Posting Instructions for DSSS Writers!
Dec. 13th, 2010 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ds_ssdiscussionThese instructions are for posting DSSS stories ONLY. Artists and vidders have a different procedure. If you're doing a story that contains illustrations, email us for more info.
The deadline is Friday, December 17th at 11:59pm Chicago time. Stories must be at least 1000 words. Please note: your word count will appear in the header to your story & in the AO3 index. (See AO3 Hints section below for more on this.)
When you're ready to upload, please follow these step-by-step instructions.
1. Go to the DSSS 2010 Collection at the AO3.
2. Be sure you're logged in.
3. Click "Post to Collection".
4. Enter the form's required data (marked in red, plus the info for J, L, N & O). Optional info is welcome, and is also optional.
If you're already familiar with the AO3 upload form, skip ahead to letters J, L, N & O in the list below and read carefully: this info MUST be entered correctly for your recipient to receive their story and to preserve your anonymity!
Now I'm going to walk through all the blanks, ticky boxes, and text fields for everyone who is brand-new to the AO3. Then I'll have some extra AO3 user hints at the end.
A) Rating: is required.
B) Archive Warnings: "Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings" is checked by default; uncheck it if you're going to tick any of the other boxes. Warnings can also (optionally) go in the Author's Notes field (L) and/or Additional Freeform tags (G).
C) Fandoms: If you've written a crossover, enter both fandoms separated by a comma. Otherwise, just enter "due South."
D) Category: tick the box(es) of your choice. "Multi" seems to mean 3+ people in a relationship. "Other" might mean things beyond binary gender or a story that is neither gen nor a relationship fic. Use your best judgment.
E) Relationships: If your story has no relationships, you can leave this blank. If it does, start typing a character's name and you'll see a drop-down list of suggested pairing tags. As you see, AO3 defaults to listing characters alphabetically by LAST NAME. If your desired pairing isn't in the list, that's okay! It may be too far down the alphabet to appear in the drop-down OR it may be new to the archive. Enter it anyway! If you have multiple pairings, separate them with commas. (See the AO3 Hints section below for much more on tags.)
[ETA: per![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
luzula, tag wrangler extraordinaire: "On relationship tags: these are not just for romantic relationships, but also for gen relationships. You can enter "Ray Kowalski & Ray Vecchio" as a tag if you're writing a story about friendship between the Rays."]
F) Characters: You don't have to re-enter characters you just listed in relationship tags, although you can if you want to. Again, if you start typing a character's name, a list of possible tags will automatically appear. If the character you want to add isn't on the list, enter it anyway! Include as few or as many characters as you want. Use commas between tags.
[ETA: again, perluzula: "On characters: If you enter "Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski" in the relationship field, but don't put "Benton Fraser" and "Ray Kowalski" in the character field, then your fic won't turn up in the filters for either of the characters (just in the filter for the relationship tag). This is (for me, at least) a good reason to put in character tags as well as relationship tags."]
G) Additional Tags: Here you can enter any additional Freeform tags you like, separated by commas. Examples include: Canon - TV, Post-canon, Pre-canon, Case Fic, Canada, Canadian Shack, Car Sex, Crossover, AU, Space AU, Apocalypse, Sex Pollen, etc. Again, if a tag you want to use isn't in the system, that's fine. Enter it anyway! Use as few or as many tags as you want, but be aware that they'll be visible on the index and may be considered spoilery for your story's content. (See AO3 Hints below and, if you want, you can select any AO3 fandom to see what this looks like in practice.)
H) Work Title: is required.
I) Add co-authors?: This doesn't apply to this challenge, so you can skip it.
J) Select author/pseudonym: AO3 allows you to use multiple pseudonyms under the same account. For DSSS, you MUST use the same pseudonym to upload your fic as you did when you entered your requests and offers! This is how we'll know you're you and that you've fulfilled your assignment!
K) Summary: always helpful! *g*
L) Add notes (at the beginning): If you want to include Author's Notes, protect your anonymity! That may include holding back on naming your betas individually until AFTER Reveal Day. Then, you can edit all identifying info into your notes.
M) Add notes (at the end): Optional.
N) Post to Collections/Challenges: If you began with clicking "Post to Collection" on the DSSS Collection page, then this blank should be auto-filled with "dSSS_2010".
O) Recipient: REQUIRED! REQUIRED! REQUIRED! Enter your recipient's username EXACTLY as it appeared in your assignment email! If you don't have the correct name, please come find a mod & we'll get it to you!
P) You can skip the remix and series blanks.
Q) This work has multiple chapters: AO3 can accept a whopping 500,000 characters in a single entry, which will accommodate a pretty long unchaptered fic. However, if you want to use multiple chapters, you can! (To do so: follow the normal upload instructions below – but ONLY paste your first chapter into the Work Text field – and tick this line's ticky box.When you've posted your first chapter, click "Edit" (under your story in the Collection index). Click the "Add Chapter" button at the top of the edit screen, insert chapter number/title, paste in the next chapter's text, and upload. Repeat as needed.)
R) Set a different publication date: You can skip this. It's mostly for backdating old fic to its original publication date.
S) Only show your work to registered users: Click ONLY if you want to lock your story so it can only be seen by logged-in AO3 users. People without AO3 accounts will be unable to view your story.
T) Work Text: Choose HTML if you hard-coded html tags for formatting (<i>, etc.) into your draft, or Rich Text if your draft's formatting appears in its final form. Paste your story into the work text box. (See AO3 Hints below.)
U) Preview: Click Preview and check your story's appearance thoroughly! At the bottom of the Preview screen, you'll find the buttons to edit again or post. Hitting Cancel will wipe your entire upload session after an "are you sure?" pop-up. Please use the Preview and Edit buttons as much as necessary! (See AO3 Hints below!)
AO3 Hints
• Site load is enormous this month, thanks to all the holiday challenges going on, so the AO3 is running slow. If you're right up against the deadline, get your bare bones info uploaded first: fill in the REQUIRED data fields and your recipient info, and upload your story! AFTER your basic draft is safely in the system, you can take your time editing tags, notes, etc. and making everything pretty.
• Word counts are weird. For example, I can open the same story in Word, Open Office, Googledocs, Scrivener, and AO3 and get five different word count totals, depending on their counting algorithms and how they cope with special characters. If AO3 thinks your story is too short but Word (for example) thinks it's fine, try inserting spaces around any dashes and ellipses and click update. If it's still too short, maybe a double handful of judiciously applied adjectives will bring it up to the limit?
• Tags are comma-separated with slashes indicating relationships. For example: multiple relationship tags in a single story could look like: "Elaine Besbriss/Frannie Vecchio, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio, Ray Kowalski/Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski/Ray Vecchio". (In case you got lost, that's one fic with Elaine/Frannie, F/K, F/V, Ray/Ray, and FKV.)
• You CAN choose to ignore the official canonical pairing tags in the drop-down list and simply type them the way you want them to look, such as "Ray/Ray" or "Frannie/Turnbull". The AO3 tag wranglers synonymize casual forms of pairing tags with their canonical forms, so ALL forms of the tag will show up correctly in relationship filters.
• Warning! The AO3 accepts ALL user-generated tags. Even misspelled ones. Even mistakenly applied ones.
• AO3 tag wranglers are unable to correct misspelled or mistakenly applied tags! Their mission is to curate rather than edit, and they are completely unable to delete or alter the text of existing tags. That power belongs solely to the user. So, if there's a mistake in your tags, you alone can fix it. To do so, click the "Edit Tags" button under your story title in the index (There are several: the dSSS_2010 index, the main due South fandom index, or your own My Works page. The "Edit" links appear on every index that contains your work, if you're logged in). "Edit Tags" lets you edit the tags only & causes less server load than the full "Edit" screen; hence it may load faster.
• Pasting Work Text straight from formatted documents or html preview screens occasionally results in weird or absent formatting. If you have trouble getting your story to appear how you want it to, it may help to save it as an .rtf or .txt file. Then open that file separately and paste the contents into the Work Text window, using the Rich Text or HTML option, whichever is appropriate. If you're pasting into HTML, remember to replace any dashes inserted by your writing program with either double-hyphens or one of the html dash tags: — or –.
• You can edit your story after uploading and forever into the future. Just click the "Edit" button to do so.
• You can track the AO3's status on its Twitter. Traffic and site load varies per time of day and region, so you may have better luck uploading in the wee hours, North America time. If the deadline comes and the AO3 completely fails to load for you, get in touch with us and keep us in the loop. In a worst case scenario, we may look into getting someone to upload your story for you.
More on using the AO3
There are some nifty user tools on the My Preferences page. To get there: make sure you're logged in and click "my home" on the top menu bar. Then click "My Preferences" in the left nav bar.
You can then change your privacy, site display (& skins), statistics, comments, collections & gifts, and various miscellaneous settings. For example, you can choose whether to minimize search engine visibility on your stories, whether you want to see hit counts, whether to show adult content without the prompt screen, whether to see chapters separately or in-line, whether to see warnings, whether you want AO3 to provide you your viewing history, and so on. Take your time (once your story's done! *g*) and explore!
Whew...okay! That should be everything! (I really hope that's everything!) If you need help with your upload, please consult these instructions first! I know there are a lot of steps, but they're fairly easy and quite a few are entirely optional. If you still have questions specific to your story upload OR if something goes horribly wrong, please email us at dsss.admin at gmail & we'll do what we can to help! If it's beyond our understanding, then we can contact AO3 support. (Note: Mergatrude is in Australia & I'm in Texas, so hopefully one of us will be around, but time zones and RL factors may delay an immediate reply depending on when you try to reach us.)
If you have general questions, email us or comment below! (Comments are visible to all, so please be vague about your story details and recipient!)
Remember, the DSSS posting deadline is this Friday at 11:59pm Chicago time. We have to hear from you by then, or else we'll pass your assignment to a pinch hitter.
Thank you all so much for playing! Yay DSSS 2010!!! \o/
~~
ETA: I've added a couple of clarifications concerning relationship and character tags, with many thanks toluzula. ♥
The deadline is Friday, December 17th at 11:59pm Chicago time. Stories must be at least 1000 words. Please note: your word count will appear in the header to your story & in the AO3 index. (See AO3 Hints section below for more on this.)
When you're ready to upload, please follow these step-by-step instructions.
1. Go to the DSSS 2010 Collection at the AO3.
2. Be sure you're logged in.
3. Click "Post to Collection".
4. Enter the form's required data (marked in red, plus the info for J, L, N & O). Optional info is welcome, and is also optional.
If you're already familiar with the AO3 upload form, skip ahead to letters J, L, N & O in the list below and read carefully: this info MUST be entered correctly for your recipient to receive their story and to preserve your anonymity!
Now I'm going to walk through all the blanks, ticky boxes, and text fields for everyone who is brand-new to the AO3. Then I'll have some extra AO3 user hints at the end.
A) Rating: is required.
B) Archive Warnings: "Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings" is checked by default; uncheck it if you're going to tick any of the other boxes. Warnings can also (optionally) go in the Author's Notes field (L) and/or Additional Freeform tags (G).
C) Fandoms: If you've written a crossover, enter both fandoms separated by a comma. Otherwise, just enter "due South."
D) Category: tick the box(es) of your choice. "Multi" seems to mean 3+ people in a relationship. "Other" might mean things beyond binary gender or a story that is neither gen nor a relationship fic. Use your best judgment.
E) Relationships: If your story has no relationships, you can leave this blank. If it does, start typing a character's name and you'll see a drop-down list of suggested pairing tags. As you see, AO3 defaults to listing characters alphabetically by LAST NAME. If your desired pairing isn't in the list, that's okay! It may be too far down the alphabet to appear in the drop-down OR it may be new to the archive. Enter it anyway! If you have multiple pairings, separate them with commas. (See the AO3 Hints section below for much more on tags.)
[ETA: per
luzula, tag wrangler extraordinaire: "On relationship tags: these are not just for romantic relationships, but also for gen relationships. You can enter "Ray Kowalski & Ray Vecchio" as a tag if you're writing a story about friendship between the Rays."]F) Characters: You don't have to re-enter characters you just listed in relationship tags, although you can if you want to. Again, if you start typing a character's name, a list of possible tags will automatically appear. If the character you want to add isn't on the list, enter it anyway! Include as few or as many characters as you want. Use commas between tags.
[ETA: again, per
luzula: "On characters: If you enter "Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski" in the relationship field, but don't put "Benton Fraser" and "Ray Kowalski" in the character field, then your fic won't turn up in the filters for either of the characters (just in the filter for the relationship tag). This is (for me, at least) a good reason to put in character tags as well as relationship tags."]G) Additional Tags: Here you can enter any additional Freeform tags you like, separated by commas. Examples include: Canon - TV, Post-canon, Pre-canon, Case Fic, Canada, Canadian Shack, Car Sex, Crossover, AU, Space AU, Apocalypse, Sex Pollen, etc. Again, if a tag you want to use isn't in the system, that's fine. Enter it anyway! Use as few or as many tags as you want, but be aware that they'll be visible on the index and may be considered spoilery for your story's content. (See AO3 Hints below and, if you want, you can select any AO3 fandom to see what this looks like in practice.)
H) Work Title: is required.
I) Add co-authors?: This doesn't apply to this challenge, so you can skip it.
J) Select author/pseudonym: AO3 allows you to use multiple pseudonyms under the same account. For DSSS, you MUST use the same pseudonym to upload your fic as you did when you entered your requests and offers! This is how we'll know you're you and that you've fulfilled your assignment!
K) Summary: always helpful! *g*
L) Add notes (at the beginning): If you want to include Author's Notes, protect your anonymity! That may include holding back on naming your betas individually until AFTER Reveal Day. Then, you can edit all identifying info into your notes.
M) Add notes (at the end): Optional.
N) Post to Collections/Challenges: If you began with clicking "Post to Collection" on the DSSS Collection page, then this blank should be auto-filled with "dSSS_2010".
O) Recipient: REQUIRED! REQUIRED! REQUIRED! Enter your recipient's username EXACTLY as it appeared in your assignment email! If you don't have the correct name, please come find a mod & we'll get it to you!
P) You can skip the remix and series blanks.
Q) This work has multiple chapters: AO3 can accept a whopping 500,000 characters in a single entry, which will accommodate a pretty long unchaptered fic. However, if you want to use multiple chapters, you can! (To do so: follow the normal upload instructions below – but ONLY paste your first chapter into the Work Text field – and tick this line's ticky box.When you've posted your first chapter, click "Edit" (under your story in the Collection index). Click the "Add Chapter" button at the top of the edit screen, insert chapter number/title, paste in the next chapter's text, and upload. Repeat as needed.)
R) Set a different publication date: You can skip this. It's mostly for backdating old fic to its original publication date.
S) Only show your work to registered users: Click ONLY if you want to lock your story so it can only be seen by logged-in AO3 users. People without AO3 accounts will be unable to view your story.
T) Work Text: Choose HTML if you hard-coded html tags for formatting (<i>, etc.) into your draft, or Rich Text if your draft's formatting appears in its final form. Paste your story into the work text box. (See AO3 Hints below.)
U) Preview: Click Preview and check your story's appearance thoroughly! At the bottom of the Preview screen, you'll find the buttons to edit again or post. Hitting Cancel will wipe your entire upload session after an "are you sure?" pop-up. Please use the Preview and Edit buttons as much as necessary! (See AO3 Hints below!)
AO3 Hints
• Site load is enormous this month, thanks to all the holiday challenges going on, so the AO3 is running slow. If you're right up against the deadline, get your bare bones info uploaded first: fill in the REQUIRED data fields and your recipient info, and upload your story! AFTER your basic draft is safely in the system, you can take your time editing tags, notes, etc. and making everything pretty.
• Word counts are weird. For example, I can open the same story in Word, Open Office, Googledocs, Scrivener, and AO3 and get five different word count totals, depending on their counting algorithms and how they cope with special characters. If AO3 thinks your story is too short but Word (for example) thinks it's fine, try inserting spaces around any dashes and ellipses and click update. If it's still too short, maybe a double handful of judiciously applied adjectives will bring it up to the limit?
• Tags are comma-separated with slashes indicating relationships. For example: multiple relationship tags in a single story could look like: "Elaine Besbriss/Frannie Vecchio, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio, Ray Kowalski/Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski/Ray Vecchio". (In case you got lost, that's one fic with Elaine/Frannie, F/K, F/V, Ray/Ray, and FKV.)
• You CAN choose to ignore the official canonical pairing tags in the drop-down list and simply type them the way you want them to look, such as "Ray/Ray" or "Frannie/Turnbull". The AO3 tag wranglers synonymize casual forms of pairing tags with their canonical forms, so ALL forms of the tag will show up correctly in relationship filters.
• Warning! The AO3 accepts ALL user-generated tags. Even misspelled ones. Even mistakenly applied ones.
• AO3 tag wranglers are unable to correct misspelled or mistakenly applied tags! Their mission is to curate rather than edit, and they are completely unable to delete or alter the text of existing tags. That power belongs solely to the user. So, if there's a mistake in your tags, you alone can fix it. To do so, click the "Edit Tags" button under your story title in the index (There are several: the dSSS_2010 index, the main due South fandom index, or your own My Works page. The "Edit" links appear on every index that contains your work, if you're logged in). "Edit Tags" lets you edit the tags only & causes less server load than the full "Edit" screen; hence it may load faster.
• Pasting Work Text straight from formatted documents or html preview screens occasionally results in weird or absent formatting. If you have trouble getting your story to appear how you want it to, it may help to save it as an .rtf or .txt file. Then open that file separately and paste the contents into the Work Text window, using the Rich Text or HTML option, whichever is appropriate. If you're pasting into HTML, remember to replace any dashes inserted by your writing program with either double-hyphens or one of the html dash tags: — or –.
• You can edit your story after uploading and forever into the future. Just click the "Edit" button to do so.
• You can track the AO3's status on its Twitter. Traffic and site load varies per time of day and region, so you may have better luck uploading in the wee hours, North America time. If the deadline comes and the AO3 completely fails to load for you, get in touch with us and keep us in the loop. In a worst case scenario, we may look into getting someone to upload your story for you.
More on using the AO3
There are some nifty user tools on the My Preferences page. To get there: make sure you're logged in and click "my home" on the top menu bar. Then click "My Preferences" in the left nav bar.
You can then change your privacy, site display (& skins), statistics, comments, collections & gifts, and various miscellaneous settings. For example, you can choose whether to minimize search engine visibility on your stories, whether you want to see hit counts, whether to show adult content without the prompt screen, whether to see chapters separately or in-line, whether to see warnings, whether you want AO3 to provide you your viewing history, and so on. Take your time (once your story's done! *g*) and explore!
Whew...okay! That should be everything! (I really hope that's everything!) If you need help with your upload, please consult these instructions first! I know there are a lot of steps, but they're fairly easy and quite a few are entirely optional. If you still have questions specific to your story upload OR if something goes horribly wrong, please email us at dsss.admin at gmail & we'll do what we can to help! If it's beyond our understanding, then we can contact AO3 support. (Note: Mergatrude is in Australia & I'm in Texas, so hopefully one of us will be around, but time zones and RL factors may delay an immediate reply depending on when you try to reach us.)
If you have general questions, email us or comment below! (Comments are visible to all, so please be vague about your story details and recipient!)
Remember, the DSSS posting deadline is this Friday at 11:59pm Chicago time. We have to hear from you by then, or else we'll pass your assignment to a pinch hitter.
Thank you all so much for playing! Yay DSSS 2010!!! \o/
~~
ETA: I've added a couple of clarifications concerning relationship and character tags, with many thanks to
luzula. ♥
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 08:14 am (UTC)On relationship tags: these are not just for romantic relationships, but also for gen relationships. You can enter "Ray Kowalski & Ray Vecchio" as a tag if you're writing a story about friendship between the Rays.
On characters: If you enter "Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski" in the relationship field, but don't put "Benton Fraser" and "Ray Kowalski" in the character field, then your fic won't turn up in the filters for either of the characters (just in the filter for the relationship tag). This is (for me, at least) a good reason to put in character tags as well as relationship tags.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 10:22 am (UTC)Also, thanks so much for the correction. *edits post*
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 10:36 am (UTC)So, I went and posted something on the test archive, and no, the characters from relationship tags do not appear in the character filters.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 10:19 pm (UTC)(Hi, I am a dork, but I really love the AO3 and watching it become.)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 10:28 pm (UTC)And I love seeing the archive evolve, too! I've thought about volunteering as a coder, but I don't think I have the time.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 10:43 pm (UTC)And I feel the same way about tag wrangling. I keep meaning to learn the system and take on a fandom, but when I've had brain to do it, there hasn't been time and vice versa. Maybe one of these days... :)