The Big Bang Collection at AO3

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

What with posting beginning in under a week, it's time to say a few words about the collection at AO3. These will be much the same words that we have said in previous years.

You are not required to post your story/art to AO3, but we encourage you to do so. It lets us have a central location for all of the Big Bang fanworks, and also, as you probably know, all stories are easily downloadable in e-reader friendly formats; this is particularly nice for your fellow fen who have health issues or who just plain love their e-readers.

The collection for the current year is Pros Big Bang 2014. (Previous years' collections are accessible here.)

A couple of years ago sineala wrote up a little guide for how to post to AO3 for the Big Bang; the same directions apply, except that you'll want to make sure you're in the 2014 collection this year.

A couple of reminders:

1. In case anyone still doesn't have an AO3 account who wants one, let us know; we still have invite codes. Alternatively, the wait time for invites is currently under 24 hours.

2. If you have stories/art from previous years that you have not yet posted to the AO3, we have left the previous collections open for exactly this reason. Feel free to add your Big Bang story or art to the appropriate year's collection.

3. If you are planning to post in HTML rather than Rich Text, and (a) you are reasonably conversant with the features of your word processor and (b) that word processor is OpenOffice (it's free!), it may interest you to know that astolat has a set of OpenOffice macros for formatting italics/bold/etc and turning your story into HTML suitable for copying into a LJ or AO3 post.

Happy posting! Let us know if you have any questions and we will attempt to confuse you further.

Comments

[unbelievable2.livejournal.com]

I never know if I'm in HTML or Rich Text (wha'?) but I regularly post to AO3 so hope I can cope. What worries me though is embedding the pictures. I hope that's allowable, and are there any helpful tips for that?

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

The simplest thing to remember is that if it's HTML you can *see* the tag instructions for things like italics in your actual document. If it's Rich Text then you can see the italics but not the actual tag itself in your document.

If you regularly post to AO3 then it's no problem, you know what works with how you usually write your story. These instructions are aimed at people who never have posted to AO3.

As to the pictures, the first thing to ask yourself is whether you'll even be doing that. Remember, your artist will be making a separate post to the com.

IF you and your artist have decided to embed the artwork in your story then you upload the images to a picture hosting site like photobucket and then HTML link it from there.

Here's a link to the wikihow with simple instructions on how to do so (http://www.wikihow.com/Insert-Images-with-HTML)

[unbelievable2.livejournal.com]

*slaps head* Yes, of *course* that's how you embed! I'd completely forgotten. D'oh! Thank you!
And thank you also for the confirmation on Rich Text!

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

No problem, we're always happy to be of help. *g*

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

Also what I find very helpful is that you can post your draft and see how it looks first before publishing to AO3 for the world to see. Also it will save your draft for about a week so you don't have to wait until the last minute to see how your story looks or how the art is placed in it. I know I have to do mine on a trial run before posting. :)

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Good point, Kat, thanks. :D

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I just thought I'd tell you that when I sent the template for the Master Posts to our group, following the example you so kindly provided, half of them came back to me saying wha? I always use the html editor, it never occurred to me that so many people don't :D

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

When I'm writing things for work I have to remind myself *not* to type the HTML code tags in to the document but rather to just type in italics, etc. *g*

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Ahh, remember the old days when the rich text editor only worked one time out of ten...

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, back in the days when LJ was steam-powered. *g*

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

You mean it isn't still? Blimey. That's what I've been doing wrong all this time...

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Well, it did used to give LJ that dewey fresh look so not all change is for the better. *g*