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So you created a story you want to share on Ao3! How incredibly exciting!
This guide is designed to walk you through posting your first fanfic, step by step – and then share a few tips and tricks to make a fic look really good to your readers.
First of all, obviously, you need an Ao3 account. You can request an invitation by going to the homepage (archiveofourown.org) and requesting one. They usually come through within a day or so; watch your email. You need to CAREFULLY read through the Archive’s Terms of Service before accepting them and creating your account. They’re important. (http://archiveofourown.org/tos)
Once you’ve got an account, and you have a fic ready to post, log into Ao3, go to your Dashboard, and select the Post New Button.
A new window will appear with a whole load of boxes in sections. We’ll take them one at a time.
First section (Tags)
The first thing you have to do is choose the Rating for your fic. Click the down-arrow at the right side of the Rating box.
Select from Not Rated; General Audiences; Teen and Up; Mature and Explicit ratings.
Here is Ao3’s Ratings guide:
Next, you need to choose your Archive Warnings. These are critical.
If your fic contains any of the four ‘major triggers’ in the Warnings – violence, major character death, rape/non-con or underage sexual relationships – then you MUST select the appropriate warnings. You can select more than one.
If none of these apply to your work, then you can select from either Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings or No Archive Warnings Apply, it doesn’t really matter.
If your fic does contain any of the major triggers and you failed to use the appropriate Warnings, you may be in breach of the Archive’s Terms Of Service and could have your account suspended or cancelled. Don’t do it.
Next come your Fandoms;
You can actually select as many (relevant) fandoms as you wish. Start typing in the box and Ao3 will come up with suggestions for you; select and press Enter to add to the fandoms for your fic. For example, I usually write Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers crossovers; my fandoms box might look like this;
Next comes your Category.
If you have ships in your fic (romantic relationships) then you should select all appropriate categories. Otherwise, you can select Gen or Other.
Lastly in this first section, you have the three ‘tag’ sections.
Ao3 tries to be helpful in the Relationships category. If you type in ‘steve/bucky’ for example, it will come up with a long list of suggestions, at the top of which is ‘James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers’. Close platonic friendships are listed with an ‘&’. See examples below.
List all ships, but in order of importance in your fic. Fans of those ships can then judge whether they want to read a fic where their ship is of minor importance.
If you’re writing about a ship nobody’s ever done before (I do this far too often) you will need to create a tag.
The best way to do this is to put in your Characters in the Character box first. It’s highly likely that they already exist so go on down to that box and start listing your characters, pressing Enter after you’ve selected each to add them to your list. It’s Ao3 convention to put your characters in order of importance, so the ‘stars’ of your fic are listed first. I list ALL characters who appear in the fic; if they are only mentioned I will enter them like this “Victoria Hand – referenced”. This is simply being polite to, for example, Victoria Hand fans. She’s an obscure character and they don’t want to have to read through whole fics looking for her appearance if she’s only mentioned briefly.
Once you have your characters listed, you can go back and create any new ships you need to create. Type the names in EXACTLY as Ao3 has them in the Characters tag, in alphabetical order – that’s why James “Bucky” Barnes appears before Steve Rogers in the example above, even though we typed in ‘steve/bucky’ when searching.
Additional Tags is for other things. Include all tags that you think apply, generally those that people are likely to search for. Again, typing in a few letters, Ao3 will give you suggestions.
You should also include ‘trigger tags’. Examples of these might include; gaslighting, non-consensual sex, dubious consent, kidnapping, bondage, incest, unplanned pregnancy – the list goes on. Think about the themes that are included in your work and if someone might find them triggering.
Ao3’s rules on tagging are that tags are entirely at the discretion of the work’s creator. Unless a tag is blatantly misleading, nobody has the right to ask you to remove it. This includes if you write a rapefic and tag the two (or more) participants in the relationship category, provided that the fic carries the appropriate warnings. Anyone who asks you to remove a tag which you feel is appropriate for the fic, you are entitled to report them to Ao3’s Abuse team.
However, if someone asks you to ADD a tag to a fic for something they find triggering, it’s generally considered good manners to do so, though you are certainly entitled to discuss it with them, and to decline if you believe they are wrong.
You can and should tag for anything else included in your fic. A lot of people search by porn tags (we do not judge other people’s kinks) so, for example, some common search terms are things like; Smut, Porn With Plot, Porn Without Plot, Knotting, Spanking, Bondage, BDSM etc. Try typing in a few things that feature as themes in your fic; you’d be amazed at what tags people have already created.
I use others like Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Alternate Universe – Soulmates, Fix-It Fic, Canon Divergence, Episode Related (tag the episode too if you do this one) etc.
Freeform tags – there is debate on these. Contrary to rumour, it does NOT affect Ao3’s efficiency in any way. However, they’re a bit pointless in terms of searching, which is what tags are really for. I use them sometimes but not a great deal. Try not to write a whole essay with them, because they really do annoy some readers and will turn people off from reading your fic.