#also I have a whole system inside this called “Special Awards 🏅”

[lilacpaperbird]

hiiiii first of all thank you for saying they're pretty <33 !! I tried my best afskhgsk (this is the post anon is referring to)

How I made my ao3 wrapped:

I'm not saying this is the best or even the most convenient way to do any of this, I'm just going to share the system I came up with, hopefully something here is useful or helpful!

There are 3 parts to this system:

1. Bookmarks

3. The spreadsheet

3. The charts

- Bookmarks:

I use bookmarks for everything (and they're always private). I bookmark every fic I read with the tag "Read" and the tag of the year I'm in, like "2024". This is incredibly useful since you can filter through your bookmarks and it keeps everything neat and tidy

- The Spreadsheet:

I'm scared of Excel, I'm sorry. So I use Notion, because I already use it for everything else in my life and to me it's much easier to handle (and it looks cuter)

I tried to make my spreadsheet in the least complicated way possible because I'm not tech savvy at all

It's just a basic table, without any manual formulas. Sadly this will sound kinda incomprehensible if you aren't familiar with Notion, but it's really simple once you look into it

The spreadsheet has 9 columns (between brackets I'll put the type of column they are):

- Date I finished it [Date]

- Title [Name]

- Fandom [Select]

- Ship [Multi-Select]

- Words [Number]

- Tags [Multi-Select]

- Rating [Select]

- Year of publication [Select]

- Month I finished it in [Select]

It ends up looking something like this:

These are the parameters I chose to track, but you may be interested in tracking other things!

Most of these columns are [Select] or [Multi-Select], and in Notion that means they function with tags. For example inside the column "Rating" I can choose between the tags "Gen", "Teen", "Mature", or "Explicit". In the column "Year of Publication" I have a tag for every year. In the column "Fandom" I have a tag for every fandom I read about. And so on and so forth!

In the "Tags" column I have a selection of tags I personally want to track/I know I read a lot about. So I don't have a tag for every tag the fic had in AO3. For example, since I mainly read Spn fics, I have tags like "Weechesters", "Early Seasons", "Late Seasons", "Post-Finale", etc, because that's something I was interested in keeping organized. I also have kink-specific tags, and in this column I have the "FAV" tag as well

At the bottom of the table it will tell you the number of rows it has, which in this table means the number of fics. And the "Words" column, since it's a [Number] type of column, will let you do all kinds of automatic calculations with all the existing fics (like Sum, Average, Max, etc) - that's how I get stuff like the words I read in total, the words I read every month, the longest fic, etc

I can then filter the table through the different aspects of the columns in any way I want to get the different data I need to make the charts. In a way, it functions similarly to how filtering through tags works in AO3

Another great thing about Notion tables is that each entry is a page in itself, meaning you can click on it and it will open a page where you can write stuff. I use that to add: 1) the name of the author, 2) a link to the fic, 3) a downloaded epub of the fic, 4) any thoughts or review

I usually add a fic to the spreadsheet right after I finish it, but sometimes I wait until I've accumulated a couple of fics in my "Read" Bookmarks, and then I do them all together in a batch

- The Charts:

I make them with Canva - it has a feature where you can add and edit graphs and charts (all the info, the colors, etc). So first I collect the data I want by filtering the spreadsheet in different ways, and then I manually make the charts on Canva (if you're not familiar with the app don't worry it's kinda intuitive, and there are tutorials about everything)

And that's all! I came up with this system completely by myself and if you're reading this and you also track your fics but you use Excel or something maybe you're thinking what the hell is this girl even doing, but it works really well for me and I'm really happy with it afdhsafskh

English is not my first language so I apologize if there are any mistakes, I hope I made sense <3