#formatting advice

[shibara]

Hey fic writers, a psa~

Sarted doing almost all of my fic reading via text-to-speech software, and I've come across this issue that I'd not realized was a thing until I started using TTS consistently.

If we separate scenes within a chapter with a - (any number of them, happens with -- and ----, too) TTS readers treat it as silent, and will ignore it. It happened with the 3 TTS I've tried so far. They won't even make a pause, just straight treat it as nonexisting and proceed to the next paragraph.

It drives me up the wall specially for fics that have pov change, because sometimes for a few seconds the switch is not obvious and it gets pretty confusing.

Other signs such as //, ***, ## or === work well, the reader goes "asterisk" or "equal equal equal" making it evident that's a scene change.

For folks who are interested in making their fics as accessible as possible, I'd very much recommend not using - as scene breaks!

[c0dyc0la]

hey you

are you a writer who sometimes worries that things are going too fast in the story? or you worry if your paragraph is too short or too long?

(if you can) turn your document from paged to pageless. this will allow you to see how the story looks compared to itself, without being blindsided by the cut off of pages.

i started doing this recently and it's helped me way too much for how simple it is

[inkabelledesigns]

You know, suddenly I’m really glad I never hit backspace for more than a few words. With the recent chapter of Searching the Depths now up, I get to finally introduce some characters to each other, and because I’ve tried writing it a few times before, some of those old attempts that were decent have gotten reused and shined up. I’m hoping this means I can share it soon. XD But there’s some details to work out still. 

But yeah, even though I haven’t updated the fic in a while, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. Sometimes when I’m stuck working in-sequence, I’ll go and write something that I know is coming up farther along. So I’ve had a few attempts at things, meaning I can perfect them when the moment’s time comes. 

One thing that helps me keep my doc organized is using headings. I don’t know how to do this for something like a word doc, but on Google Docs, this is useful, so I’m gonna share it here. 

Every time I make a new chapter, I write out the chapter and its name, then I set it to the text style of “Heading 1.” That way, I get this nifty little side menu, and if I click on the chapter I want, it’ll jump me right to it. That’s actually why I have that weird row of 6′s in there, I needed to remind myself to edit something mid-chapter, so that’s a placeholder with the heading style so I can jump to it easily. Sometimes though, if I write in all caps, it’ll apply a subheading? Even when it’s not all caps, sometimes it just does that at random points (like in Too Many Eyes’ draft). Hence the “YOINK!” there, I don’t know why it does that at random, but hey, I make use of it. But yeah, if you’re working on a long fic and need to move around it easier, I highly recommend using headings, it’s been a great timesaver. You’d be surprised how many people I’ve talked to that don’t know about this feature. 

[just-complete-trash]

If I’m color coding information should the jn-text citations also be color coded? Like for example the info about Norse mythology is navy blue, so should the citations also be blue?

[mizjoely]

AO3 Formatting Tip for people like me who are lazy

I know there is a way to make sure you don’t have all those funky extra spaces on AO3 without actually going through and deleting them, but if you also post to ff. net, there’s another way to do it that I find really simple.

Go to ff. net and upload your story/chapter here:

Then copy your text from the doc manager and go to AO3. Once there, paste it into the text box, making sure you’ve selected RIch Text and not HTML:

All your format will remain except centering - your bolds will remain bolded, your italics will remain italicized, and best of all, your spacing between paragraphs will look the way it’s supposed to.

[scribe-sisters-blog]

A Haiku about the Enter Key.

Ahem.

Use the Enter Key, Do not be afraid of it. Push the freaking key.

It’s harder to have too many paragraphs than it is to have too few. Too many is emphasis, too few is confusion.