...prepare your story for publishing online
List of terms often met in the fanfiction universe. More to come...
One of the things I personally recall from when I first joined the fanfiction world, was the difficulty I encountered as, right when I had my story ready, after spending endless days and more sleepless nights to perfect, I realised I didn't know how and where to publish it.
This page exists to help other ambitious writers facing the same problem, making sure that minor technicalities won't prevent the publishing of their stories.
There are the EASY methods and the more sophisticated ones... You make your choice.
I will however not suggest how to write the fanfiction. This is for you to decide. The source of ideas and the way you present them is entirely up to you. Interfering with it, is even rude.
Below you can learn how to put your story in a file easily read on the internet.
Note: Although newer versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer read Microsoft Word documents, it is not recommended to post your story as a word document (*.doc) because:
- Files can be ridicilously large
- They may contain viruses
- The plugin that reads word documents takes a lot of memory
- html and text files are the token internet files. And they are NOT hard to make!
- Open the program in which you write (word processor, notepad, etc)
- Whenever you want to change line, insert
orto have an empty line.
- Most word processors have the ability of replacing/substituting characters. Copy the tab into your clipboard and go, Edit -> Change/Replace/Substitute that clipboard with any of the options, such as ;nbsp&
- Save your file as html and open it in your browser.
Where if you wanted html, you've got it. Read below on how to enhance it.
To make this file into text...
- From the Browser's File menu, save the page as text. You may need to type the .txt extension!
Presto! You have a perfect txt file!
There's more to that, however. Read on...
General posting tips
- Make sure the font size is big enough to be clear. You don't want the reader to squint but you don't want to appear immature with excessively large text.
- Make sure there is proper paragraph separation. A block of text is hard to read and fanfiction should be enjoyable not a hard task.
- Ensure your text is properly within the window. Scrolling sideways is not advisable.
- Color is good but don't overdo it ok?
What files can I get my stories to?
Wouldn't it be great if the browser could read the original files you had your text, with all the underlining and fancy fonts? Unfortunately this doesn't happen. There are two types of text files accepted:
Advantages
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Disadvantages
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Just in: The line converter, a program that automatically word wraps a text file to the line length you choose it, so you don't have to go through the carriage return.
The program was kindly submitted by JRC. You can download the zipped file here:
Line Converter
You will find the four following files in the zip:
- Line Converter.exe
- readme.txt
- COMDLG32.ocx
- VB40032.lib
The text file is just plain text.
It appears something like that. Nothing fancy or special.
One great advantage of this format is that it is very small in size and should the reader have few time, it can be downloaded and viewed by any text viewer.
Q: Okay sounds cool. Now how do I do it?
A: All you need is Notepad (notepad.exe), or Wordpad (wordpad.exe / write.exe), depending on the size of the file. Both of these come with Windows (all versions) and are located in your Windows directory. Actually, any word processor should be able to handle text documents.
Save your text as Text document (*.txt). The word wrapping must be done manually, by pressing the 'Enter' / 'Return' button at the end of each line.
One thing to keep in mind when manually word wrapping is the size of the screen. Although the text might fit perfectly in your 800x600 resolution, anyone who views it in 640x480 will have trouble.
One rather simple and good way around it is to keep the notepad window in a size about the three quarters of the screen: That way, you can be sure you will fit to all screen dimensions.
A possible hazard one may encounter is the word wrapping option of the notepad. Unfortunately, this option is not preserved once the file is online. It can however be helpful, indicating the ends of the lines and you can browse down each of it, hitting the enter button.
When you're done word wrapping, disable the word wrapping option
Notepad: Menu Edit, click on Word Wrap
Wordpad: Menu View --> Options --> Text tick No wrap
Better still, open the file in your browser
File --> Open. It'll show the select screen. That will also show you how your file will look when viewed by third persons online.
Tips when opening a downloaded text file: Better if you view it using an advanced text editor, such as wordpad, since many times this file includes the tab character that in notepad appears as a messy little black rectangle. Normally, wordpad will be all you need.
Advantages
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Disadvantages
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The html file can be as wild as you picture it to be... Hold it right there.
The fonts you choose for the file will work finely only for your browser, unless you're talking about *really* popular fonts.
Fonts that are likely in every user's disk are:
- Times New Roman
- Courier new
- Arial
- Verdana
- Comic Sans MS
- Algerian
And don't forget the
Now for the infamous 'tabs' problem. However many times you press the space bar within an html document, the browser will insist in showing one single space.
Ways around it are the tag, that replaces the paragraph pretty well. Only problem, MSExplorer isn't really happy with it.
| What the source looks like... | What the browser shows: | |
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The other trick is replacing each space stroke with ;nbsp& and this way, by putting about five or six strings of that mystic keystriking, you will achieve the gap needed. Unlike the previous method, you need to remember to add either
or
to achieve line separation.
| What the source looks like... | What the browser shows: | |
|
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This one definitely shows a neat tab in all browsers. Drawback is that it significantly increases the volume of the file |
The best and most certain way is with the help of the all famous invisible gif. This file is a transparent gif of a pixel height and width. Instead of a tab, you can start your paragraph with the tag provided you have the transparent gif. Get it here in case you don't :)
Again, don't forget the
or
tags for the line separation. I personally recommend the
one.
| What the source looks like... | What the browser shows: | |
|
Make it as wide as you want, include an alt tag if you wish. With space.gif you can practically do anything you want!!!
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Make it as wide as you want, include an alt tag if you wish. With space.gif you can practically do anything you want!!! |
And if you have a good picture editing program, you can modify the dimentions of the gif, so you can skip the width attribute in your tag.
Again, choosing the right spacing is up to you...
The text now is automatically word wrapped to the width of your window, be that the browser or the available frame. However, you still need to separate paragraphs with the famous
tag. You can of course replace that with
since that leaves
a single spacing instead of a full empty line.
To the matter of adding colour, images, music and backgrounds to your text.
Surely you can, if you want to make a confusion of images that most of the times discourage the reader. Readers don't come for your pictures, rather your writing skills. The quizlett held from January the 25th, 1999 to January the 31st, 1999 stated the following:
Therefore, while ornaments are possibly a good idea, please refrain from really flourished backgrounds such as only annoy the eye.
On the subject of music, if you MUST have music accompanying your text, then leave the option of listening to the reader. Most of us browse with music of our choice and a midi sticking out
somewhere there is plainly... discouraging. Take my advice.
I have the stories ready... where do I post?
So your story is all set and ready to be posted but... how do you get it online?
Either you start your own homepage, or you send it to one of the sites accepting submissions of others.
To start a homepage, you need a server. On the left are some hosts of free webspace for those who want to start their own homepage.
If that's not you as you still feel uncomfortable or you don't really have time to maintain a homepage, there are many sites accepting fanfiction online. What you need to do is contact the webmasters of these sites and let them know of your story.
You can find many such sites through the Fanfiction world. They are in the Submit section of the site.
With every hope, all your questions have now been answered. If however there still are some that aren't covered, don't hesitate to ask me.
Hope to read your stories soon!
This page is copyright by Sapfarah. Reproduction or distribution of this page or portions of it is not permitted. If you wish to link to it, let me know.
free web space
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