How to tackle the seemingly-daunting task of joining the SCP wiki and/or writing your first SCP article
I’ve always wanted to do something like this, but now that I’ve posted a new SCP for the first time in a year (Doomsday Contest got me off my ass), I feel like I finally have the fresh view to find the words for it.
How to join the SCP wiki:
Be 15 years of age or older.
Visit this page. I understand that the page seems like a link to a daunting pile of guides, so don’t worry, I’m not leaving you with just that.
Read that guide, the Guide for Newbies. It may seem like a lot of information, but relative to the vastness of the SCP wiki, it actually does a pretty succinct job at summarizing what you need to know to start. Here are some concepts that you may not pick up on from the guides, which I think are worth detailing:
You’re not under any obligation or expectation to write, post, vote, or do anything once your account is active. If you just want to lurk, you can lurk.
If you write a post and it fails, no one will remember it later on. The wiki is getting huge and no one wants to focus on failed articles anyway. You do not need to be embarrassed if your article fails, especially since every established writer I know – including myself – has at least one failed article under their belt.
If you write one standalone article, you are not under any obligation or expectation to write another one. No one on this site is getting paid, it’s all just for fun and for the sake of creative fiction.
Once you’ve read the Guide for Newbies – you do have to read it, because it contains something you need to put in your application – go back to Join This Site and follow the short instructions in the second tab.
Sit back and wait to be accepted. If you followed the steps correctly and did your application with the proper text, you should be accepted.
Remember that your SCP wiki membership is a membership of one site on a platform provided by Wikidot, and your Wikidot account is not under the control of SCP wiki staff, but rather the Wikidot company. Staff cannot help you with account issues beyond just giving advice on how to contact Wikidot.
Once you’re in, go to the upper right corner with your account name and click the drop-down arrow. This is where you can click “settings” and from there change your Wikidot information, like avatar and name, make your account look pretty and info the way you want it. The colored bar is “Karma”, a measurement of how active you are. Yours will be gray/empty when you first become active. You can also delete the membership acceptance notification so that it doesn’t flash (1) forever by clicking “messages” and finding it in there.
With your idea in mind, browse article tags and find articles similar to your concept, be it in the type of subject matter, the Object Class of the article, so on and so forth. To elaborate if that’s too vague, take a look at this list of article tags hosted on the auxiliary staff site for an idea of “types” of anomaly.
Read as many similar articles as you can. This is a collaborative writing site, and stylistic and tonal similarities are what makes the SCP universe appear seamless despite having so much different content. Doing this will give you an idea of tone, sentence structure, and any specifics like technical jargon that you will want to mirror or use.
Take note of how particular articles are about spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We hold ourselves to publishing standards as far as those go. The real Foundation would triple-proofread their articles, so we do too.
We understand that published authors have to hire editors, and that not everyone has the exact nuances of SPaG ingrained in their writing ability. Don’t stress about this! There are other authors and users who are the ‘editor’ type and are more than happy to line-by-line your article and find these things for you. We’ll get to that in the next part.
I am a writer who found that tales came far more naturally than SCPs because tales are just normal format stories. It all depends on your imaginative style; personally, I write by watching the movie in my head, and then transcribing what I see. That’s why I’m so dialogue- and action-heavy with tales. That’s also what made it hard for me to get invested in the narrative of an SCP.
Here’s what’s taken me literal years to articulate: SCP narratives are shown through collected objective information, not direct narrative description and character interpretation. Here is what information you should include, and in this order:
The Item # is what the Foundation named it when they found it.
The Object Class is a representation of how difficult the item is to contain. It does not directly correlate to how dangerous something is. Here is a breakdown of Object Classes.
The Special Containment Procedures section describes how the anomaly is kept safe, inactive, out of the public eye, or any other parameters that may apply. Remember: the Secure is about securing the anomaly, the Contain is about containing the anomaly, and the Protect is about protecting the anomaly and humanity. It’s not just about one or the other, it goes both ways. The Foundation sees anomalies as worth preserving. (This is why it’s not cool to treat human and sapient anomalies like criminal prisoners with no rights or privileges, but that’s a whole ‘nother post…)
The Description is where you describe it. This is not only the description of a physical object; a lot of SCPs are intangible. The Description covers effects, locations, persons affected, history and discovery, scientific findings and research, and anything else you may need to illustrate to the reader what the thing is.
(Optional) The History section is sometimes (I’m one of the authors that does it) used as a separate section from the Description, if the anomaly’s history is comprehensive enough to need its own section (like more than a paragraph or two). Even if you don’t make a second section of the article for the anomaly’s history, it’s a good idea to have at least a little information on how it was classified as an SCP object, even if it’s just “the first event was noticed at X time and we don’t know where it came from”.
(Optional) The addenda section could include any other information you can use to showcase certain aspects of the anomaly. This could be lab results, exploration logs for physical anomalies, notes from people studying the anomaly, interviews with affected persons and/or sapient anomalies if applicable, or many other types of information.
(Optional) the classified section is typically at the bottom of an article (but sometimes at the top to imply that the entire anomaly’s existence is classified information) and involves a collapsible (get the code for those on the ‘formatting’ tab of How to Write an SCP), which will typically say something like “Level 4 access required to proceed” but the exact phrasing and parameters for access are up to you. It contains information restricted to personnel of a certain position and/or clearance level, and frequently has extra documentation written by someone of high authority, like an O5 Council member. Only add this section if there’s actually something about the anomaly worth hiding from certain personnel and worth the buildup; don’t just throw it in for dramatic effect. This section is not necessary with most concepts.
I used to really struggle creating this information because of the factual format. I have an action-focused writing style, not an information-oriented writing style. I had an epiphany when I was stoned once and realized that I could overcome this hurdle by putting myself in the shoes of a Foundation employee who is writing this article about the anomaly they witnessed. I am basically LARPing in my mind every time I write an SCP article. Come up with the anomaly first. See it and observe it. Then describe what you’ve witnessed in the format your organization requires you to describe it in. Suddenly it will feel like writing a lab report instead of connecting post-it notes on a cork board and tying red string between them.
A few last random pointers:
A lot of SCPs are intangible. Your article does not have to be a physical object that is locked away somewhere. It can be a digital phenomenon. It can be a distant star out in space. It can be a pattern of social behavior the Foundation is tracking. It can be literally anything because there is no limit to the anomalous. As long as the Foundation had a way to find out it exists, it can exist.
Not everything needs to be horror or sci-fi, or scary and dangerous in general. Things can just be interesting. Undertones of other genres can be present in your subject matter as long as it still fits the objective, scientific documentation format.
How to draft and post an SCP:
Make yourself a sandbox page. This is an auxiliary site hosted on the same platform (Wikidot) that we use to store our draft articles. The instructions for creating a sandbox page are linked there and are very simple (just make a page named your username). The sandbox allows you to put your article into Wikidot formatting. Please pay as much attention to formatting as you do spelling and grammar. The real Foundation would carefully their articles, so we do too. If you’re overwhelmed by formatting, you can scroll to the bottom of any SCP article page, click “options”, click “page source”, and view what the text looks like at the source.
Get other people to read your draft. Here’s a list of where that can happen:
chatrooms (your best option for quick responses, even if it’s just finding someone who’s willing to read it at a later time)
various places offsite, like r/SCP, but keep in mind that people from the wiki typically have higher standards for article quality than the offsite fandom, so it’s a good idea to use a wiki channel for crit at some point
Make sure you get several people reading your draft, not just one or two. And while every user’s feedback is valuable because all reader opinions count, I highly recommend getting a few experienced users and authors (many of whom are staff, which makes them easy to find) to read it with our seasoned eyeballs or whatever. It’ll help your article in the long run, and details experienced users point out could make the difference between a draft turning out to be a +30 article and a +75 article.
When you’ve had multiple people with diverse and varying expectations for quality confirm that your article is ready for the mainlist, follow the instructions on this page.
Alternatively, just type in the URL of whatever item number you’re taking and create the page from there. The URL format is always www.scp-wiki.net/scp-xxxx with xxxx as the four-digit number.
Your article’s title does not go on the page. The title should be just the SCP number. The title is from the Series listing page; edit that respective page to give your article a title. (I know it looks daunting in its raw text format in the editor; just copy the exact same formatting from other numbers.)
Don’t 👏 forget 👏 the 👏 rating 👏 module 👏 – it’s mandatory – get the code off of ‘formatting’ on How to Write an SCP.
Don’t worry about tagging your article unless you’re absolutely certain you can accurately follow this (but seriously, there’s a team of staff dedicated to tagging articles, so you’re not expected to know how).
Click “discuss” at the bottom of the page and make an author post. If you want to thank people by username for draft help, you can turn it into a link with their icon by typing [[*user Username]]. Authors typically talk about their inspirations for it and any challenges they may have overcome when writing it.
I hope this post can help you if you’ve been feeling like you don’t know where to start and you’re intimidated by the wiki’s guides!
