Posting Your Gift: An AO3 Tutorial
I've had four or five questions about this, so I decided to take advantage of my day off and put this post together now, rather than hold off a few weeks :)
So! For those of you who have never used AO3 to complete a challenge before, here's a step-by-step guide, with pictures, laying it all out!
Step One: Go to archiveofourown.org. Make sure you're logged in. On the upper right hand side, under your usericon (or the stand-in box where your usericon would be), click on the "Post New" button.
Step Two: Begin filling out the basics about your gift. Items marked with a red asterisk are mandatory. "Rating" offers several options that are roughly equivalent to the MPAA rating system. "Archive Warnings" covers several major warnings that the archive requests you either warn for or explicitly choose not to warn for. If none of the warnings apply to your gift, click "No Archive Warnings Apply." If you do not want to warn, either because you don't like warnings or you don't want to spoil the story, click "Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings." Otherwise, click the warnings that apply. (You can select more than one.)
Step Three: Fill in the fandoms for your gift. As with all forms on this page, as you start to type, the archive will autofill from it's "canonical tags." Canonical Tags are tags that exist within the archive and are searchable. Please click the correct fandom from the autofill. You can use more than one if you're writing a fusion/crossover.
Step Four: Fill in the category and pairings. "Category" here refers to the type of ship. Please feel free to select whatever combination you feel best describes your story. (For instance, if it's a story mostly about Erik teaching Sean how to cook, but it's assumed Charles and Erik are a couple in the background, you can click "Gen" and "M/M." If it's a story where Raven and Angel are falling in love, encouraged by the already-together Alex and Armando, you can click "F/F" and "M/M.")
For pairings, please enter the pairing here, and, as you did with fandom, select it from the autofill that appears below. AO3 lists pairings alphabetically by last name, so "Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier" appears rather than "Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr." Putting in other variations of the pairing will work, thanks to the wonderful tag wranglers whose job it is to look for all the variations of tags that people enter and redirect them to the main archive tag, so you only need to enter the pairing once--all variations will redirect to the same place!
Step Five: Fill in the characters. As with pairings and fandoms, the characters will autofill below as you type. Separate each additional character with a comma.
Step Six: "Additional Tags" are optional (as are character and relationship tags, actually). They help identify elements in your story that are frequently used/searched for by users, such as common tropes, additional warnings, etc. "Canonical tags," meaning, again, tags that are searchable in the archive, will autofill as you type. For example: "Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers," "First Time," "Established Relationship," "First Kiss," "Teenagers," "Kid Fic."
Tags that do not autofill (ie: "tumblr-style tags") can also be entered here, but are not searchable. If you like to use these tags as a form of expression, feel free! This is the place to do it.
Step Seven: Preface! This is where you get to the actual creative details of your gift! Enter the Title and the Summary in the appropriate boxes.
Step Eight: Notes! Here you can enter your author's notes--beta credit, thoughts and explanations, etc. Please remember that any comments that you put here will be visible, even when the story is anonymous, so please hide any identifying information. I, personally, redact the names of my betas because I use the same three people all the time and it's usually a red flag that I've written the story in question XD
Step Nine: Associations! Here's the most important bit--in the box labeled "Open Assignments" there will be a checkbox for your secret_mutant assignment with your recipient's name. Check that box! That will ensure that your gift is anonymous and posted as part of the collection.
Under "Gift this work to" put your recipient's username! That ensures they get an email alerting them that they have a gift!
Step Ten: Your actual gift! Here you can paste your story or a link to your art. The archive defaults to Plain Text HTML. It will automatically put in paragraph breaks and carriage returns without additional HTML, as well as accepting the following HTML formatting tags:
a, abbr, acronym, address, alt, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, cite, class, code, col, colgroup, datetime, dd, del, dfn, div, dl, dt, em, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, height, hr, href, i, img, ins, kbd, li, name, ol, p, pre, q, samp, small, span, src, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, title, tr, tt, u, ul, var, width
Rich Text is also available for those who prefer not to use Plain Text.
Step Eleven: Once you've got all the information above inputed, click "Preview." There are options for "Post Without Preview" and "Cancel," but you want to take a look at yours before you post it for good.
Step Twelve: This is a preview of your story! This is where you can check to make sure all the formatting is correct, that everything looks fine, etc. Your author name will come up as "Anonymous" until works are revealed :)
Look through everything, and if it's good to go, scroll all the way down to the bottom!
Step Thirteen: If you want to make some changes, click edit! If everything looks good, click post!
And you're done! Hurrah! Sit back and relax and wait for all the new fic and art that will soon be up for viewing!
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!
So! For those of you who have never used AO3 to complete a challenge before, here's a step-by-step guide, with pictures, laying it all out!
Step One: Go to archiveofourown.org. Make sure you're logged in. On the upper right hand side, under your usericon (or the stand-in box where your usericon would be), click on the "Post New" button.
Step Two: Begin filling out the basics about your gift. Items marked with a red asterisk are mandatory. "Rating" offers several options that are roughly equivalent to the MPAA rating system. "Archive Warnings" covers several major warnings that the archive requests you either warn for or explicitly choose not to warn for. If none of the warnings apply to your gift, click "No Archive Warnings Apply." If you do not want to warn, either because you don't like warnings or you don't want to spoil the story, click "Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings." Otherwise, click the warnings that apply. (You can select more than one.)
Step Three: Fill in the fandoms for your gift. As with all forms on this page, as you start to type, the archive will autofill from it's "canonical tags." Canonical Tags are tags that exist within the archive and are searchable. Please click the correct fandom from the autofill. You can use more than one if you're writing a fusion/crossover.
Step Four: Fill in the category and pairings. "Category" here refers to the type of ship. Please feel free to select whatever combination you feel best describes your story. (For instance, if it's a story mostly about Erik teaching Sean how to cook, but it's assumed Charles and Erik are a couple in the background, you can click "Gen" and "M/M." If it's a story where Raven and Angel are falling in love, encouraged by the already-together Alex and Armando, you can click "F/F" and "M/M.")
For pairings, please enter the pairing here, and, as you did with fandom, select it from the autofill that appears below. AO3 lists pairings alphabetically by last name, so "Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier" appears rather than "Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr." Putting in other variations of the pairing will work, thanks to the wonderful tag wranglers whose job it is to look for all the variations of tags that people enter and redirect them to the main archive tag, so you only need to enter the pairing once--all variations will redirect to the same place!
Step Five: Fill in the characters. As with pairings and fandoms, the characters will autofill below as you type. Separate each additional character with a comma.
Step Six: "Additional Tags" are optional (as are character and relationship tags, actually). They help identify elements in your story that are frequently used/searched for by users, such as common tropes, additional warnings, etc. "Canonical tags," meaning, again, tags that are searchable in the archive, will autofill as you type. For example: "Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers," "First Time," "Established Relationship," "First Kiss," "Teenagers," "Kid Fic."
Tags that do not autofill (ie: "tumblr-style tags") can also be entered here, but are not searchable. If you like to use these tags as a form of expression, feel free! This is the place to do it.
Step Seven: Preface! This is where you get to the actual creative details of your gift! Enter the Title and the Summary in the appropriate boxes.
Step Eight: Notes! Here you can enter your author's notes--beta credit, thoughts and explanations, etc. Please remember that any comments that you put here will be visible, even when the story is anonymous, so please hide any identifying information. I, personally, redact the names of my betas because I use the same three people all the time and it's usually a red flag that I've written the story in question XD
Step Nine: Associations! Here's the most important bit--in the box labeled "Open Assignments" there will be a checkbox for your secret_mutant assignment with your recipient's name. Check that box! That will ensure that your gift is anonymous and posted as part of the collection.
Under "Gift this work to" put your recipient's username! That ensures they get an email alerting them that they have a gift!
Step Ten: Your actual gift! Here you can paste your story or a link to your art. The archive defaults to Plain Text HTML. It will automatically put in paragraph breaks and carriage returns without additional HTML, as well as accepting the following HTML formatting tags:
a, abbr, acronym, address, alt, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, cite, class, code, col, colgroup, datetime, dd, del, dfn, div, dl, dt, em, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, height, hr, href, i, img, ins, kbd, li, name, ol, p, pre, q, samp, small, span, src, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, title, tr, tt, u, ul, var, width
Rich Text is also available for those who prefer not to use Plain Text.
Step Eleven: Once you've got all the information above inputed, click "Preview." There are options for "Post Without Preview" and "Cancel," but you want to take a look at yours before you post it for good.
Step Twelve: This is a preview of your story! This is where you can check to make sure all the formatting is correct, that everything looks fine, etc. Your author name will come up as "Anonymous" until works are revealed :)
Look through everything, and if it's good to go, scroll all the way down to the bottom!
Step Thirteen: If you want to make some changes, click edit! If everything looks good, click post!
And you're done! Hurrah! Sit back and relax and wait for all the new fic and art that will soon be up for viewing!
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!