How To Add A Story

How To Add A Story

The form to post a story should be self-explanatory or at least easy to figure out what goes where. The fields that must have entries in order for you to post a story are: Title, Summary, Category, Rating and of course Story Text.
The first box is for the title of your story. Simply enter the Title. If you want to make the title a 'hot link' to take the reader to another webpage where your story is already located, see #12 below for instructions.
Below the Title is a space to provide a brief summary of what the story may be about. Please, readers like this, so take a moment to provide something. Do not use, 'Please Read', 'I'm a great writer you won't be sorry', 'Untitled' or anything else that doesn't pertain to the story. You will also note this section is the first that incorporates the TinyMCE editor this script uses. You may use the buttons below this space to modify your entry, with bold, italics etc. You may also use either the 'Plain Text' or 'Word' buttons to cut and paste your information from another source. If you use the Firefox browser you will need to use these as Firefox does not allow the 'cut and paste', I didn't try it in IE or other browsers yet.
To submit a birthday story, for Category first use the drop down box to select Months. Once Months shows under Category, use the drop down box again to select the appropriate month your story was written for. Once that is finished be sure to hit Select to save your choice. On rare occasions the story may fit another Category. Perhaps you wrote a story that covered several months, or it may involve a holiday, or there were some that were in Poetry form. If you wish to add another Category just follow the above steps again, be sure to hit Select when finished. Your Category choices will be listed in the field box below the Category selection box. If you enter a Category by mistake, just highlight it in the box below and hit the Clear button.
The next three boxes deal with some of the warnings that may be identified with your story and can also be used for readers to search by. Most of the stories on this archive will be of the H/C Genre, but other Genres may apply. Choose what fits your story and highlight it. As noted in the directions above the boxes, holding down the CTRL key after making your first selection will allow you to make multiple selections if needed. Do the same for Warnings, choose any amd all of those listed that may be appropriate for your story. For Characters, the main cannon characters have been listed. Only worry about choosing the Character(s) that are the main focus of your story. NOTE: If there is a Genre or Warning that you think needs to be added, please notify Administration at m77h7c@gmail.com.
The next line is for your story's rating. You may find the guidelines here: http://tfrrs.tripod.com/. Remember no slash is allowed on this archive.
If your story is complete in one posting, check the box next to complete. If you have multiple chapters leave this box blank. You can then add additional chapters until the story is complete. When the story is complete, then go to your manage stories page. On your list of stories you will see the word Complete and Yes or No beside it. If the story is now complete, click on the No and it should change to Yes. The reverse is true if you accidently set a story as complete but it is still in progress.
Chapter Titles - most are labeled as Chapter 1, Chapter 2, ect, (these come up automatically, don't shoot me if I'm wrong) but you may give your individual chapters an actual name, feel free to do so here.
Author's Notes: This is optional. For simplicity's sake only OW, ATF, and AU where included in the list under Genres. If you want to further identify the AU you are writing in, you may do that here. Also note this script generates a date that the story is published, the date you upload it to the archive. This will show on the Story Indexes and when formatted for printing, if you want to include the original date the story was written do so here. This is where you can also acknowledge beta readers or original creators to the AU or characters in your story, or simply explain special circumstances within the story that you wish to point out. Note: if you do a link to your story in the Title section your authors notes mau not show up.
Now it comes to the heart of the action - adding the story. You can do this by either cut and pasting your story into the text box. Or look below the larger box to the Story Text (file). Here using the browse button will allow you to find your story in your computer files and upload it to the site. If you customarily put the Story Title, Author, Warnings, Disclaimers etc. at the top of your story in your file, uploading this way will not put this information in the appropriate spaces, it will just be another paragraph. You may want to make a separate file just for the body of your story for this purpose, and some say saving it as a txt file makes the process easier, just like it makes it easier for cutting and pasting to the list. If you use Microsoft Word you will probably get double spaces between the paragraphs. It helps if you go through your story and remove the extra spaces before you hit preview, because previewing may add another extra space. Above the authors notes you will see a list of allowed HTML tags, this is what this program recognizes. If you get a lot of extra spaces or strange line breaks after you preview your story you can go through and delete any of the extra you find. If your are really into tech stuff E-fiction uses a Javascript called TinyMCE and you can try to understand it at their site. Sometimes cutting and pasting your work from another site, with the HTML already encoded works fine and will leave the allowed codes in place such for Italics =  or Bold = . You can add these functions yourself in your story, just remember when you put the beginning tag, after the section you are changing, put the ending tag, (the tag with a / ). I'm sorry if this is only as clear as mud to some people, I think it will take a little trial and error before you get use to it. And for archivist this is only a small fraction of the code they use to manage websites so now you can appreciate them even more.<g> Note: Since I wrote this, I updated the TinyMCE editor. Now it is much easiser to use the buttons for the cut and paste in txt file format or word. Click on one of the buttons below the text box, paste your story into the box then hit insert. As before you can through and edit if you need to. Highlight words to Bold and use the bold button, it will automatically place the code. For the horizontal lines between scene changes or POV use the 'bar' located there. You will not see the bar right away just a small dot. If you are like me and paste a story part up to a break, insert the break,just go ahead and paste the next story part in. It will go in the right place. Hit preview and you will see the breaks. If you hover your mouse over a button on the editor it will identify it.
If you do need further help or question contact the administration m77h7c@gmail.com .
You already have your story up on a website, you don't want to upload the story here because you want the readers to see your pretty pictures too. <g> We can handle that. I like to use the Story Title box for this but you can also do this in the story text box. The reason I like using the Story Title box is because then when readers select the title you will automatically go to the story, otherwise you will get another page and then be able to click on the URL. So in the Story Title box (see how I got you to do that) insert the following <a href='http//Note this is your URL addy here'>Your Story Title As Normal</a>. And that should give you a hot link. You will still need to fill in the other items, Summary, Genre, Ratings, etc. Plus put something in the text box, like 'See Title'. If you do the hot link correctly no one will ever see that but the program expects something to be there. If you don't do the tags in the Story Title box, just put the above tags and addy in the Story Text box to create a hot link there. Also note: doing this method will not give you your word counts, chapters counts etc, if you are concerned with those things. People can still review your story though.
If you use horizontal lines or special characters *~ ~* or = = 7 = =, to mark the POV and scene changes within your story, you may certainly leave those in. You may want to check that they are centered (<center></center>), or use the centering button, if you want them that way. What I like is if you go through you can remove those and at the left hand margin where they were, insert <hr>. When your story is published the default horizontal line will be inserted automatically. With the TinyMCE editor there is a blue bar button that will insert the horizontal line for you. It will not appear until you use the preview button. If you hand code the <hr> you may need to hit the preview button twice for the lines to appear.
In the future we hope to add a gallery site to upload pictures. Still working on that, but you can add an image to your story if you wish. I believe you can also add one to your personal information page also, like an avatar. If you want to add a picture to your story, go to your account page and look for Manage Images. Select upload new image, use the browser button to select the image from your computer and hit Upload. If done successful you will be given an HTML code, copy that and paste it into your story, usually at the top of the first chapter.
Adding Fanart: For the time being a Category has been added for Fanart to allow you to upload pictures for manipulations of pictures if you wish. Login, go to your Account Page, choose the option Manage Images. (images cannot exceed 640x480 pixels). After you upload the image, you will see a page with the html code for the image. Go to page to upload a story and fill in the form. In the box for Story Text, copy the code for the image. Do not add anything other than the image to the story text box. If you want to add notes to the picture do so in the Summary or Author Notes section. Make sure you submit the picture under the Fanart Category only.
To Issue or Answer a Challenge: Click on Challenges. To Issue a Challenge, click on 'Issue a Challenge'. Fill out the short form. A Title, readers can search by titles, a brief Summary of what you'd like to see. Category should be Challenges. Then if you want to specify Characters. To Answer a Challenge: Click on Challenges. You can read through the Challenges offered, the alphabet line above can help search by titles. To submit your Answer to one, go to you Account Page and Enter a New Story, be sure the Category you select is Challenges. When the story is uploaded go to the Challenges page find the challenge you were answering and click on Respond to the Challenge under the entry. You will see a list of your stories, click the box next to the one you are answering the challenge with and Submit. This will link your story to those files.
That should be it for now, you now an author on the Archive. If there is something else that you feel needs to be covered here feel free to contact the Administration. m77h7c@gmail.com Also if you need further help. I'm still learning too, but we will muddle through together.