[mod post] How to? (Tips, tricks, and answers, Part 1)
Greetings omgspnbigbangers! For those of you in the US, I hope you are having a fabulous Memorial Day weekend.
As promised, and based on your responses to last week's poll, this is the first post in a series of "how to" posts designed to answer common questions authors and artists encounter when posting their fabulous finished masterpieces of fic and art. There are other "how to" posts out there that can tell you the basics of how to do an LJ-cut or how to post spoiler text, but I am trying to gather the nuts and bolts of questions you might need answered and things you might want to consider here into one easy-to access set of posts. This is great timing too, since posting starts in about a week and a half, and spn-j2-bigbang put up this year's posting instructions yesterday. You can find those here.
Have ideas? Have questions? Have tips or tricks you want to share? Feel free to post in the comments. Together we can pool our knowledge and experience and make this year's bigbang a fabulous experience for everyone.
Click on the LJ cuts below to expand each question.
Question: When do I have to warn for spoilers? How do I warn for spoilers?"
First of all, the spn-j2-bigbang does not officially require you to tag or warn for spoilers (see FAQ post). Still many of you may want to, and readers generally appreciate it if you do. The thing is, there are many different definitions of a spoiler, and this time of year (in the summer while the US and Canada are between broadcast seasons) it's somewhat hard to tell what spoilers people will expect to be warned for.
By one definition, a spoiler is anything about an episode that hasn't aired yet or that hasn't aired everywhere yet. Since "Supernatural" doesn't air in all countries at the same time, just because you've seen season 8 doesn't mean everyone has seen season 8. Similarly, something based on a preview, trailer, article, etc. or other source of information about an upcoming episode or season that hasn't yet aired, would also be a spoiler.
By another definition, a spoiler is anything that might spoil someone for an episode they haven't seen. For example, just because Episode 5.22 "Swan Song" has been out in the universe easily available in multiple formats for years doesn't mean everyone who might be reading bigbang stories has seen that episode. So, if your fic deals extensively with the events of that episode, you might want to warn for spoilers for that episode even though it's not new.
But what does that mean? What should you really warn for?
For that matter, how much warning is too much?
Eight seasons of "Supernatural" totaling 173 episodes have aired so far. If you try to warn for spoilers for each and every episode your fic might touch on, you're going to wind up with more spoiler warnings than story and you may give away more about the plot than you want to, while actually not being very helpful.
The better, sanity-preserving, and more useful strategy is to define the scope of episodes for which your story might contain spoilers. Here are a few examples:
A) "Spoilers: Anything through 8.23 is fair game."
B) "Spoilers: Contains speculation about season 9."
C) "Spoilers: AU after Season 3, but references elements of 4.03, 5.13, and 8.12."
D) "Spoilers: Set during Season 2."
You get the idea? Give readers a heads-up about your source material so the reader has enough information to know if they might be spoiled by reading, and can proceed at their own risk. Meanwhile you, the author, don't go crazy trying to figure out each and every conceivable episode you might have referenced or drawn inspiration from.
Still feel like you're giving too much away? Well there are tricks for that.
LJ conveniently provides the LJ-specific HTML tag, "< lj-spoiler >" which acts like a mini-LJ cut to hide text. For example, if you wanted to provide the spoiler warning in example C above, but you didn't want to be quite so obvious about it, you would type the following (but without the spaces): < lj-spoiler text="Spoiler Warning" > AU After Season 3, but references elements of 4.03, 5.13, and 8.12. < / lj-spoiler >. Typed properly that would appear as follows: [Spoiler Warning]AU After Season 3, but references elements of 4.03, 5.13, and 8.12.
Still not clear on the spoiler tag and what it does? Check out the FAQ page here.
If you're more comfortable with HTML you can also use "span" tags to place your spoiler warnings over an identical-colored background so readers have to highlight to see what you've written. For example:
< span style="background-color:type background color here" >< font color="type font identical font color here" > Type the spoiler you want to hide here < /font >< /span >
Remove the spaces and replace the filler text with actual font and background color and the spoiler text you want to hide and voila, spoiler concealed. This also works great for other warnings.
If you think you want to use the "span" tag, here's a few words of advice. 1) Don't use it when making your post to spn-j2-bigbang. If you check out the posting rules page, you'll notice Wendy and Zee have warned against using anything that attempts to change the font, color, etc. of the page. This technically counts, so don't use it. Use the lj-spoiler tag instead. 2) If you want to use this on your own page, test it out before making it go live. Your page may be formatted with CSS that will hijack your pretty span tags and make them not do what you want them to do, e.g., override the font color so low and behold, your font winds up another color than what you intended making your spoiler visible (or worse, drawing attention to it). 3) If you apply a new format to your LJ later on, the new formatting may go ahead and hijack your coding on your old posts making previously functional spoiler-concealing spans inoperative. It's not fun. So, think before you use.
Question: What other warnings do I need? What if I don't want to warn? Are there warnings I am not thinking of?
Not everyone writes stories that need content warnings. Of course, people's opinions differ about what content needs a warning and what doesn't. Therein lies problems.
Content warnings go hand-in-hand with spoiler warnings, but are far more fraught with contention. What should you warn for? If there was an answer to that question about which everyone agreed, fandom would be a much friendlier place. Allow me to be blunt, frank, and honest: debates over content warnings, like debates over content themselves, can descend into super-charged flame-wars that hurt people's feelings and send readers and writers alike running from fandom. No one wants that. But what can you do to avoid it?
Bear with me, as someone who has experience with both sides of the debate, I'm going to hop on a soapbox for a minute, and then I will offer suggestions on how to avoid this fandom landmine altogether. (TL:DR? Just want the tips? Skip to the next bold heading.)
People have massive differences of opinion about what to warn for and when, how detailed warnings need to be, etc. Fans don't just have opinions, they're passionate. For some people it's about the integrity of their work, their free expression as an author their desire to have readers try the work on its merits rather than on some pre-defined set of spoiler warnings. Writers want readers to experience their work like they might a real book, where the author doesn't tell you in advance if they're, for example, going to kill off a beloved minor character in the middle of chapter 3. Writers want readers to expand their horizons, to give things a try even if it isn't something they might ordinarily read, and to have their work viewed on its own merits, not the merits of whether they thought of all the right content warnings. For that matter, too many content warnings can make writers feel like they're putting a big "stay away" message allover their fic--the writer's attempt at candor and honesty winds up scaring folks away from a story they might otherwise enjoy.
For readers it can be about preference. Some people just really don't want to read fic involving character death, even minor character death. Some people just don't like violence or sex or anything else. For other readers it's far more personal and important. People may be trying to avoid painful or dangerous triggers that can cause flashbacks, anxiety attacks, psychological trauma, and worse. In these situations a lack of a warning may mean more than just not enjoying a story, it can leave the unsuspecting reader feeling violated, betrayed, sick, angry, victimized, and marginalized. It lead the reader to relive a horrible personal experience. It can ruin that reader's enjoyment of anything written by the writer. It sucks and no one has fun and its as far from the joyful celebration of creativity and fandom that bigbangs should be as you can get.
But how do I know what someone's triggers are? What if giving a spoiler about character death or past non-con spoils the entire plot? Do I really need to warn for slash separately from het? What if...?
These are fabulous points. We're all different. We all have different sensitivities, experiences, perceptions, and expectations. One person's trigger is another person's pleasure. Try as hard as you might and you will inevitably eventually miss someone's trigger. And all the good intentions in the world aren't going to make it up if someone has a really bad reaction to reading a story. For that matter, spoiling your own plot can't really be undone either. So how do you get around this obstacle?
Tips and Tricks for Content Warnings
1) Rather than trying to warn for everything, state up front what you warn for.
Archive of Our Own provides a great example of how to handle this. Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) has four stock warnings categories: a) major character death, b) graphic depictions of violence, c) rape/non-con, and d) underage. Writers are then instructed to select which warnings (if any) apply. They can also opt not to use archive warnings. In this case the reading audience is put on notice that the author isn't using warnings, and a story might contain rape, underage, character death, or graphic violence, and the reader can decide in advance whether they want to take their chances or not. If the author wants to use archive warnings, the reader is on notice the author is warning about those four categories, but other topics may not receive warnings.
No mater where you post your work, you can follow this strategy. On your master post or in your author's notes explain what you warn for. For example, I might say I warn for major character death, non-con, dub-con, graphic sex, torture, and graphic violence. Then readers can be confident if one of those issues shows up in the fic, it will be in the warnings, so if it isn't in the warnings it isn't in the fic. However, if there's something else that isn't on the list, it won't be in the warnings. That reader then has notice about the scope of possible triggers not in the fic and can make an informed decision about whether or not to read the fic, and might opt to ask the author before proceeding.
Where do you put this information? Your author's notes are a great place--you can then say to "see author's notes" for content warnings and include a link to the notes. (I will go over how to set up master posts, etc. in a later post.) If you're posting in AO3, author's notes are built in, so this is pretty easy.
2) Invite readers to contact you with questions about specific content warnings or triggers.
In your author's notes you may want to invite readers to contact you if they have questions about specific content, triggers, etc. You can suggest they send you a PM (personal message) or if you are comfortable, an email, or a comment. You don't have to, but opening a dialogue with readers can go a long way to allaying everyone's concerns. That way readers with specific concerns can get their questions answered and writers don't get stuck stressing wondering if there's anything else they should have warned for or something they forgot. Writers and readers get to know each other a little better, and people get to try stories they might have otherwise shied away from.
3) Provide more detailed warnings, but hide them under spoiler tags.
This tip can be implemented in conjunction with tips one and two or on its own. Want to give really detailed content warnings, but also don't want to spoil the story for folks who might not be interested in the content warnings? Easy, put them under a spoiler tag, use "span" coding to make them readable only when highlighted, or place general warnings on the fic and list the detailed warnings in your authors' notes or in a different post. People who want (and need) the detailed information get it, folks who hate spoilers remain unspoiled, and authors don't get stuck feeling like they're giving away the entire plot.
Question: How big is an LJ post? What is the maximum LJ post size?
The maximum size of an LJ post is 65,000 bytes... Bytes, not words, not characters. If you paste text from Word or another word processing program and don't clean it, that means you get maybe 4,000 or 5,000 words per post. Text pasted from Word and "cleaned" or stories posted using the HTML editor are free from extraneous, unnecessary bytes and will get more--perhaps as much as 9,000 words per post. You might, might, might get 10,000 words, but it's highly unlikely.
The exact length depends on the amount of formatting (lots of italics, bolding, smart quotes, etc. take up more bytes leaving less space for text) and the average word length (longer, bigger words, mean fewer words per post). Imbedded art need not take up a lot of space. If you are using image tags < img src="image URL here" > linking to art hosted on another site like photobucket, tinypic, etc., your overall word count per post won't change that much even if you are putting lots of pics in each post.
The problem is obviously that even if you have a 20,000 fic, it will probably take three posts to post the text of your story. If you want detailed author's notes or acknowledgements that's another post or two. How do you tie them all together? Well that will take a master post, of course. That means even the most basic, simple story around the 20K minimum, will take about 5 LJ-posts. Linking the posts together takes time. More complicated stories will take more posts. Sometimes a lot more posts. Speaking from personal experience, my 2010 bigbang fic was ~145,000 words and took thirty-nine (39) posts due to chapter length a desire to provided written versions of text contained in chapter art, etc. Most of you won't have stories that complicated, but still, that's a lot of posts. And posting can take a lot of time.
In contrast, Dreamwitdth has maximum post lengths somewhere around ~20K words per post?? (I think) (it might be more or less, I don't use Dreamwidth, and had a hard time getting an exact post length). This makes bigbang posting a lot easier and faster, especially for folks with shorter stories.
Even better, is AO3. The maximum post length there is 500,000 characters. How long is that? Well, I was able to post an 82,000-word fic with imbedded art in one post. Plus AO3 provides built-in chaptering functions, allows you to easily link and order works in a series, and has separate character counts for its built in author's notes and summary sections. In other words, you can post more per post with A03, often enough to fit an entire looooong bigbang entry in one post, and should you wish to have multiple chapters, author's notes, etc., you don't have to do any of your own coding. It's much, much faster.
Up next (later this week): Master Posts and how to make them; coordinating posts with your artist or author; and how to use LJ privacy settings to make your life easier.
Feel free to ask questions, offer suggestions, comment, kvetch, squee, and share your awesome feedback here!
As promised, and based on your responses to last week's poll, this is the first post in a series of "how to" posts designed to answer common questions authors and artists encounter when posting their fabulous finished masterpieces of fic and art. There are other "how to" posts out there that can tell you the basics of how to do an LJ-cut or how to post spoiler text, but I am trying to gather the nuts and bolts of questions you might need answered and things you might want to consider here into one easy-to access set of posts. This is great timing too, since posting starts in about a week and a half, and spn-j2-bigbang put up this year's posting instructions yesterday. You can find those here.
Have ideas? Have questions? Have tips or tricks you want to share? Feel free to post in the comments. Together we can pool our knowledge and experience and make this year's bigbang a fabulous experience for everyone.
Click on the LJ cuts below to expand each question.
Question: When do I have to warn for spoilers? How do I warn for spoilers?"
First of all, the spn-j2-bigbang does not officially require you to tag or warn for spoilers (see FAQ post). Still many of you may want to, and readers generally appreciate it if you do. The thing is, there are many different definitions of a spoiler, and this time of year (in the summer while the US and Canada are between broadcast seasons) it's somewhat hard to tell what spoilers people will expect to be warned for.
By one definition, a spoiler is anything about an episode that hasn't aired yet or that hasn't aired everywhere yet. Since "Supernatural" doesn't air in all countries at the same time, just because you've seen season 8 doesn't mean everyone has seen season 8. Similarly, something based on a preview, trailer, article, etc. or other source of information about an upcoming episode or season that hasn't yet aired, would also be a spoiler.
By another definition, a spoiler is anything that might spoil someone for an episode they haven't seen. For example, just because Episode 5.22 "Swan Song" has been out in the universe easily available in multiple formats for years doesn't mean everyone who might be reading bigbang stories has seen that episode. So, if your fic deals extensively with the events of that episode, you might want to warn for spoilers for that episode even though it's not new.
But what does that mean? What should you really warn for?
For that matter, how much warning is too much?
Eight seasons of "Supernatural" totaling 173 episodes have aired so far. If you try to warn for spoilers for each and every episode your fic might touch on, you're going to wind up with more spoiler warnings than story and you may give away more about the plot than you want to, while actually not being very helpful.
The better, sanity-preserving, and more useful strategy is to define the scope of episodes for which your story might contain spoilers. Here are a few examples:
A) "Spoilers: Anything through 8.23 is fair game."
B) "Spoilers: Contains speculation about season 9."
C) "Spoilers: AU after Season 3, but references elements of 4.03, 5.13, and 8.12."
D) "Spoilers: Set during Season 2."
You get the idea? Give readers a heads-up about your source material so the reader has enough information to know if they might be spoiled by reading, and can proceed at their own risk. Meanwhile you, the author, don't go crazy trying to figure out each and every conceivable episode you might have referenced or drawn inspiration from.
Still feel like you're giving too much away? Well there are tricks for that.
LJ conveniently provides the LJ-specific HTML tag, "< lj-spoiler >" which acts like a mini-LJ cut to hide text. For example, if you wanted to provide the spoiler warning in example C above, but you didn't want to be quite so obvious about it, you would type the following (but without the spaces): < lj-spoiler text="Spoiler Warning" > AU After Season 3, but references elements of 4.03, 5.13, and 8.12. < / lj-spoiler >. Typed properly that would appear as follows: [Spoiler Warning]AU After Season 3, but references elements of 4.03, 5.13, and 8.12.
Still not clear on the spoiler tag and what it does? Check out the FAQ page here.
If you're more comfortable with HTML you can also use "span" tags to place your spoiler warnings over an identical-colored background so readers have to highlight to see what you've written. For example:
< span style="background-color:type background color here" >< font color="type font identical font color here" > Type the spoiler you want to hide here < /font >< /span >
Remove the spaces and replace the filler text with actual font and background color and the spoiler text you want to hide and voila, spoiler concealed. This also works great for other warnings.
If you think you want to use the "span" tag, here's a few words of advice. 1) Don't use it when making your post to spn-j2-bigbang. If you check out the posting rules page, you'll notice Wendy and Zee have warned against using anything that attempts to change the font, color, etc. of the page. This technically counts, so don't use it. Use the lj-spoiler tag instead. 2) If you want to use this on your own page, test it out before making it go live. Your page may be formatted with CSS that will hijack your pretty span tags and make them not do what you want them to do, e.g., override the font color so low and behold, your font winds up another color than what you intended making your spoiler visible (or worse, drawing attention to it). 3) If you apply a new format to your LJ later on, the new formatting may go ahead and hijack your coding on your old posts making previously functional spoiler-concealing spans inoperative. It's not fun. So, think before you use.
Question: What other warnings do I need? What if I don't want to warn? Are there warnings I am not thinking of?
Not everyone writes stories that need content warnings. Of course, people's opinions differ about what content needs a warning and what doesn't. Therein lies problems.
Content warnings go hand-in-hand with spoiler warnings, but are far more fraught with contention. What should you warn for? If there was an answer to that question about which everyone agreed, fandom would be a much friendlier place. Allow me to be blunt, frank, and honest: debates over content warnings, like debates over content themselves, can descend into super-charged flame-wars that hurt people's feelings and send readers and writers alike running from fandom. No one wants that. But what can you do to avoid it?
Bear with me, as someone who has experience with both sides of the debate, I'm going to hop on a soapbox for a minute, and then I will offer suggestions on how to avoid this fandom landmine altogether. (TL:DR? Just want the tips? Skip to the next bold heading.)
People have massive differences of opinion about what to warn for and when, how detailed warnings need to be, etc. Fans don't just have opinions, they're passionate. For some people it's about the integrity of their work, their free expression as an author their desire to have readers try the work on its merits rather than on some pre-defined set of spoiler warnings. Writers want readers to experience their work like they might a real book, where the author doesn't tell you in advance if they're, for example, going to kill off a beloved minor character in the middle of chapter 3. Writers want readers to expand their horizons, to give things a try even if it isn't something they might ordinarily read, and to have their work viewed on its own merits, not the merits of whether they thought of all the right content warnings. For that matter, too many content warnings can make writers feel like they're putting a big "stay away" message allover their fic--the writer's attempt at candor and honesty winds up scaring folks away from a story they might otherwise enjoy.
For readers it can be about preference. Some people just really don't want to read fic involving character death, even minor character death. Some people just don't like violence or sex or anything else. For other readers it's far more personal and important. People may be trying to avoid painful or dangerous triggers that can cause flashbacks, anxiety attacks, psychological trauma, and worse. In these situations a lack of a warning may mean more than just not enjoying a story, it can leave the unsuspecting reader feeling violated, betrayed, sick, angry, victimized, and marginalized. It lead the reader to relive a horrible personal experience. It can ruin that reader's enjoyment of anything written by the writer. It sucks and no one has fun and its as far from the joyful celebration of creativity and fandom that bigbangs should be as you can get.
But how do I know what someone's triggers are? What if giving a spoiler about character death or past non-con spoils the entire plot? Do I really need to warn for slash separately from het? What if...?
These are fabulous points. We're all different. We all have different sensitivities, experiences, perceptions, and expectations. One person's trigger is another person's pleasure. Try as hard as you might and you will inevitably eventually miss someone's trigger. And all the good intentions in the world aren't going to make it up if someone has a really bad reaction to reading a story. For that matter, spoiling your own plot can't really be undone either. So how do you get around this obstacle?
Tips and Tricks for Content Warnings
1) Rather than trying to warn for everything, state up front what you warn for.
Archive of Our Own provides a great example of how to handle this. Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) has four stock warnings categories: a) major character death, b) graphic depictions of violence, c) rape/non-con, and d) underage. Writers are then instructed to select which warnings (if any) apply. They can also opt not to use archive warnings. In this case the reading audience is put on notice that the author isn't using warnings, and a story might contain rape, underage, character death, or graphic violence, and the reader can decide in advance whether they want to take their chances or not. If the author wants to use archive warnings, the reader is on notice the author is warning about those four categories, but other topics may not receive warnings.
No mater where you post your work, you can follow this strategy. On your master post or in your author's notes explain what you warn for. For example, I might say I warn for major character death, non-con, dub-con, graphic sex, torture, and graphic violence. Then readers can be confident if one of those issues shows up in the fic, it will be in the warnings, so if it isn't in the warnings it isn't in the fic. However, if there's something else that isn't on the list, it won't be in the warnings. That reader then has notice about the scope of possible triggers not in the fic and can make an informed decision about whether or not to read the fic, and might opt to ask the author before proceeding.
Where do you put this information? Your author's notes are a great place--you can then say to "see author's notes" for content warnings and include a link to the notes. (I will go over how to set up master posts, etc. in a later post.) If you're posting in AO3, author's notes are built in, so this is pretty easy.
2) Invite readers to contact you with questions about specific content warnings or triggers.
In your author's notes you may want to invite readers to contact you if they have questions about specific content, triggers, etc. You can suggest they send you a PM (personal message) or if you are comfortable, an email, or a comment. You don't have to, but opening a dialogue with readers can go a long way to allaying everyone's concerns. That way readers with specific concerns can get their questions answered and writers don't get stuck stressing wondering if there's anything else they should have warned for or something they forgot. Writers and readers get to know each other a little better, and people get to try stories they might have otherwise shied away from.
3) Provide more detailed warnings, but hide them under spoiler tags.
This tip can be implemented in conjunction with tips one and two or on its own. Want to give really detailed content warnings, but also don't want to spoil the story for folks who might not be interested in the content warnings? Easy, put them under a spoiler tag, use "span" coding to make them readable only when highlighted, or place general warnings on the fic and list the detailed warnings in your authors' notes or in a different post. People who want (and need) the detailed information get it, folks who hate spoilers remain unspoiled, and authors don't get stuck feeling like they're giving away the entire plot.
Question: How big is an LJ post? What is the maximum LJ post size?
The maximum size of an LJ post is 65,000 bytes... Bytes, not words, not characters. If you paste text from Word or another word processing program and don't clean it, that means you get maybe 4,000 or 5,000 words per post. Text pasted from Word and "cleaned" or stories posted using the HTML editor are free from extraneous, unnecessary bytes and will get more--perhaps as much as 9,000 words per post. You might, might, might get 10,000 words, but it's highly unlikely.
The exact length depends on the amount of formatting (lots of italics, bolding, smart quotes, etc. take up more bytes leaving less space for text) and the average word length (longer, bigger words, mean fewer words per post). Imbedded art need not take up a lot of space. If you are using image tags < img src="image URL here" > linking to art hosted on another site like photobucket, tinypic, etc., your overall word count per post won't change that much even if you are putting lots of pics in each post.
The problem is obviously that even if you have a 20,000 fic, it will probably take three posts to post the text of your story. If you want detailed author's notes or acknowledgements that's another post or two. How do you tie them all together? Well that will take a master post, of course. That means even the most basic, simple story around the 20K minimum, will take about 5 LJ-posts. Linking the posts together takes time. More complicated stories will take more posts. Sometimes a lot more posts. Speaking from personal experience, my 2010 bigbang fic was ~145,000 words and took thirty-nine (39) posts due to chapter length a desire to provided written versions of text contained in chapter art, etc. Most of you won't have stories that complicated, but still, that's a lot of posts. And posting can take a lot of time.
In contrast, Dreamwitdth has maximum post lengths somewhere around ~20K words per post?? (I think) (it might be more or less, I don't use Dreamwidth, and had a hard time getting an exact post length). This makes bigbang posting a lot easier and faster, especially for folks with shorter stories.
Even better, is AO3. The maximum post length there is 500,000 characters. How long is that? Well, I was able to post an 82,000-word fic with imbedded art in one post. Plus AO3 provides built-in chaptering functions, allows you to easily link and order works in a series, and has separate character counts for its built in author's notes and summary sections. In other words, you can post more per post with A03, often enough to fit an entire looooong bigbang entry in one post, and should you wish to have multiple chapters, author's notes, etc., you don't have to do any of your own coding. It's much, much faster.
Up next (later this week): Master Posts and how to make them; coordinating posts with your artist or author; and how to use LJ privacy settings to make your life easier.
Feel free to ask questions, offer suggestions, comment, kvetch, squee, and share your awesome feedback here!