minimalsizeconspiracy

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

No-Google (fan)fic writing, Part 4: Markdown

Storytime

As I mentioned in this post, I frequently use LaTeX to write fanfiction. As a system based on plain text, it takes fewer resources and lets me do stuff like using a glossary to swap between the vocabulary used in different continuities of my fandom for the same concept.

Most fandoms don’t suffer of that particular problem, though. They may use slightly different terminology, but it’s usually not six different words for the same concept, so that’s a feature very few people will need. So what would be an alternative, if you want to move away from using Word or Google docs, have decided that LibreOffice Writer isn’t for you and LaTeX is really too complicated?

I would suggest you take a look at Markdown.

Word/Writer/Google docs versus Markdown

Let’s perhaps start out by backing up a step and clarifying a few things. Like, for example, what plain text even is and what it looks like.

Very simply, plain text shows only the characters, but no graphical representation or other stuff. If you use AO3 to upload your stories and you’ve clicked on the HTML button, you already have an idea of what plain text looks like, but images say more than words, so

It doesn’t look too scary, does it? It’s just text with a few characters mixed in, like # and ** and [].

What do they do?

Well, other than in Word/Google docs, where you click on the button to mark words you want in italics, in Markdown, you enclose the word in *stars*. If you want a heading, start the line with #. For a subheading, you use ## before the subheading title.

These characters won’t be printed in the output document. They’re just instructions to your computer that you want this word in bold and that word in italics and it’s the same thing as in Word, except you can see the **bold** and the *italics* in your text and you need to type ** and * instead of clicking a button.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. And you probably already know that already, because Markdown is one of the most commonly used markup languages on the internet. Chats use Markdown. Tumblr uses Markdown. If you don’t believe me, create a new post, open the options via the little wheel and scroll down to “Text Editor”. It’ll probably be set to Rich Text, but if you click on it, the dropdown also gives you the option of using HTML or Markdown.

So basically, you already know Markdown. If you are thinking about getting away from Word/Google docs and you don’t want to invest much time in learning something else, Markdown will take you about half an hour to learn.

Yes, seriously. Half an hour of your time and you can be free of Word/Google docs forever.

That deserves a big +1.

Cost

Equally deserving of +1 is the fact that Markdown is free. And there are really good, also free and simple guides for Markdown beginners. My favourite is the Markdown Guide.

Also free are many of the applications you can use to write Markdown.

Interface

One personal favourite, and the one I would recommend especially for Markdown beginners, is Ghostwriter – simply because it comes with an inbuilt preview window that lets you check what your text will look like on output.

It’s also incredibly easy to export your .md-file to your desired output format from Ghostwriter – CTRL + E opens a menu, which gives you different options. Because, much like LaTeX, you can export Markdown into a whole variety of other file formats (more below).

But, in case you don’t like Ghostwriter, there are other options. Also a personal favourite of mine is KATE, which is originally for Linux systems, but runs on Windows just as well. KATE, too, has a preview window, but is more of a general-purpose editor, so can also be used for other stuff.

Then there’s Notepad++, which is for Windows only. It needs the Markdown Panel or Markdown Viewer++ plugin to preview Markdown documents in the same way Ghostwriter and KATE allow you to, but they’re free, too, and easy to install, so that’s not really a problem.

+1 for the choices and also for the quality of the editors.

File formats

Some people may still be wondering what exactly the benefit of Markdown is when you still need the extra step of exporting the text. Word/Google docs and even Writer just allow you to copypaste directly.

Well. The benefit is that you can convert your .md-file to a vast number of other file formats, especially if you install a translator like Pandoc in addition. You want to copypaste your text into the AO3 Rich Text editor? You export your .md-file to RTF, or ODT, or even DOCX.

You prefer the AO3 HTML editor? Great, simply export your .md-file to HTML instead and copypaste from there.

Why is that useful? I’m going to write a longer post on this, but it is for example very useful if you want to send the same story to your beta, who then uses “track changes” in Word/Writer, and later on upload it to AO3 from HTML.

Or if you publish on AO3 and fanfiction.net both, where you still need to upload your story as a .docx- or .odt-file in order to publish it.

Of course, if you continue using Word/Google docs, all of that kind of comes automatically without needing to export anything.

That’s true, but the post that sparked this series explains how Google is now using Google docs to train their AI on your work. And Word uses proprietary code. If your document ends up corrupted in some way and you haven’t made backup copies, there’s a pretty good chance your story will be lost.

Markdown documents use plain text. You can open them with any text editor, on any computer, on whichever operating system, and it’s close to impossible to corrupt a plain text file to the point where the contents are beyond saving. You really need to put a lot of effort into it, let’s put it like that.

So even if your editor breaks; if Ghostwriter stops development; if KATE and Notepad++ disappear – there will still be tons of free plain text-editors around for you to open your file with and read your story.

+1 for flexibility – and +1 for not having to be afraid of losing stories to outdated file formats and software.

Features

Markdown has all of the features you need to mark up text: italics, bold, italicbold, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, numbered lists, unnumbered lists, quotes, and yes, you can include images as well.

A feature that I particularly like and that neither Word nor Writer have, is the ability to “outcomment” text. What that means is quite simply that you write text that doesn’t appear in the final output, for example like this:

The [//]: # () tells your computer that this is text you don’t want to include in the output, allowing you to keep notes or stuff you didn’t want to delete in the original file. Neither Word nor Google docs nor Writer can, to my knowledge, do that, and it’s a feature I love to death because I’m one of those authors ridiculously attached to what they’ve written, even when I recognise it doesn’t fit into the story any longer.

+1 many times over.

Syncing

Markdown files can be synched between computers with any common synching service out there: Dropbox, OneDrive, GIT, an old-fashioned USB.

Because it is plain text, syncing with GIT has additional benefits, which needs an extra post – let’s just say for now that if you use GIT to sync Markdown files, you’ll easily be able to see the changes you made between the last and the current version of the document.

Ease of use for Word/Google doc-users

If you’re coming straight from Word/Writer/Google docs, Markdown needs some rethinking. By that I mean, probably about an hour until you’ve gotten used to it. It is very easy to learn, it is very easy to use and it takes very little time to get the hang of it. In fact, I would say that for someone coming straight from Word(-like) text processors, Markdown is probably the easiest markup language to get into. Other than LaTeX, it doesn’t require you to learn a whole new way of approaching documents, it doesn’t even require using the command line depending on which editor you use.

So yes, besides Zettelkasten, this is the approach I would most recommend to every writer looking to get away from Word and Google docs.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

No-Google (fan)fic writing, Part 3: LaTeχ

Storytime

Just like I used Zettelkasten for fic parallel to Word for work for a long time, I used LaTeX alongside Zettelkasten for a few years. The reason why I made the switch to LaTeX in the first place was precisely because I’d been forced to use Word at work, and Word is just about the shittiest application you could possibly choose if you have to make text look pretty. As in, print-worthy pretty, not just “this assignment needs to look somewhat good so my professor doesn’t grade me down”.

So I badgered an acquaintance to show me LaTeX, which he did, which is when I started down that road – that I’m still on, although I am fairly certain it leads to hell. There were a number of reasons why I started using LaTeX for writing fanfic as well:

I ditched Dropbox for GIT, which is way better in terms of version control and allows you to directly compare changes between plain text files. With Zettelkasten’s bespoke .zkn3 file format, the direct comparison unfortunately doesn’t work because it’s not plain text, and I became increasingly frustrated with that.

I got into Raspberry Pis, and while it is possible to work with Zettelkasten on the small screens, even that simple interface became a bit much for the screen size.

I fell into the Transformers fandom with its plethora of canon and fanon terms for body parts, time units and even different curse words.

Boiling all of that down, I made the decision to switch to a system that would allow me to write plain text at all times because plain text is great for direct comparisons of files, for working on your stories regardless of which operating system your computer runs on – and because LaTeX has an amazing package called “glossaries” that I’ll talk about later on.

Word/Writer/Google docs versus LaTeX

Hoo boy, where to even start! Because, you see, LaTeX is NOT “What You Get Is What You See”. LaTeX is “What You Get Is What You Want (but that also means that while you’re writing your document, it looks nothing like the finished version will look)”.

Let me be plain and clear from the start: If you’re looking into an easy and convenient replacement for Word/Writer/Google docs, I can almost assure you that LaTeX is not what you’re looking for, at least not plain LaTeX. Learning LaTeX requires you to completely rethink how you approach text, because

where in Word, you’ll have boldface and italics and a mixture of both,

in LaTeX, you must write \textbf{boldface} and \textit{italics} and \textbf{\textit{a mixture of both}} and put \chapter{around every single one of your chapter headings} and never, ever forget to close a curly bracket or you’ll (temporarily) break your document.

It ain’t for the faint of heart or those unwilling to learn how to write plain text with code that is actually instructions to your computer on what you would like pieces of your text to look like in your output file.

And for 99.9% of stories, LaTeX is completely overpowered. Seriously.

But I love LaTeX and use it for writing fanfic, so I’ll include it here.

Cost

On the pro side, LaTeX is free. On Windows, you can either install MiKTeX or TeX Live, on Linux, only the latter.

+1 for being free. Just make sure you have enough bandwith and time when you install, because it’ll take time. Hours, if your computer is old or you have little bandwith.

Interface

Here comes the first catch:

You will almost never interact directly with LaTeX, especially if you’re new to it. Becaus LaTeX runs in the background and you need an extra interface to interact with it, unless you’re comfortable using the command line.

Fortunately, there are very good LaTeX editors: TeXstudio and TeXMaker are probably the most popular, and either is good and free. Or you can use any plain text editor, really: Notepad++, KATE, whatever Mac has.

Which I sort of want to give +1 for, because it’s not difficult to find a good LaTeX editor, buuut you actually have to download and install an extra editor to use it.

File formats

Still, there is the +1 I’ll give it for being plain text. You can open a LaTeX document in any editor you like and you’ll be able to read the file contents. The official file extension is .tex, but it’s basically the same as opening a .txt-file.

That is actually great. Genuinely, really great, because regardless of which computer you’re using, every computer, any operating system will come with an editor that can open .tex-files.

Even better, if your documents aren’t too complicated, they can be exported into HTML, which is what I usually do. Write story in LaTeX, export to HTML via make4ht, then copypaste into the AO3 HTML or Rich Text editor.

But the main output format for LaTeX is actually PDF. To use make4ht, you need to use the command line, so it’s actually a bit more complicated than with Zettelkasten or LibreOffice Writer to get your story out of LaTeX and into AO3.

Features

As far as features are concerned, there are an insane number of things you can do with LaTeX, layout-wise. I could spend a whole year writing an entry every day on something LaTeX can do and I still wouldn’t have covered even half of it.

LaTeX requires you to have proper document structures, meaning chapters, sections etc. It lets you outcomment text that you want to keep, but don’t want printed in the final version. It lets you load entire chapters or scenes from other .tex-files if you want to keep them separated like the “notes” in Zettelkasten. There’s a package that allows you to include fancy coloured To-Do notes just to annoy your beta with whiny comments about how you’re struggling with a particular scene. (I do that a lot.)

In other words, it is extensive. So I’m going to just focus on what was my main reason to move to LaTeX to write fanfic: the “glossaries” package. Remember what I said above about all the different terms in Transformers? Canon and fanon terminology is, in fact, so diverse and extensive that people write whole lexica for it.

Hands can be servos. Feet can be pedes or peds. And the time units in different continuities (there’s at least seven) make you want to break down, hit the floor with your fists and scream “why?!?” as your neighbours call 112.

The glossaries package in combination with what are called “conditional switches” in LaTeX allows me to create a sort of “dictionary” including all of those different time units while using the same “keyword” for the same concept.

Let’s pick “year” as an example. The entry for that looks approximately like this:

\ifDreamwave \newglossaryentry{year}{name={ano-cycle},description={probably meanting a year in the Dreamwave continuity}} \fi

\ifEnergon \newglossaryentry{year}{name={cycle}, description={year in the Energon continuity}} \fi

\ifIDWTwo \newglossaryentry{year}{name={kilocycle}, description={year in IDW 2019}} \fi

I could go on, but I think the principle has become clear. All of these have in common that I “call” them by entering \gls{year} in the actual text. What the \if does is switch between the different versions, depending on which I enable by adding, for example, \Energontrue.

Every time \gls{year} appears in the text, LaTeX will now automatically replace it with “cycle”, and I can stop trying to remember which word the particular continuity I’m writing for uses.

Does this blow the whole issue of different terminology entirely out of proportion?

Yes, yes, it does. But if you think that will dissuade me, you can’t have met many fanfiction authors. I do not care in the slightest that it is entirely bonkers to go to all that effort just to make sure I’m using the right terminology for the continuity I’m writing in. You’re missing the point.

Syncing

Unless you’re using Overleaf (I’m going to laugh my arse off if any of you tells me you’re using your university-sponsored Overleaf licence to write fanfiction), syncing your .tex-files across machines requires the use of another service – Dropbox, OneDrive, but actually, GIT is the best, either online via GitHub or GitLab or with a USB. I will get to the differences between those services in due time.

Ease of use for Word/Google doc-users

XD

I said it above already, but if you’re coming straight from Word or Google docs to LaTeX, you’re going to have to invest time into understanding how LaTeX works. You’ll have to get used to writing code in your document and being unable to immediately see what your text looks like in the output, unless you use LyX, which is a LaTeX-editor that was built specifically to make it easier for Word-users to switch to using LaTeX. But even so, you’ll need to learn how to structure documents.

If you’re thinking of using LaTeX for other purposes as well – uni, publishing actual books, anything where it’s useful to be able to layout your documents professionally yourself, absolutely. At least give it a try.

In order to just write fanfic? In franchises that haven’t decided to come up with new time units every time they create a new continuity?

It’s probably not worth it. The only reason I’m using it to write fanfic is because I already knew all of that stuff. I didn’t have to invest time in learning LaTeX in the first place, I just started using LaTeX for writing fanfic as well.

Don’t get me wrong. I love LaTeX. It is just a huge time investment if you can’t also use those skills somewhere else, and if it’s the plain text you’re after, the next part will feature Markdown – which has by and large the same benefits as LaTeX, but takes about half an hour to learn.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

No-Google (fan)fic writing, Part 2: Zettelkasten

Storytime

Word and Writer (see this post) used to have one huge disadvantage – the number of pages either of them were capable of keeping in active memory before the whole thing would just crash. This was, of course, in part because computers had less RAM in those days, but also because Word and Writer constantly keep everything you write available in exactly the layout it will be printed as. Or, to use slightly more computer-y language, both of them are “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG).

That also means that if you start using certain features – lots of headings, footnotes, images especially – they quickly reached their capacity. I had one document consistently crash at 100 pages, although usually, it would take up to 300 pages before that happened.

Nonetheless, it was frustrating, also because the crashing meant that documents would get corrupted and I would lose what I had written. Yes, corrupted documents are a real issue. Especially because Word’s source code is protected, so it’s not easy to recover them.

Also annoying was the “having to split up documents into several files”.

But the worst part, for me, was that I lost some really good stuff because I was rearranging the order of scenes and forgot to paste before cutting another scene, and didn’t notice in time.

So I went looking for other options. How I ended up finding Zettelkasten is a mystery today, but I did.

Word/Writer/Google docs versus Zettelkasten

So what is Zettelkasten?

Many notes, one story

Well, if you have heard of Scrivener, that would be an equivalent. The principle is fairly easy – every new thought/idea/scene is created as a “note”, which is added to a growing collection of other “notes”. That means you can keep different scenes separate and work on them individually without always opening the whole document, which, given the crashing problems mentioned above, definitely a +1.

Features

It is also easier to rearrange the order of scenes without losing anything, because Zettelkasten has a virtual “desk”, on which you can place your notes. This “desk” can be divided into chapters, sections and subsections, basically small “folders” that you keep all the scenes for a specific story in, in the order you want. They can be moved up and down, to different chapters, or entirely removed from the desk. That’s important to note, because it doesn’t mean you’re deleting the note completely. Even if you accidentally delete a scene from this desk, the note will still be there, so you can simply add it again, no harm done.

+1 for organisation and another +1 for not having to be afraid of losing stuff.

Additionally, Zettelkasten lets you tag every note. I had tags for characters, so each note would be tagged with the characters appearing in that particular scene, but you can create tags as you like. This also allows you to search specifically for scenes with certain characters involved, which is useful because I used Zettelkasten a lot to simply jot down ideas for scenes that weren’t yet part of a larger story. If and when I decided to actually write that story, I’d create a new virtual “desk” (you can have several) and find the notes via tags to add them to that desk.

Great feature, much beloved, +1.

Since it was originally developed for taking notes for academic papers, Zettelkasten also has a literature tab. For every note, you can add a reference. I used that to enter the provisional title of the fic, which again made it easier at the end to find all notes belonging to the same story. Additional benefit: renaming the story is super-easy, because there’s no need to find every note and replace the “reference” individually, instead you just rename the title from the literature tab and it automatically changes on all notes with that “reference”.

Again, a much-beloved feature, +1.

There are more features – bookmarks, cross-referencing, attached files – but since I rarely used those for writing (fan)fic, I’m not covering them here. If you want to know more, leave a comment.

File formats

Zettelkasten has its own file format, .zkn3. That means it’s difficult to open it with other programs but the original (but not impossible – 7zip, for example, can open .zkn3 files). The idea here is that you jot down all of your ideas in notes, sort and organise them on your virtual desk, then export them either as the whole desk or as single chapters/sections/subsections from the desk to a file format of your choice, and there are many. HTML, DOC(X) (Word), ODT (Writer), RTF, XML, MD, TEX …

Safe to say you’re somewhat spoilt for choice here, with one caveat: some of those require you to have Pandoc installed on your computer. Which is also freeware, so, you know, not a problem.

My preferred method of uploading to AO3 was usually to export to HTML, then copypaste from one browser window into the other browser window with the Rich Text AO3 text field. Just like with Writer, rich text formatting (bold, italics, underlined, etc.) are copied over, so you don’t need to redo all of that.

Or you just open the .html-file in an editor (Notepad) and copy the code over to the HTML text field on AO3. Either works. Black magic is not required.

Interface

Like Writer, the big pro of the Zettelkasten interface for me is how uncluttered it is. It’s divided into areas where you can see your note, the note’s title, the “references” field and then, on the right, two columns showing the tags for the currently open note and another column with tabs showing available tags, individual note titles, all available references and more.

New notes or notes you’re working on are opened in a separate window, where you enter your changes and then save them. The desk is similarly simple – on the left side are your chapters/sections/subsections, in the middle are the notes and their text, on the right are three fields for additional notes.

Again, the interface isn’t fancy and may put some people off. I love it exactly because it’s so simple. I want to write, edit and develop my story, not be distracted by something the designers thought would look cool.

So, at least for those of similar simple minds as me, +1 for clarity.

Cost

Zettelkasten is free to download, unlike Scrivener or many other comparable applications. However, as with many a free software application not backed by a company or corporation, it probably has an expiration date and will likely stop working at some point in the future.

Since you can export the whole .zkn3-file to various other formats, you aren’t going to lose anything – in a worst-case scenario (and yes, been there, done that, it works), you can open the .zkn3 file with an archive application like 7zip and extract the underlying .xml-files from there. So no, your stories will not be lost forever just because Zettelkasten stops working. It might just require half an hour’s work to get them out.

Syncing

No cloud storage for Zettelkasten, either. As mentioned here, alternative options include Dropbox, GIT, OneDrive or a regular old USB.

Ease of use for Word/Google doc-users

Again, I really like the uncluttered interface of Zettelkasten, which only has very few buttons. The “write notes first, export later” took a moment to get used to, but was outweighed by the knowledge that I couldn’t lose a note, any note, unless I actively deleted it.

Honestly, that decreased my stress levels significantly. I used Zettelkasten for a long, long time, also for work-related stuff. Once I’d wrapped my brain around the idea of having a note for every idea, I found using it extremly easy and conducive to writing. It wasn’t even a problem when I decided later on that two scenes in two notes should actually be merged – I just put them in the right order on the desk and then deleted the empty line between them when uploading to AO3.

A very long story can take some time to appear on the virtual desk, admittedly, but not once has Zettelkasten crashed on me. My fears of losing ideas and scenes disappeared after I started using it, and I like to believe it even helped me get better at writing, because structuring on the virtual desk made me really think about what was happening in which order.

In short, it is software I can whole-heartedly recommend.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

No-Google (fan)fic writing, Part 1: LibreOffice Writer

Storytime

The first documents and fanfictions I wrote on a computer were .doc documents written with Microsoft Word 98. At least those I remember.

From there, I sort of naturally graduated to following versions of Microsoft Word, the last one I’ve actively used to write texts of any considerable length (more than half a page) being Word 2007 (but only under duress from my employer).

That was partly due to the fact that the Microsoft Office suite has always been expensive and there were times I simply didn’t want to spend the money on it. So I started using OpenOffice Writer fairly early on, “graduating” to LibreOffice Writer once that was available.

Word versus Writer

What are the differences between Word (Microsoft) and Writer (LibreOffice)?

Cost

Firstly, Writer is free. It comes as part of the LibreOffice Suite, which has a replacement for almost every application Office has. The ones it hasn’t, you won’t need for writing fanfic, trust me.

So, +1 for being freely available.

Interface

Interface-wise – well, it might look a little old-fashioned to those used to Google docs and Word. Back in the day, it was mostly that the buttons looked differently. However, Writer did not adopt the “ribbon” Word has shipped and continues to have customisable bars. For me, that’s a huge +1 argument for using Writer over Word or Google docs, because I can edit these bars and only keep the buttons I actually need – unlike the Word ribbons, which drove me to despair and ultimately away from Word after 2007 appeared.

Features

Other than that, it really isn’t all that different from Word. You can use document structures like headings, subheadings, track changes, compare documents, footnotes, endnotes, everything else Word can do. It really is a proper, great replacement for Word – it even is mostly compatible with Word in that .doc and .docx documents can be opened with Writer, even if the layout may look a bit off.

So +1 – your old files are compatible with it.

File formats

Files written with Writer are stored as .odt (Open Document Text), but there are options for export into other formats, such as PDF, EPUB or XHTML. Exporting to AO3 is simple – copy the text you want, set the AO3 text editor to Rich Text and paste.

Easy +1.

Syncing

LibreOffice does not offer cloud-storage. So if you want your files available on several devices, you need a different solution. As I write more for this series, I’ll describe the different options in more detail, but Dropbox, GIT or, depending on which provider you’re using, your email providers cloud storage are options. OneDrive, if you mind Microsoft less than Google.

Or an old-fashioned USB in combination with an automatic backup application.*

Ease of use for Word/Google doc-users

As someone who came straight from Word (although a very old version) to Writer, I’ve always found it very easy to use. What I particularly like is that the interface is much less cluttered than the Word ribbons and I can customise the bars. In all honesty, if it weren’t for that cosmetic difference, I think many users wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Writer and Word.

So if you’re just looking for something to replace Word or Google docs, Writer is definitely a good option.

*I’m not recommending USBs because I’m of the opinion that it’s a convenient solution. I’m doing it because I’m a cynic. Every time a company tells me I can have something for free, my first question will be “what will I be paying with instead?”

Because if I don’t pay money, I’ll pay with my data. That’s one of the main reasons I never started using Google. It’s just too good to be true, all those services for free.

So, you know, if you’re good with data being collected on you or you can’t afford to pay for a syncing service, by all means, use unpaid services. Just be aware of what comes with it. You will pay, one way or the other, with money or your data. Nothing in the world is for free, especially not those apps companies are trying to get you to use.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

No-Google (fan)fic writing

After this post about Google automatically enrolling everyone into their AI program (including reading Google docs), I realised that many people may not be aware that there are actually very, very good alternatives to using Google docs – although what they can do for you varies.

So, since I’ve over the years tested quite a lot of different applications for usefulness in writing fanfic, I thought I’d share some of my experiences here. The link list below will be expanded as I continue writing more pieces, so keep checking here.

Part 1: LibreOffice Writer

Part 2: Zettelkasten

Part 3: LaTeχ

Part 4: Markdown

Note: I updated some of the posts with screenshots of the interfaces for illustration purposes. You might want to reblog those again.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

Myopic Megatron #9

https://archiveofourown.org/works/58104937/chapters/161450326

Megatron finally finds the grey frame in Optimus’ closet …

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

I desperately wish people would start actually reading the AO3's TOS before confidently making 'user guides' to the AO3 that are just blatantly, flatly wrong.

Yes the AO3 has banned content. They do not allow anything that's illegal under US law - though US law, importantly, does not ban fictional depictions of things - and they do not allow any commercial content. That includes your ko-fi link, or mentions that you do fic commissions. If you do post fic commissions to AO3 and want to mention the commissioner, the fic is a 'request' from the commissioner. This protects the AO3 and you from copyright law.

No the AO3 is not 'a creative fanfiction archive'. It is a fandom archive. Your meta, insights, and theories are absolutely welcome and encouraged there. AO3 also encourages you to post other types of fanworks, like fan videos, podfics, and art, but unfortunately isn't able to natively host those like it does text, so fic has kind of become what it's known for. That absolutely does not mean that other types of fanwork aren't allowed, or are discouraged by the site culture! Anybody who tells you otherwise is just plain wrong!

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

And that is why Google docs, no matter how convenient they are, are a Bad Idea.

Alternative ideas that have served me very well over the years:

Use Markdown, write plain text. (If you've ever been in a chat, you already know half of Markdown anyway.) My favourite editor is Ghostwriter, but I also like KATE or Notepad++, both of which can do Markdown preview (Notepad++ with an addon).

Use GIT to regularly back everything up, either to an online service like GitHub or GitLab, or with an external drive (flash drive, hard drive, whatever). If you can't do command line or find the GIT interface confusing, GitHub ships the GitHub Desktop application, which you can use just as easily with a GIT repo on a USB.

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

This reminded me …

When dick pics first became a Thing, as in a widely discussed phenomenon, my friends and I started sending each other Dik pics.

No, that is not misspelt. Dik-diks are antelopes found in southern Africa. They’re tiny. Less than half a metre. And terribly cute.

Of course, because we were all nerds, our favourite would be Kirk’s dik-dik.

Anyways, so our logic was that Dik pics are vastly superior because you get double the dik, exponetially the cute, and we would send them quite frequently.*

And I’ve always wondered why no-one has written fanfic yet where the Decepticons and Autobots keep sending each other pics of Spike Witwicky because see above.

*Yes, we thought we were being very funny.

previous one went stratospheric so this came about lmao??

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

While looking for something else, I found an old ask I answered about "ideal chapter length" in terms of word count.

I've been asked this probably a dozen or more times, and each time I need to take a moment and adjust my thinking to take the asker's point of view into account. Because the thing is? The only time I ever try to factor the word count into how I write a story is when I'm aiming for a true drabble.

For whatever reason, this difference in thinking stuck with me today and I actually considered why that might be. And I think it's because I'm in my 40s and the first 25-30 years of my life, any stories I was reading were printed on paper and bound into physical books.

When I imagine a novel, I still think of a mass market paperback on my bookshelf. An average one would be maybe an inch thick, probably in the neighbourhood of 300 pages. A long one would be maybe as much as two inches thick and 500 or more pages long. A short one was always nice to have because it filled in the gaps in the shelf because 200 page books were so much narrower. Or so it seemed.

When I started posting my fic online, I still thought in terms of pages. I'd type them out in whatever word processing software I was using at the time, and I'd usually get a chapter's worth of ideas into 3 or 4 pages. Turns out that's about 1000 words, which makes sense with the number of 1000 word essays I wrote in high school. I'd been trained to encapsulate an idea into approximately that length.

And that's what it comes down to. The thing that always made that question seem weird to me. A chapter isn't about how many words there are in it, just like a cake isn't about how many cups of flour exist in each slice. A chapter is a an idea that helps make up a bigger idea called a story, and it needs to be however many words that idea needs to be to get it out.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

Obli(vi)ous euphemisms

In case anyone wants to look up all* the nice euphemisms and more from https://archiveofourown.org/works/43416888, go browse

Yes, that fic was actually inspired by browsing that dictionary, at work no less. No regrets whatsoever.

*Not the Transformers ones, obviously. But the others.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

Always nice to see someone else posting about one’s fic. Thank you ^^

it tickles

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

Pros of re-reading your own fic

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

Is that another TYpO

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

For the love of all that you enjoy: DON’T PAYWALL YOUR FANFICTION.

Again, but louder:

DON’T PAYWALL YOUR FANFICTION

It’s getting more and more common. I’ve seen three posts about it in the last 24 hours - patreons where you’ll get “exclusive” fanfiction stories if you’re a subscriber.

Don’t.

Don’t do it.

It’s annoying, but mostly it’s fucking dangerous.

The whole fanfiction community prosper on someone else’s turf under “fair use” laws. In simple terms: we can play with other people’s creations for as long as it’s done for our own amusement, and that of our followers.

Once any kind of financial benefits are made, it becomes another abuse of someone else’s rights.

And look, I get it. It sucks, especially seeing the artists take commissions while the authors get nothing, and it takes hours and hours of our time, and I understand people are looking for a side hustle to make ends meet in this monstrosity of a capitalist society, but if we don’t stop it from happening, the rights owners will stop it.

And they’ll stop it for everyone.

It’s not worth it. Don’t do it.

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

memes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

Don't want to put this on the post itself for risk of derailing it, but that post the other day about Terry Pratchett's early work really stuck in my mind. OP had sent in an ask saying that they heard some of Pratchett's earlier works had problematic elements (not unusual for a male english writer in the 80s) and they weren't sure whether to go ahead with reading the work anyway.

What I really want to ask that person, or indeed all persons who are hesitating over whether or not to read problematic works or works by imperfect authors:

What are you worried about happening, if you read a work with problematic elements?

I'm worried that if I read this art, I will run across hateful images or words that will shock or upset me

I'm worried that I will spend money on a work of art that then financially supports a bad person, and that thought makes me uncomfortable or upset

I'm worried that I will read works of art written by a bad person, and comment or react on them, and other people will see what I am reading and will think less of me because of it, or will assume that I hold the same bad beliefs as the author

I'm worried that I will read works of art written by a bad person, and I will enjoy them, and the author will find out about my enjoyment and feel emboldened to do bad things because of it

I'm worried that I will read works of art written by a bad person, and their badness will contaminate my way of thinking and make me a worse person in turn

Because these are all different answers and some of them are more actionable than others

[minimalsizeconspiracy]

I swear we used to be able to think critically about random GoFundMe asks

It used to be understood that if someone using a throwaway blog suddenly starts messaging a bunch of accounts to beg for money, they were most likely a scammer.

Now suddenly there are fucking swarms of throwaway bots relentlessly shilling GoFundMe campaigns to anyone who even so much as breathes in the direction of a trending tag or post, yet the mere suggestion that any of these could be a scam will immediately get you yelled at by self-righteous strangers.

What changed?