to the title just above the posts, under the header and navigation. This defaults to "[Total posts] Works in [Username]" when the field is left empty.

"Filtered tags" takes a comma-separated list of tags, entered exactly as they'd be written in the Tumblr post editor but without the hashtag. E.g. the tags #politics, #red and blue, and #green would be entered as "politics, red and blue, green" (make sure there's spaces, and no comma after the last item!). The filtering plugin will then put a warning message over any posts with those tags, along with a button letting you show the post.

"[Section] title" act as the headers for the corresponding section, if provided. "Custom links title" defaults to "Pages" if nothing is entered, and is used when the custom links are displayed on the navbar.

"Featured tags" takes a comma-separated list of tags, in the same format as Filtered tags. This field will display links to those tags, along with the number of posts in that tag on your blog, in the left sidebar.

The Recent posts section displays the 5 most recently posted/reblogged posts on your entire blog, displaying in the left sidebar. If you enter a tag under "Recent posts tag", it'll instead display the 5 most recent posts in that tag on your blog. Only 1 tag is allowed.

Rules and FAQ

Both these sections work the same way. Each new item, a rule or a question, consists either of one statement, or a statement and some more text, usually as an answer or additional note. E.g. the screenshot below shows three rules, where the last one has more text in the dropdown.

To create an item, prefix it with <li> . To add more text, create a <li> item and add a [more] label underneath, then write your extra text after that. To illustrate, here's the Customize page code for the above:

Updates

This section is similar to Rules/FAQ, though it flips the order around. After each <li>, first list the date, then add the [label] marker, then add your actual update. Again, here's an example:

And here's the Customize page code that created that:

Toggles

This section displays checked/crossed-out items, and uses a simpler version of the formatting for the above sections. Use <li> for each new item, then add [on] or [off] at the end, depending on whether you want it checked or crossed off. Here's an example:

And here's the corresponding Customize code:

Progress bars

This section also uses <li> items, where each item has two parts: the text label, and the number(s) for the progress percentages, put inside square brackets like with the other sections. Here's an example (note how the top two use fraction values while the bottom one uses a percentage):

And here's the code that made these. In short, the format is <li> Text here [##/##], or <li> Text here [##%], where ## refers to any number.

Social links in footer

The footer links, aside from the email and personal website fields, take usernames or user IDs for various websites. Be sure to check you're not entering a username in a user ID field!

The Email address field takes a standard email in the format youremail@mailprovider.com and adds a link to let people mail that address.

The Personal website fields will generate a link in the footer's Follow section. Personal website name is the human-readable text label for the generated link, and Personal website URL is the URL that will open when the generated link is clicked. Make sure to add https:// to the start of the personal website URL so the generated link doesn't just redirect you to a different part of your blog.

Credits

Layout and design by Archive of Our Own

Style My Tooltips by malihu

Phosphor Icons

Expanded Tumblr localization and NPF photosets plugin by codematurgy

Custom audio posts by annasthms

Tag filtering by glenthemes

Palette toggle by eggdesign

Scroll to top by Fabian Lins

[dramioneasks]

Can you please please make a lost of pros and cons for posting a dramione story on ffn/ao3/h&v/lj/tumblr/wattpad/etc? Maybe addressing the number of views and audience? Amount of flames. Their navigation and UI and UX. Etc. anything that comes to mind. Thanks. I really appreciate it. 🙏🏻

Howdy!

This ended up being a rather long post, so please click on the link below to read the rest…

It is also entirely based on my personal opinions and experiences from posting my fics at these sites. This likely isn’t a completely comprehensive list, just what came off the top of my head… so… feel free to add a comment to this post on these websites’ features and I’ll update it.

❤️ @refictionista​

So… without further ado…

The Pros and Cons of Various HP Fan Fiction Websites

Posting on FFnet

Pros:

Largest and most popular fan fiction website… like… in the world

Has an official app that makes downloading fics super easy

You can have ‘book covers’ for your fics

You can create polls

Has in-site PM feature

Very user friendly posting process

Interest can be determined via reader reviews, favs, and follows

Can be posted immediately (no wait times or approval process)

Communities for collecting fics

Best analytics of any fan fiction site

Allows saved drafts

Cons:

384 character max for fic summary… brevity is not one of my virtues

Any author notes, foot notes, chapter notes, etc. are part of the chapter and thus they affect the word count

You can’t rearrange the order of the chapters

Tagging is practically non-existant, limited to characters (with a max of four characters)… of these, you can only do (duo) pairings (no triads)

Keeps having these weird glitches that mess up my update notifications

Allows anonymous guest reviews, of which I’m not a fan… anonymity can lead to flaming drama… and I don’t mean the genre…

Formatting is extremely basic… meh

You can’t do anything resembling links… I once had a chapter that was supposed to be an email thread… the email addresses had to be typed out as name (at) domain (dot) com… shudder

Can’t post above a ‘M’ rating

I haven’t figured out their forums

@sennalya said: I personally dislike ffnet because their search/filter/block options plainly suck and their tags simply don’t exist.

Posting on AO3

Pros:

You can write a fic as a gift for another user

You can add co-authors

Fics can be part of a series… bless this feature

You can rearrange the order of the chapters

Has a prominent trigger warning (Archive Warning) display

Tagging system is extremely well done, search functionality is amazing

Has a viewing history feature

Comments (their “reviews”) are done as messaging threads by named users… like the threads (they’re more interactive than just plain reviews) and the lack of anonymity cuts down on the flaming drama

Several search list sorting options

Formatting options are amazing… like… even superscript… amazing (but to use these more advanced formats, you need to know your coding)

Separate chapter summaries, chapter notes, and end notes (all useful to determine an accurate word count)

Interest can be determined via reader comments, kudos (their “likes”), bookmarks, and page hits (guests/anons can only leave kudos)

Can be posted immediately (no wait times or approval process)

Several in-site fic downloading options (.mobi, .ePub, .PDF, and .html)

Integrates with LiveJournal and other fanfiction communities for fests and other challenges

Allows saved drafts

I’m a big fan of their legal advocacy initiatives

@sennalya said: You can do it all in your doc (MS Word or whatever), and when uploading, click the rich text button (top right above the text field) and simply paste your chapter in. Just tried it with heavily formatted text (bold, italics, superscript, and it took it all. Only had a bit of a glitch that I had to insert an empty line to the text field before I could paste at all, weird). If you have a coded text, chose the html button and paste your text in. It’s really very user friendly!

Cons:

No PMs

No mobile app

Analytics are okay but not great

My book covers have to be added as separate chapters

Posting on H&V

Pros:

Not going to lie, my favorite site

Just dramione

You can rearrange the order of the chapters

Search functionality is custom tailored for dramione fics

Fics show their banners in the search/list display (so I’m not too upset that I have to add my book covers as separate chapters)

Allows bookmarking on specific chapters… and when you last clicked on a fic/chapter

Reviews are done as messaging threads by named users… like the threads and lack of flaming anon drama… FYI, I never seen any review drama on this site

Fics can be part of a series

Separate chapter notes and end notes (useful to determine accurate word count)

Top (insert category) lists

Submissions are reviewed and approved by admins prior to posting, and the verification/approval process helps to maintain fic quality standards

Allows saved drafts

Cons:

Website is currently down and has been for a while… they say it’s just technical difficulties and will be back soon (fingers crossed)

Sometimes it takes a week or so for a chapter submission to be approved and then posted

Analytics are basic

I know you can follow/subscribe to a fic, but I haven’t figured it out

Posting on LJ

disclaimer: I’ve only posted fics on LJ that were submissions to fests.

Pros:

Used in quite a few fests and communities

Some of these journals are devoted entirely to a specific pairing or genre within that pairing

Good formatting options

Good mobile app

Cons:

Mostly used for one-shots… can have multi-chapter fics, but I’ve only had that done for me with a submission that was part of a fest… I poked around once but still have no idea how to that myself on my own LJ page

Formatting options are available, but you need to know your coding

Haven’t even figured out how the analytics work

No saving of drafts

Posting on Wattpad

disclaimer: this is based on previous experience. I removed all of my fics from this site because I didn’t like the display… completely a personal preference.

Pros:

Great mobile app (most readers access the site via the app)

You can add book covers

Easy to use… no coding required

Cons:

Mainly original fiction

Formatting options are basic

No saving of drafts

Analytics are basic

Posting on HarryPotterFanFiction.com

disclaimer: this is based on previous experience. I removed all of my fics from this site after a chapter update to my P&P parody fic was rejected due to it violating their ToS (it too closely resembled Jane’s Austen’s original story).

Pros:

Submissions are reviewed and validated

Has in-site mail feature

Reviews are done as messaging threads

Decent formatting options

All Harry Potter fan fics

Cons:

Upload process was confusing at first

Analytics are basic

Posting on Adult-Fanfiction.org

disclaimer: this is based on previous experience. I removed all of my fics from this site because I kept having difficulties just simply trying to log into my account on my preferred web browser.

Pros:

Posting adult content fics that wouldn’t be accepted on other archives

Cons:

The search function and tagging systems are antiquated… most fics I found were spread by word of mouth recommendations

On a restricted/blocked domain in many locations

The formatting options are a hassle

Upload process is significantly less user friendly and confusing

I never figured out their analytics

Other fan fiction websites (that host HP fan fiction) but that I’m not familiar with…

MuggleNet

Quotev

deviantART

FicWad

Internet Archive

Feedbooks

Goodreads

FictionPad

MediaMiner

The Maple Bookshelf

Lost D/Hr Fics (I added it to this list, but you don’t post there… it only posts fics no longer available)

Some people also post their fan fics here on tumblr… search for the #fanfic tag

[sephhaa]

How to Customize Your AO3 Writing HTML Format & More!

Okay! So you want to know how to customize your AO3 HTML writing format/how to navigate AO3 in general—well you’ve come to the right place! 

Here I’ll be addressing common errors that happen when navigating AO3 as both a reader and primarily as a writer. I’ll also be giving out some great tips and tricks on navigating AO3—especially when it comes to customizing your AO3 writing. I’m mainly making this because when I was trying to simply publish my stories on AO3 with indentation on my writing format; it was such a HASSLE. Especially going through countless blogs that were really freakin’ old and youtube videos that weren’t at all helpful and/or very confusing. Hopefully today I’ll be able to help you try and alleviate that confusion. 

I’m also going to make a youtube video on this in the near future as well as my tumblr guide( if you want to learn how to customize your Tumblr blog(theme, linking things on your bio, navigating certain functions) go ahead click here.

Alright! So let’s say you already have your chapter ready and prepped to be pasted onto the HTML writing format. Here are a few things you need to know before pasting that long written chapter onto the HTML format.

If you have a bunch of indentation on your chapter and go ahead and paste that onto AO3 HTML format—it’d immediately remove all that indentation.

Indentation:

No Indentation:

This is going to happen no matter how much spacing you put in that text on HTML. It’s primarily because HTML is meant to be a bunch of code in between text. There is no code suggesting to create indentations on your text. So you might be asking yourself, well how do I create indentions Seph? Here is how:

^ here is my secret weapon hehe~

Now, before I came across this holy grail of a website(after going through long hours of searching through youtube videos and articles etc) I was manually typing out all of my code onto my stories. It was literal hell(especially because I write very LONG chapters(20k-60k) so I had to physically scroll through my own writing to put code in between text that sometimes didn’t even work when I finally published my story/chapter. The website I’m going to link to you—it’s a website where you paste your work onto the google doc and it’d put the code in FOR YOU. So you don’t have to sit there for hours implementing your own code for indentations, bold text, etc. Here’s how to use the website:

Website link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eZnBQ4989Dr17v2ODFgE8QWAo9Oahi4USDNS3hOSvM/copy (as far as I know this website doesn’t have a name but imma just call it the HTML holy grail lolll)

* You’re going to click, “make copy.”

Make sure before you’re clicking, “make copy,” that the gmail you’re signed into is the same one your browser is signed into. So when you go through the process of selecting a google account to sign into—you don’t select a different gmail. If you don’t write your stuff on google docs and for example—use Word—just copy your writing from your Word document and paste it into the website’s google doc. You’d just have to sign into an email anyway lol.

Now when you click, “Make copy,” it’d open to this page. This page has a bunch of instruction you don’t need to read. What you’re going to do is delete all of this text and paste your writing on it. To select all the text:

SHIFT+CMD+A (MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A (Windows)

Then hit:

Delete (Mac)

Backspace (Windows)

Now that it’s empty, you’re going to go ahead and copy your story:

 SHIFT+CMD+A  & then CMD + C  (MAC)

 SHIFT+ALT+A  & then ALT + C (Windows)

and paste it to this document.

Now it’s going to look very similar to your own google docs page where you copied your writing from. What you’re going to do next, is click/look for the text that says, “Post to AO3″ which can be found on taskbar above the writing functions next to, “Help.” 

When you click this, it’d ask you two things:

and:

Obviously, we want to select, “Prepare for pasting into HTML Editor.” Click that and it’d immediately start running. It will ask you to sign into a google account as well:

Click continue (this is where it’d ask you to sign into a google account):

Here choose your gmail account (for obvious reasons I won’t be showing my email lol):

It’d ask for permission, select— “Allow” below.

It’d immediately run the script and it should look like this:

Everything highlighted in blue is your code. This coding will make your indentations for you as well as make the coding for bold text, italic text, so on and so forth. 

Now, you’re going to copy all of this text:

SHIFT+CMD+A :then: CMD + C (MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A :then: ALT + C (Windows)

and paste it into your HTML editor on AO3 (ofc, delete all the text already on your ao3 editor):

Now all of your writing should look like this—all code and text. 

Keep in mind, when you click, “Preview” your indentations/italics/bold text won’t appear. Idk why it doesn’t (ao3 is just wack like that) but when you publish your indentations/bold text/italics, text WILL appear. I guarantee it.

Alright so adding tags/editing your work is very simple:

Here is where you’re going to tag all of your work. As you can see, you have a lot of options:

Here is where you start rating your fic. It runs from Not Rated to Explicit. This is primarily to let readers know what type of fic they’re reading before actually clicking on it. It lets younger audiences know not to click it if it’s too mature or too explicit. This also makes it easier for readers to search up stories under whichever rating you choose.

Now the Archive warnings are just extra EXTRA warnings that are more specific. So if your story falls under any of these specific warning tags go ahead and put them—you can also choose not to use the warnings.

The fandom tag is pretty self-explanatory. If you’re confused then you clearly don’t know what AO3 is LOLL. Ao3 is commonly known as a fanfiction site where people will upload fanfics in relation to the fandom they’re writing for. So let’s say I made a fanfic for the anime Death Note, I would type, “Death Note” onto the fandom tag:

Now the categories tag is very self-explanatory as well, choose the tag pertaining to the relationship of your main characters. For example:

I’m going to use Death Note as my example: both of my main characters and/or ship is L/Light Yagami depending on how both characters identify their genders, in this case both characters identify as male in my fanfic. I would choose the “M/M,” tag. Another example:

If I wrote a BTS fanfic and it’s a x-reader X Park Jimin fic, the x-reader for my fic identifies as female, while Park Jimin identifies as a male in my fanfic so I would choose the “F/M” tag. 

If the fanfic you wrote has characters that are nonbinary for example, you can choose the “other” tag. 

The trend here is knowing what your characters identify as in your fanfic and applying that tag here.

The relationships tag is where you’d put the main ship tag. So again:

If I wrote a Death Note fanfic, and my main romantic pairing or sexual pairing was L/Light Yagami I’ll type that pairing onto the bar and depending on how popular that ship is, it’d pop up for you.

The characters tag is where you’d put all of your characters by name onto the bar. So going back to the Death Note example, I would put L, Light Yagami, and Misa Aname as my characters. You also have the option to add OC characters as a tag (OC—Original characters.)

Additional tags is just that—additional tags. Here is where you’d list specific tags/concepts pertaining to your fanfic. So my tag list will look something like this:

*Gore

*Violence

*Explicit Sexual Content

*Fluff

etc.

Here is where authors commonly put a bunch of random thoughts/writing. You have to keep in mind—if you want to write your thoughts, for example, “L totally rims Light cuz we all know Light is king of the bottoms” you can’t make your thoughts EXTREMELY long. If your thoughts end up being very long—ao3 won’t let you publish your fanfic unless you fix the tags. 

Onwards!

Now, here is where you’re going to put your story title, summary, add any co-creators, beginning notes and end notes. All very self-explanatory. Though, I will come back to beginning notes/endnotes later.

Here is all the extra stuff that I don’t really find a lot of authors using. The only one that has a lot of relevance is the “Language” tag which is very important for obvious reasons. Though the small list of tags/buttons to click on—hold some value. If you have a fanfic that is a series, as an example, you can select this box. If you have a fanfic that has multiple chapters, you’d check off the mark that says “this work has multiple chapters.” When you click this, it’d ask you how many chapters. If you don’t know how long your fic will be, you can simply put a question mark. If you selected the option where your fanfic is part of a series, it’d ask you from what series in your works and/or let you make a new series (if your first work is the first book to said series.) The last option, “Set a different publication date,” is an interesting feature on ao3. This feature lets you prep your works in advance and if you know what exact date you plan on publishing your fanfic, you can put an exact date on that fic for when you want to publish it. 

Now work skins, or, “Skins,” is a feature I don’t find a whole lot of people using. I had ended up using it because again—I wanted to create indentations to my work on a HTML format and upon some research I found that someone recommended to use skins and apply them to your work to create those indentations. 

You may be asking yourself, “What is a skin/work skin?” 

A work skin/skin is a body of code you can customize in a separate window. I don’t know the exact details on how to successfully make this code since I forgot how to properly do it (also I mainly don’t want to go into extreme detail how to make a work skin lol) this work skin can be applied to your writing and modify it in a way where you don’t have to manually add certain features. For example:

I wanted to make indentations for my fanfic on the HTML format. At first I used a work skin with code to do the indentation for me:

Here’s a link where you could learn how to do that: work skin indentation

The issue I found when creating this work skin and applying it to my writing, it made it look really wonky. Now I’m sure you can go ahead and change the settings to the work skin in terms of sizing/spacing etc. But to be honest, that sounds like a lot of work I don’t wanna be doing. If you find yourself successfully using work skins (and you know your way around advance coding) by all means, use work skins to your advantage. As far as I know, work skins also have different functions but I do not know those exact functions. I have the holy grail google docs to make indentations/coding for me lol. Moving on!

Last but not least, we have the privacy section where you’d obviously make your selections based on your preferences. Registered users are users who have actual ao3 accounts. Guests are users who don’t have ao3 accounts. Pretty self-explanatory. You can choose where you want a specific audience to read your fics, register users or guests. Or choose both. Or none at all. 

START NOTES/ENDNOTES:

Remember how I mentioned that I would be coming back to beginning notes/endnotes? Here’s why:

Let’s say you successfully publish your fanfic and it’s a multi chapter fic. A common problem I found myself having and A LOT of other people, when you have multiple chapters and you add endnotes to a specific chapter, your first chapter endnotes appear on that latest chapter you’ve created different endnotes for.

Let me make this clearer:

Let’s say my fic is 10 chapters. In the very first chapter, I added specific endnotes that look like this:

The text: “Leave a comment if you enjoyed the first chapter! Chat with me on my <a href="https://sephhaa.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">tumblr</a> Chat with me on my <a href="https://twitter.com/Sephhaa" rel="nofollow">Twitter!</a>” <— this is my endnotes I put for my first chapter.

Now if I go ahead to check my chapters outside of the editor page and then check my latest chapter (in this case is chapter 10):

Both my endnotes for that chapter (chapter 10) and my endnotes for the very first chapter appear on my 10th chapter when only my endnotes for, specifically, chapter 10—should be the only one that readers SHOULD see. My readers should only be seeing chapter 10 endnotes. NOT chapter 10 endnotes AND chapter 1′s notes. 

Now you may be asking yourself, “Well, how do I get rid of my first chapter notes on my chapter 10 endnotes? When I go to the editor page, to chapter 10, my endnotes look fine and I don’t see my first chapter endnotes there?” Here is how you get rid of them:

Now, I want you to pay attention to this screenshot. This is a screenshot of my ao3 editor page for my latest fic, “IMPOSTERS.” The reason why I want you to pay attention to this screenshot because I want you to notice a very alarming detail we all gloss over.

We are in the, “Edit Work” page. We are NOT on chapter 1. 

Let me break this down:

You know how your first chapter’s endnotes keep appearing on your latest chapters? Yeah, that’s because they’re appearing on every other chapter because you’ve pasted your first chapter’s endnotes on the, “Edit Work” editor page instead of putting your endnotes to chapter 1 and ONLY chapter one. 

What you’re going to do is scroll down to your endnotes

*Copy them if you want

*DELETE! the endnotes on the, “Edit Work” page by selecting this little window:

*Make sure to un-click the little blue check mark so it deletes the endnotes.

Go over to your first chapter by selecting the chapter number on the above taskbar:

*Scroll down to your endnotes

*Paste those endnotes you copied in the endnotes box (now these notes will only appear on chapter 1)

And BOOM! No more first chapter endnotes to your latest chapter endnotes:

Keep in mind: what commonly happens is if you see your first chapter endnotes and then you go and publish chapter 6, just know that if you had written notes in the editor page instead of the chapter, will now naturally move on to the next chapter until another update —it’s because your first chapter endnotes will move onto the latest chapter you post. Those first chapter endnotes won’t be applied to every single chapter of yours. 

HITS/KUDOS/COMMENTS:

Now, Hits, Kudos and especially comments are very self-explanatory but here are some things I really do love about each feature:

HITS:

Hits are something I really do enjoy about ao3. Main reason being it’s so different compared to every other writing platform for example—Wattpad.

Now I’ve been, up until recently, on Wattpad for 8 years, I started as an original novel writer and then transferred into fic writing (which is hilarious cuz a lot of writers start as the very opposite.) 

In saying that, Wattpad is famously known for clicking and rising the amount of views/reads on a story based on the amount of clicks you give that story. What I didn’t like, even as the writer to my own work, if I click my own stories—Wattpad would count those clicks and mark them as reads. So whenever I edit or check my own work, my reads would go up simply by me—as the author— clicking my own story/chapters. It would be extremely hard to know who was actually reading my story and how many of those reads were actually me just clicking my story. 

AO3 doesn’t do this. Since you are the author of that fanfic, it doesn’t count you as a reader when clicking your own story. 

This is super great and it just gives me an idea of how many people actually went to give my fic a hit.

KUDOS:

Kudos is a great function and I like it a lot because ao3 doesn’t have the option where people can dislike a fic. Ao3 and many writing sites don’t have a “liking” system like Instagram and Facebook. And that’s mainly because ao3 is NOT a social platform. You cannot make social posts on ao3 and while it’d be nice to notify my readers about x, y and z you can just link your social platforms in your end notes. Which is something I’ll get into in a second.

COMMENTS:

Comments are just that, comments. A good feature on ao3 tho is, you as the author can filter comments. I see authors, unfortunately get a lot of hate for x and y ship and/or concept. It happens a lot and it’s complete BS—especially when authors end up orphaning said story so they can get a little peace of mind. 

Ao3 has a pretty good filtering system where you can choose to allow certain comments underneath the story/chapters. The only downside to this, you as the author have to manually read through all these comments (which are commonly hate comments) and it can put a mental toll on you. Ao3 has yet to figure out a way where we can block certain users so they won’t be able to comment/read your fic. So if you are someone who has recently came out with a fic and you are receiving some kind of hate—maybe get a friend or close family member to log into your account and filter your comments for you. Otherwise, you’d have to grow a backbone and can take the hate and filter through your own comments. 

In saying that, please please be aware to not take every comment personally and surround yourself with good people. What people say doesn’t matter as long as you were happy writing that chapter/pairing/concept. If it means you’d need a minute away from the internet or not check your inbox at all—both options are available to you and you as the writer don’t have an obligation to respond to hate if you don’t want to.  

LINKING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IN NOTES:

If you had came from my tumblr guide (which I highly recommend if you’re trying to navigate your tumblr) the coding used for adding links to your tumblr bio in that guide is extremely similar to the coding we will be using today in the AO3 beginning notes/endnotes:

Now here is my social media links in my endnotes. You can add social media links to both beginning notes and endnotes (I find they’re placed more commonly in the endnotes) the coding we will be focusing on is:

<a href=“

that is:

<a SPACE href= QUOTATION MARK ( “ ) 

(really familiar yeah? lollll shoutout to y’all who came from my tumblr guide)

Now, you’re going to want to type this out in your notes window, and then go grab a social link (I’ll just go ahead and use my Twitter social link) simply copy whichever social platform link you want to copy and paste it right after the quotation mark. It’d look a little something like this:

<a href=“https://twitter.com/Sephhaa” 

and end it with a quotation mark( “ ) again. 

Right after that we need to write more coding and that coding is:

ref=“no follow”

that is:

SPACE ref=QUOTATION MARK( “ ) no SPACE follow QUOTATION( “ )

So your link will now look a little something like this:

<a href=“https://twitter.com/Sephhaa” ref=“no follow”

Now more coding, but this time, we need some type of text so it just doesn’t look like some long ass link in your notes. Here is the code we’re going to use:

>  - beginning

</a> - end

that is:

(start) > TEXT </a> (end)

(my text in this case is going to be “>Twitter!</a>”)

(together ofc, for the sake of the example I’m spacing it) Your link should look something like this:

<a href=“https://twitter.com/Sephhaa” ref=“no follow”>Twitter!</a>

Now you can do this with every social media you have to convert it into a link inside your notes/endnotes. 

You can tell whether it worked or not if it’s underlined and highlighted. 

ADDING IMAGES TO YOUR HTML FORMAT:

Alright! Adding images to your fic is great! Especially if you want to feature some fanart and you want everyone to see it etc. I personally use this feature to add text dividers. Text dividers is what separates my text, for example, if I’m going from one POV to another—I can add a text divider. I’m going to teach you how to add images to your HTML format since it’s a bit complex and takes a little trial and error—especially when it comes to sizing.

 Alright so the coding you’re going to use here is this:

<img src="

that is:

<img SPACE src= QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

After that we’re going to use a website that can convert our images into a link:

Postimages.org!: Website Link.

Here is where you can choose an image, the website will convert it and then you can copy the link of your image and paste it to your code:

After converting your image of choice—you’re going to copy the direct link.

Now, once you have copied the direct link you will go back to your coding and paste it after the quotation mark. It should look like this:

<img src=“https://i.postimg.cc/kGfmV3hQ/C6-CF33-E3-8-D9-E-4-E92-B63-F-1-EE2-B5-FA00-AF.jpg" alt="

and make sure you end it with another quotation mark. 

Here is the next set of coding:

alt=“

that is:

alt= QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

Then:

width=“100%” (or whatever number you want to put, here I will just put 100)

that is:

width= QUOTATION ( “ ) 100% QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

height=“50%” (or whatever number you want to put, here I will just put 50%)

that is: 

height= QUOTATION MARK ( “ ) 50% QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

Your code should now look like this:

<img src=“https://i.postimg.cc/kGfmV3hQ/C6-CF33-E3-8-D9-E-4-E92-B63-F-1-EE2-B5-FA00-AF.jpg"alt=“”width=“100%”height=“50%”

Now you’re going to end the code like this:

/> </p>

that is:

/> SPACE </p>

Now your official image link should look like this:

<img src=“https://i.postimg.cc/kGfmV3hQ/C6-CF33-E3-8-D9-E-4-E92-B63-F-1-EE2-B5-FA00-AF.jpg"alt=“width=“100%”height=“50%”/> </p> 

If you select “Preview,” in your HTML editor you can see your image in that window and you can adjust the sizing of the image as much as you like. My image looks something like this when I go to preview:

This sizing is pretty great for fanart sizes. You can use this to also make text dividers but in smaller sizes. Like this:

(I have to fix the spacing but you know what I’m trying to get at lollll)

my text dividers look like that and I use a sizing of 30% for both my width and height. You’d simply use the same steps as the first image. Just change the sizings on width and height and adjust it to a much smaller image so it can appear as a text divider. These images are also set to “center” immediately. I don’t know the the coding to make images not centered(if you want your image on the right/left sides) but if I find them all add them to this guide. 

Now I don’t really have a whole lot of tips and tricks but some tips I can give you if you are someone trying to gain some attention to your story.

1). Within your fandom pay attention to which fanfic gets the most hits and look at their concepts/tags. Now I pride myself on originality and you should too but sometimes just seeing what tags/concepts ppl use can give you an idea of what readers are trying to read. 

I find that in the VLD fandom, the top grossing ship is Klance therefore if I make a fic with them as my main ship, I know I can except some hits. Ships alone can make readers click on your stories. If you write an uncommon ship, it’s likely you won’t really get a lot of hits but honestly you should write for your own enjoyment and not for the hits. This is coming from a person who makes fanfics that I MYSELF want to read and anyone else reading it is reading my own indulgence lmaoooo. 

2). Look at concepts. 

Think of yourself as a reader and not a writer when looking at concepts. What are concepts YOU seek out. This could be anything from smut to explicit content. To enemies to lovers, to murder and violence. Fantasy AUs and Touch of Life AUs. Me personally—I always seek out stories that have explicit content, primarily smut cuz I know if the story has smut sometimes the story is written to my unhealthy standards of mature content/explicit content. I also look for uncommon concepts, violence, and my favorite concept is anything with crime.

Those are my preferences as a reader and if you are a writer and writing content that you yourself would like to see in a fanfic, there’s a chance other people like those same concepts too. If you don’t know what concepts you’d like to write or what concepts are out there—look at your favorite fic writers and what concepts they write as a reference. You can also just sit yourself down, in front of a google doc, and think about a fanfic you would like to scroll by and think, “OOO That’s def something I wanna read/add to my bookmarks.” 

3). Now, I don’t use this tip/trick that often (cuz again, I don’t really care THAT much about hits/kudos etc.) but it is daunting when you put so much time in a fic and it’s not getting as much hits/kudos as you thought it would. If you think it’s a fic worthy of some attention and you’d like to get your name out there more than use this tip/trick:

AO3 functions in a way where if you publish a fanfic to your designated fandom, it’d appear on the front page of that fandom tag. This is where readers will scroll through and find fanfics they want to read. Since there is so many people who publish their fics daily everywhere in the world—your fic won’t stay on the front page for a long time. Unless it’s a fic with A LOT of hits (I only really see this in the BTS fandom tag, all stories with thousands of hits are on that front page lol) So here is a little secret way to keep your fic on the front page for a much longer time:

Go to your latest chapter on any of your stories or any story in general. 

In order to get your story on the front page again, you’d need to copy everything in this chapter. I’m talking about summary, notes, and the entire written chapter. I suggest separating your chapter summary/notes in one google doc and the chapter text in the work section in a different google doc. Mainly cuz it’s easier to use the

SHIFT+CMD+A (MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A (Windows)

keys. So go ahead and copy everything, paste them to their separate google docs and delete that entire chapter.

Yes. You heard me. Delete the chapter.

It physically hurts me to do this, especially if something goes wrong. Good thing I keep a copy of all my work—AND YOU SHOULD TOO WTH. 

Anyway, go ahead and delete the chapter and then go ahead to your story Edit Work and add a new chapter where you’d be re-publishing that specific chapter.

Step 1: Saving Chap Summary/Notes

Step Two: Saving Chapter 10:

Step 3: Deleting Chapter/Latest Chapter on AO3:

(As you can see above, I only have 9 chapters when originally I had 10)

Step 4: Re-Publication:

Step 5: Publication/Post: 

You can also take your time and preview it to see if everything looks good.

As you can see my chapter is posted and it looks good! Now if you click on your fandom tag underneath your fic title—it’d take you to the front page of the list of fics posted. You should be able to see your fic on the front page.

As you can see, my fic is the very first one on the list of fics and on the front page of my fandom fic tag. 

Some things to keep in mind: 

1). While this is extremely helpful in getting people to click on your fic since your fic is on the front page, the downside of using this tip/trick is the fact that the original date you published this chapter will change. So let’s say you published your fic in the summer of 2020 and have long since finished the story and decide to use this trick and republish your work again in order to get on the front page—the date will instead be 2021 on whatever season or month you decide to republish. It feels kind of weird to republish a chapter and/or story when you’ve finished it a long time ago and it will give an impression to readers that you have only JUST finished the book. Now, if the readers decide to follow your social media and know that you had actually finished the series a long ass time ago—then it’d be written off as you editing/revamping the chapter.

In a lot of cases, it’s just you editing/revamping a chapter in the case that the chapter didn’t upload right etc.

2). Depending on your fandom: this tip/trick might not entirely work. While I’m in the VLD fandom and it’s fairly easy to appear on the front page again—I’m also in the BTS fandom and I find that the process is extremely different. While re-publishing my story in the VLD fandom tag I can easily get my story back on the front page—I cannot say the same for my BTS fandom tag primarily because BTS fics are not sought after by how recent fics have been published but by the amount of hits your fic has. The larger amount of hits you have on your BTS fics—the greater your chances are staying on the front page of the BTS fandom tag list. Since my BTS fic has a good amount of hits (499-500) I appeared on the front page but for a very short period of time. Sometimes that’s enough to garner the attention of 1 or 2 readers. And that’s enough for me.

3). Again, I don’t use this tip/trick often (mostly a trick honestly lol it kinda feels like cheating the system a bit) and you should use this sparingly. Not so much to NOT give your fics the attention you want them to have but on your mental health. Numbers are numbers at the end of the day and it matters more to actually like the stories you write and reach out to a few people instead of thousands upon thousands who probably don’t even interact with you as an author. Start small and build your way up. It’s more genuine that way and you can learn how to maneuver things smoothly when you start off small. That and you have more room to make mistakes and get the chance to learn from them instead of receiving hate for them early on.

Welp! That is all for my AO3 guide. I’m sure I’ll come across another tip or trick or SOMETHING and add it here lolll. I’m still fairly new on ao3 (in terms of publishing my own work) and I’m bound to run into errors etc. But I hope this was helpful for you. I really wish there was a guide like this one (updated to at least 2019 or something cuz LORD all the articles/blogs I came across were old as shit and I didn’t even know if their tips/information were still relevant to the new ao3 format etc) So at least I did a service to younger Seph a year or two ago trying to navigate ao3. 

If you found this helpful, I also have a tumblr guide on how to customize/navigate tumblr and all things tumblr (in terms of adding links to your bio, how to make a masterlist etc) so if you’d like to see/read that, head on over here. I’ll also be making youtube videos on both these guides in the near future, just for the peeps that need that extra visual and who don’t want to read through this VERY long guide. 

If you like this or me, check out some of my work! I am a fanfic writer—I write both anime and BTS content ( primarily VLD(Voltron) fics but I do plan on writing something for Death Note & Inuyasha (cuz there isn’t enough SangoXMiroku content and that’s a crime in of itself) I also plan to write for the MHA fandom soon too! If that’s something you’re interested in head on over to my Masterlist.

Until my next guide!