Oh god, please delete the extra spaces between paragraphs in your fics on AO3. Please. I know it takes ages and it’s really annoying to do, but it is an immediate backspace away from your story if I’m on mobile because I get one sentence per page and acres of white space.
I can help! There is an easy way to do this if you have a word processor! Instructions with screencaps follow:
1. Before you paste your text into the Ao3 text box, make sure “Rich Text” is clicked.
2. Paste your story into the Ao3 text box (like you usually do)
3. Instead of hitting post, go back and click “HTML.” Your story will suddenly show the HTML markup, including all those pesky extra spaces:
4. Open a new, blank document in your word processor. Copy all the text from the Ao3 window and paste it there.
5. Do a find / replace for all the lines that say “<p> </p>”, replacing them with nothing.
6. Now you have a document with HTML markup and no extra carriage returns.
7. Copy this and open up your Ao3 window again. MAKE SURE “HTML” IS CLICKED. Paste your nice new text into this window.
8. When you click “Rich Text” again, your story will look beautiful and have no extra spaces!!!!!!
9. Now you can post your story!
10. Congratulate yourself on your amazingness, win $100,000,000,000,000, become best friends with Idris Elba, roll around with a pile of happy puppies
oh look! @thepurrbutton i may be able to give you chapters with proper spacing again!
Also! You can stop it from doing this in the first place by using the right settings in your word processor. From the Rich Text Editor (RTE) help text (linked from the question mark next to “Type or paste formatted text.”):
Press Enter once between paragraphs. Pressing Enter twice will insert a blank paragraph, creating additional, and likely unwanted, space between paragraphs when you paste into the RTE. The Archive uses top and bottom margins to create the appearance of a blank line between paragraphs; you can use the paragraph formatting options in your text editor to create a similar effect without adding extra <p> tags.
In Google Docs, you can go to the “Format" menu, choose “Line spacing,” and then choose “Custom spacing.” It will let you set how much space you want before and after paragraphs.
In LibreOffice, go to the “Format” menu and choose “Paragraph.” Under the “Spacing” heading, there will be options for Above and Below paragraph.
Those are the only programs I have handy, but generally, you want to look in the formatting menu for something about either paragraphs or spacing, and you’ll find a similar option there. You can then use any amount of spacing that’s pleasing to your eye and it will still have AO3′s usual amount of spacing between paragraphs.
(I could teal deer about all the whys involved – why did fandom start hitting Enter twice, why do paragraphs on computers and paper have different amounts of vertical space, why does the RTE not know what to do when given text where someone hit enter twice, why don’t we we change the parser if we can’t change the RTE – but that’s probably a little more detail than necessary to be helpful.)
To set paragraph spacing in Scrivener (Windows), go to the “Tools” menu and select “Options.” Select the “Editor” tab. Click inside the window with text, then click the line spacing menu:
Select “More…” and you’ll see this pop-up:
Set “Before” and “After” in the “Spacing” section to whatever you want. They start at 0.00 and I just increased them until I liked the look of the text. There, now you only have to hit Enter once!
If you do end up having to go back and backspace the lines, it’s a great opportunity to do one last edit as well!
I like how fanfiction culture decided to drop all pretense about self-insert oc characters hooking up with canon characters and just leaned into “character x reader” stories. These were just non-existent in my early FF days, we’re talking 15+ years ago, and they’re everywhere now. I appreciate it, chase your bliss dears
GOD I WISH I HAD THAT SPINE OF STEEL
WHY DID YOU LEAVE OUT THE BEST PART, THIS IS A LEGEND
That thing you wrote that isn’t “good enough” to put up on the AO3. You can put it up there! The AO3 isn’t meant to be The World’s Classiest Showcase. It’s an archive. It exists because most other forms of hosting fannish work eventually degrade or disappear. Accounts get deleted. Websites shut down. The AO3 preserves those things. Ten years from now you’ll be like, “Shit, there was this really great tag essay, but the person changed their Tumblr URL and then Tumblr closed up shop…” (look, even Tumblr will die eventually) and your only hope of finding it will be if the page was cached, or if somebody uploaded it to the AO3.
The AO3 exists to preserve ephemera as much as substantial works. You know how valuable it is for archaeologists to be able to read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii? The little things, the notes, the headcanons, the notfics, the meta, the back-and-forths, are all important too.
YES YES YES THIS.
Tumblr’s likely to die sooner than you expect, and suddenly – it’s owned by Yahoo. (Anyone remember
del.icio.us, later delicious.com?) Yahoo’s trying really really hard to squeeze money out of tumblr and it’s not working, for all the reasons discussed in synec’s post and because a huge portion of its userbase is 13-18 years old and HAVE NO DIGITAL MONEY so can’t buy things online even if they wanted to.
There is no “worthy to be on AO3.” None. The early fics were often really well-written; it was a high-standards archive – not because “it strove for high standards” but because the only people who knew it existed, who cared about a new multifandom archive, were the ones who’d been around watching archives disappear for years; they were veteran fic writers who wanted a permanent place to share their stories. It took a long time for AO3 to have enough server capacity to allow open invites; in the early days, it was friend-of-a-friend for invite codes. (They wanted more people; they couldn’t handle a flood. So they handed out a few codes at a time)
We even talked about it while setting up the original terms of service – knowing that by saying, our standards are less restrictive than ff.net, less restrictive than LJ, we were going to eventually have HUGE amounts of really bad fic. FF.net got the nickname “pit of voles,” and AO3 was going to outdo that… eventually.
And. We wanted it ALL. All the reader-insert Mary Sue “date with hot dude” fic; all the “quiz to find out which power ranger you would be” fic; all the “band came to my home town and their bus broke down in front of my house and they needed a coffee and…” fic. And later, all the meta: the thinky character analyses; the “who’d be best on a first date” discussions; the “why the new movie sucked rocks and should never have been made because they ruined my favorite sidekick” rants.
ALL. WE WANT IT ALL.
AO3 is not about “the best of fandom;” it’s about “the truth of fandom.” And the truth is, fandom is not comprised of 90% well-written tightly-plotted carefully proofread fic. Fandom is comprised of people who love their favorite shows and books and characters and want to share that love with others.
AO3 are not the fanfic standards police. We’re the ones cheering for the “GLOWING BLUE SKELETON DICKS” tags.
Someday, some fandom archaeologist (and yes, there will be fandom archaeologists, isn’t that awesome?) will sift through the badfic, the quick drabbles, the Mary Sues, and write articles for peer-reviewed journals chronicling the complete collected works of some of the 21st century’s greatest authors and how you can see in THIS self-indulgent Protagonist/OC clusterfuck the origin of those characterization tactics and flow of prose that make your subsequent masterworks truly shine as beloved classics, and THIS short character drabble gives THAT story arc in your well-known later story an exceptional poignancy and depth if one considers it backstory.
Also that fandom archaeologist’s teenage daughter will think the self-indulgent Protagonist/OC clusterfuck is the best thing she’s ever read.
when i forget to log into ao3 and i have to click proceed to see an adult fic, i actually get a kick out of it. like i am an old timey queen and my bard is apologetic: “gentle lady, dicks doth touch in this next ballad. would you prefer another?” and i give him a gesture of command like, “nay, you may proceed, minstrel. bring forth the tale of dicks”
This post is so old I almost forgot why I think “proceed with the tale of dicks” every time I click on it now
imagine how i felt the other day when i tried to get into ao3 on a new device and blithely thought, “ha, i think i saw a tumblr post about this once.”
those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household
don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)
if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO.
seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys
xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.
Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too.
I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.
COMMENT. I don’t care how old it is or how many chapters a reader comments on.
The only thing that might possibly be more flattering is the “I stayed up all night because I couldn’t stop reading” comment.
Yes, please.
YES ALL OF THIS
all of this
Reblogging because readers somehow still have this idea that too many comments/kudos are seen as creepy or stalkery. IT’S NOT. Seriously. Every comment, all of the kudos, they’re greatly, GREATLY appreciated. And knowing that someone liked your work enough to click on your name and go through your other fics and liked those too, even the old stuff you’re kind of self-conscious about, is the greatest feeling a writer can have. So if you like a fic, say something/leave kudos, no matter if it’s the first or fifth fanfic you’ve read in one night from that author.
I LOVE when I get an email where it’s the same name, like a dozen or more times because they went through and read like, /everything I ever wrote/ apparently. It makes me so happy! 😀
Multiple kudos and/or lots of comments are the best thing ever
Not at all creepy. It’s like, they are reading, get to the end, said they liked it, and Prove they liked it because they read another and liked that…
And yes, it’s just as fun to see this with old stories. Maybe even more?
The other thing that is super nice? When someone comments and says, hey, I tried to kudos but I had already kudos’d so I’m commenting to kudos again because I do that ALL THE TIME. I either forgot I’d read this lovely thing and want to kudos again, or I’m doing a re-read of something and I *want* to kudos again. When it happens to me it’s seriously lovely – someone enjoying your stuff enough that they re-read.
reblogged so fast I sprained something
I know for me especially that while writing just for yourself is great, nothing drains me more from writing than not seeing kudos or comments. If you notice in my writing at least, I get the most inspiration when I see people leaving likes, comments, even tags when they reblog (because I look and read them all).
Please please please leave comments, like, kudo, reblog, everything! No writer thinks this is stalkerish and is in fact one of the highest praises we can receive through this medium. It lets us know that you like it and you want more!! Without it, it may possibly mean we may not even continue it. I know I get like that with several of my multi chapter stories.
Don’t feel like leaving something on every little thing? My absolute favorite thing is when people leave notes in my inbox telling me about how much they love my characters, my voice behind canons, just the fact that they say how much they enjoy what I’ve done! I have kept every little note I have ever gotten and once I get my set up my new desk space, I’m going to print them all out and hang them on my wall so I can read them every day. I’m not kidding! This thing fuels us writers!! In this world, fanfiction is probably one of lowest forms of writing. We don’t get paid. Our payment comes from your feedback and the excitement that you have to keep reading!
IT IS NEVER STALKERISH!
IT LETS US KNOW YOU LOVE US AS MUCH AS WE LOVE YOU FOR READING!
“I’m going to print them all out and hang them on my wall so I can read them every day” – Oooh, that’s such a great idea, I might just have to do it too! *g*
And as someone who’s left those strings of comments, and has received them:
1. There is nothing better than an author who knows they’re appreciated. They often get motivation from it! (do be sure to say what you liked- and saying you’re looking forward to the next chapter after is okay, but ‘update’ often scares us writers and gets us stressed- we’ve got soft heart, pelase be gentle with us).
2. It’s a great way to meet new people! Most of my fandom friends I met through commenting on their stories, or them commenting on mine!
3. It inspires us! I can’t remember how may times I got ideas for sequels or new fics I got because this one person commented something that made me tilt my head and go: what if? And I’ve seen the same happen to other writers!
I once got a comment that was basically two readers chatting back and forth about the chapter I’d just posted as they read it. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite that delighted with a response to my fics.
Those times when I get a string of kudos or comments from a person who liked one fic and decided to hit up the rest of my works… Don’t think anything can compare to that, for a writer. This person has stumbled across my fic, and has sallied forth to read all of it! Because they liked it so much!
Why in the world would that be creepy. Or stalkerish. Stalk all our writing, dear readers, and come scream at us about it in the comments or on Tumblr. It’s humbling, leads to squealing on our part and is massively inspiring all at once.
just moving along like everyone else 