• Welcome to Thousand Roads! You're welcome to view discussions or read our stories without registering, but you'll need an account to join in our events, interact with other members, or post one of your own fics. Why not become a member of our community? We'd love to have you!

    Join now!

Posting Your First Fic!

Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
Partners
  1. dratini
  2. dratini-pen
  3. dratini-pen2
Welcome to the forum! Here's how you can post your fics:

1) Click on "Fanfiction."

1617068571453.png

2) Click on the red button in the upper right that says "Post Thread."

1617068615289.png

You'll see the following interface:


1617066404450.png

3) See where it says "No prefix"? Click that to select either "Pokemon," "Non-Pokemon," or "Original" as the category of your fic. Most works posted here are Pokemon fanfiction, but works for other fandoms and original works are totally acceptable!

4) Enter your story title.

5) Determine whether your first post in the thread is going to contain the actual text of your story, or be a table of contents/introductory page. For longer chapter-fics, making your first post an introduction/table of contents is generally better organization. That kind of post will generally include the summary for your fic, any title art you have, any content warnings, a note about what kind of feedback you're looking to receive (from "positive comments only please" to "I love crit, hit me with anything!"), and any other notes that might help situate your reader.

6) Put in the text! If you're having spacing issues, insert

Code:
[respace]

before your text

and after it

[/respace]

To create a horizontal line-break between sections of your story, insert
Code:
[hr] [/hr]


You can change your font, font-size and font color. Strike-throughs, images, emojis, and links are also supported.

7) You can click the "Preview" button in the top right-hand corner of the text box to see how your post will look when it's published. If you want to make adjustments, just click the Preview box again and the box will become editable once more.

8) Once you're satisfied with the text, it's time to threadmark. Just what is threadmarking? It lets your readers easily navigate to whichever chapter they want to read. Click on the little black triangles to see the following drop-downs:


1617066931771.png

In the description box, enter whatever you want people to see as a preview when you post the link. Putting your summary here is probably a good bet!

Index progress is where you can indicate the fic's completeness. Your options are Incomplete, Complete, Hiatus, and Dropped. If you're posting a oneshot, you can change this to Complete, but otherwise, don't worry about it!

Next move on to the "Initial Threadmark" section. In the "Threadmark label" textbox, write the title of the chapter you're posting. For an introductory page, that might be "Summary Page" or "Table of Contents" or "Author's Notes." When you start posting actual chapter content, it might be, "Chapter One - From the Frying Pan Into the Fire" or just "Chapter 1" or "I"―whatever you find aesthetically pleasing!

9) Next, enter any tags that describe your story, separating each one with commas. We're working on putting together a more standardized list of tags, but good candidates might refer to the world your story is based in (PMD, anime, manga, games, trainerverse), its genre, or canon characters who appear.

10) Click the "Watch this thread" box if you want to recieve an email every time someone replies to your thread.

11) Click "Post Thread."
It's official, you're published!

12) If your initial post was an introductory one, you can now begin to add your actual story. In your newly posted thread, scroll down to the bottom. You can post your first chapter straight into the textbox there.

1617065847123.png

13) Before you hit "Post Reply," don't forget to add a threadmark for this new chapter! You can add the threadmark simply by writing it into the "Threadmark label" box at the top of the text box. Make sure to do this every time you post a new chapter―it really helps with readability, since the nature of a forum thread is to become cluttered with reviews and review replies. Threadmarks let your reader jump past reviews and straight to the next chapter they want to read.

14) Oh no! There's a glaring a typo in the very first sentence of your post, and somehow you missed it?? Never fear. Go to the bottom left-hand corner of the post you want to alter and click the "Edit" button. You can make any changes you need. If you forgot to add a threadmark, you can also do that after the fact.

15) Don't forget to advertise! Anytime you post a new story or chapter, feel free to drop a link into the #fic-updates channel of the Thousand Roads discord. We look forward to reading your story!
 

Attachments

  • 1617064417455.png
    1617064417455.png
    28.4 KB · Views: 7
  • 1617066484777.png
    1617066484777.png
    2 KB · Views: 8
  • 1617068596694.png
    1617068596694.png
    6.7 KB · Views: 6
Top Bottom