Welcome to the third edition of Swan Queen Winter Solstice!
We’re very glad to announce that sign-ups are now officially open from Nov 1st to Nov 20th at 11:59PM EST for writers and artists! They will stay open for betas and cheerleaders all throughout the event, but (in the case of cheerleaders) please consider signing up early to get matched with someone sooner.
There is important information about the event in the FAQ and Schedule links, so make sure to check them out before signing up. If you still have any questions, you can contact us on Twitter, Tumblr, or send an email to [email protected]. We may also be found in the Discord server.
Soon we'll release the newest version of the Prompts List. If you'd like to send a prompt to help another possible creator, click here. Next week we'll announce the list, so don't miss your chance! If you're interested in signing up but are unsure of what to create, you can have a look at it and see if anything sparks your interest.
Our Discord server is also up — we send updates there as well if that’s more convenient for you. It’s also a great way to get to know other participants and to share troubles, to do writing/art sprints, and to get help from fellow creators!
Our official prompt list is out, sorry for the wait! If you’re still on the fence about signing up to create something for SQ Winter Solstice 3, why not take a look at the list linked below and see if anything sparks your interest? 💙
The final steps are upon us. It’s time to put your works in the Swan Queen Winter Solstice collection, so they can eventually be revealed to the fandom! 💜
The deadline for posting your work(s) is midnight EST on January 22nd unless you’ve asked for an extension. (Click HERE to check what time that is in your area.)
Without further ado, let’s do this!
1. HOW TO GET TO THE COLLECTION
To start, head directly to the collection by clicking HERE, and then hit the Post to Collection button to submit a work to it.
If you have participated before in similar events, then feel free to skip the rest of this tutorial and create your work in the collection (the only exception might be if you’re posting a video, because we have a special formatting we’ve provided for displaying them on mobile. You might want to check it out in section 6.3).
2. TAGS SECTION
The first section that will show up when you create a new work is the Tags section. Here you will add information about your creation: Rating, Archive Warnings, Fandom, Category, Relationships, Characters, and Additional Tags. It will look similar to the image below:
The Rating and the Archive Warnings are very important steps, so please make sure they are accurate to your work. Make use of any of the options for Archive Warnings that might apply, keeping in mind that ‘No Archive Warnings Apply’ should only be used in case none of the others such as ‘Graphic Depictions of Violence’ or ‘Underage’ appear in your work. Otherwise, if you’re trying to avoid spoiling your plot for any reason, ‘Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings’ is a good option.
In Fandoms, you could add another besides Once Upon a Time (TV) if your work has a crossover; in Relationships, and Characters, feel free to add any others that might appear in your work besides Emma and Regina in case they’re crucial to the plot.
Additional Tags can include anything you feel might also apply to your creation, and that also might help people search for it.
If there are any specific warnings you’d like to clarify, add them in. Is your plot set in an alternate universe? Or maybe it includes bed sharing? Are they being idiots in love? (Always.) Maybe they’re trapped together? Is there lots of fluff? Mutual pining? Angst? (Well, now that would be a plot alright.)
Just don’t add too many to avoid overwhelming anyone, of course.
3. PREFACE SECTION
Now, to introduce your work to people. How will it be named and remembered? Here’s more or less how the preface section will look like once you’ve filled it in:
In your Work Title, you name your creation. In Add co-creators, you add the name of your collab creator in case you have one. You put your Summary in its text box, explaining some of your plot — for writers and artists both, we recommend not leaving your summary blank! It gives a bit more insight into your work.
Specifically for artists — in the title, adding [Art], [Fanvid] or [Fanart] to the end of your title helps make it recognizable in the collection. (An additional tag with the same thing wouldn’t hurt, too!)
After that, we have Notes. You can have them at the beginning by checking the little box, or at the end (or both!). The first one is a good place for you to thank betas, cheerleaders, explain a bit about your idea, inspirations; while the second one can be another place to thank everyone, talk a bit more about your process, and remind everyone that comments are very very welcome.
If your work has multiple chapters, we recommend not marking ‘at the end’ for now unless you’d like for the same note to appear at the end of every chapter!
4. ASSOCIATIONS
Firstly, please check that SQWinterSolstice3 is still there in Post to Collections / Challenges — if you clicked directly on the link beforehand, it should be. If you don’t see it, type it in and you should be good to go.
It’s possible to Gift this work to someone, too. You could gift it to your beta, cheerleader, or just a friend. Just type in their AO3 name.
This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work — you can mark this if you worked with another creator. Just get the work’s URL from your collab partner, paste it in its box and AO3 will do the rest.
This work is part of a series — in case you’re writing multiple works set in the same universe, for example, you can mark this and create a series. Otherwise, feel free to skip it altogether.
This work has multiple chapters — as seen in the image above, when you mark the option you can type in the amount of chapters your work has, as well as name your first chapter. If your work does not have multiple chapters, just leave it unmarked.
Set a different publication date — do NOT mark it just yet! Once you receive your email with your reveal date, we will provide further instructions about this and when to change the date. If you set it to something different now, your work won’t show up at the beginning of the SQ tag once it’s revealed, so leave it alone for now.
Choose a language — select English and that’s it!
Select work skin — if you have worked with HTML/CSS before and have customized something for your work, select your work skin here. If not, leave it blank, or refer to 6.3 in case you’re posting a video.
5. PRIVACY SECTION
This section is completely up to you. While ‘Only show your work to registered users’ and ‘Only registered users can comment’ might limit mean comments, they can also make it harder for people to comment in general. ‘Enable comment moderation’ means you’ll have to approve comments before they show up on the page, so it’s a more viable option. Consider what’s best for you.
6. WORK TEXT SECTION
Here is where you place your work.
6.1 — Fics;
6.2 — Fanarts, fanmixes etc;
6.3 — Fanvids.
6.1. FICS
While you can use the HTML editor, we recommend switching to the Rich Text editor so you can directly paste your story from Word or Google Docs. Otherwise, your fic might lack spaces between each paragraph, making it harder to read. Most of the basic formatting will be retained from the original, such as bold, italics, paragraph division, etc so please make sure to change to Rich Text before pasting your work.
If everything worked so far and feels correct, please refer to item 7.
6.2. FANARTS, FANMIXES ETC
Also using the Rich Text editor like shown above, to add an image click on Insert/edit image:
This is what will pop up once you do:
In Source, AO3 asks you to paste in the url of your work. There are a few options to get one. The easiest one is to post it privately on your Tumblr, grabbing the url from it. Please remember that anywhere you post it to get this url has to be private, since it hasn’t been revealed yet. Your URL has to end in .png, .jpg, .gif to be valid. AO3 also provides a few alternatives, if you want to check it out.
Next, we have Image description. Here you’re able to describe your work for people who use screen readers.
For Width and Height, leave it blank for now and see how your image looks posted before altering it. If it looks fine for all screens, then you don’t have to change it.
You might have to write something in the text box in order to have the image show up.
If everything worked so far and feels correct, please refer to item 7.
6.3. FANVIDS
Remember: your video has to be set to private until its reveal date! The following tutorial works for Youtube videos. It might not work if you’re posting it elsewhere.
If you head to your video, you’re able to click on Share and then Embed and copy the code for your video. While pasting that code on the HTML editor on AO3 works fine, it leaves it badly displayed on mobile. For this reason, we found a code from pigalle that embeds a youtube video and scales it correctly for any smaller screens.
It may be a few extra steps, but it does look a lot nicer for mobile viewers.
The first step is to create your own work skin so you’re able to apply it to your work. (You might have to save your work first as a draft in order to have your work skin showing up as an option to choose from. It’s necessary to refresh the page so the work skin shows up.)
So, to create your work skin, head over to your profile on the top right, then click on My Dashboard.
There, click on Skins, then on the button My Work Skins, and, last but not least, Create Work Skin.
Next, in the About section you can fill it in with any Title you’d like, as long as the Type is set to Work Skin. The description, preview and apply to make public options are not necessary, so you may skip them.
Now, for the CSS part. The CSS is what sets the properties and values and decides how the HTML will look like. What matters is just pasting the code below in the box. You don’t have to alter it, just copy and paste it:
#workskin .mobilevideo {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
#workskin .videoscale {
position: relative;
height: 0;
padding-top: 56.25%;
}
#workskin .videocontainer {
max-width: 100%;
width: 560px;
}
After that, just click on Submit, and that will mean your Work Skin has been created!
Back to your work, in the Associations section, Select Work Skin should have your recently created one as an option. Remember that you might have to refresh the page for it to show up, so make sure to save it as a draft first so you don’t lose any changes you made.
And then, in the HTML editor of your work, paste the code below:
Then, when you go to your video on Youtube, grab the ID portion of it like the one highlighted below:
Simply copy and paste that into the code where it says VIDEO ID HERE, like shown in the picture below as an example:
If everything worked so far and feels correct, please refer to item 7.
7. POST SECTION
And that’s it! Please double-check if everything is correct, though you’ll be able to edit it later. If you’d like to take a look at it first, click on Preview. If you’re confident about it, just click on Post.
If you’ve clicked on Preview, it will show how your work looks like on AO3. If something’s amiss, go back to the previous page by clicking on Edit. If it’s good to go, just click on Post — it’s the only way to have it be submitted to the collection, otherwise we won’t receive it.
7.1 HOW TO ADD CHAPTERS AND EDIT YOUR WORK
If your work is one with multiple chapters, or you’d like to make it one, on top of the posted work you’ll find several buttons. Clicking on Add Chapter or Edit will provide you with the option to create a new chapter for your work.
In case it only has one chapter and you’d like to edit it, just click on Edit and you should find the same page from earlier. Simply scroll down until you get to the Work Text section, and then click on the Rich Text button to edit your work.
8. HOW TO FIND YOUR WORK LATER
Once your work is posted as a Mystery Work, you can bookmark the page on your browser — the url will not change after it’s been revealed. It’s the easiest way to not lose track of where your work is and edit it later.
But don’t worry! If you lost your work’s url, there are a few ways to get the url and save it.
On your dashboard on AO3, there is an option on the sidebar that says WORKS. From there, you can either click EDIT WORKS (which displays all your works) or WORKS IN COLLECTIONS (which displays all your works currently in a collection). Either option will show you your unrevealed work.
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There we go! Now you’re all set. Thank you so much for submitting your work!
We will be emailing you your reveal date(s) soon, so don’t worry if you hear someone has already gotten it and yours hasn’t arrived yet. In the email you’ll have more details on what to do for your reveal day, so please make sure to check your email so you don’t miss it!
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected] preferably, or on Twitter @SQWintrSolstice.
