Staying out of trouble on ff.net

[icarus]

I was just chit-chatting with gmth about ff.net's no author-notes-instead-of-chapters TOU rule and thought this might be a good opportunity to talk about staying out of trouble on ff.net.

My experience with ff.net is that if no one complains, the place too big for the owner to patrol. The big complainers are a) the slash trolls - people who look for slash in order to get rid of it - and b) the very young and squeamish.

There are few things to avoid:

1 - Stories that are not plot-driven, or where the sex comes before the plot. If you're writing slash, you'll want at least a page or two of plausible plot before you get to any boy/boy action. By then the slash-haters will have stopped reading.

2 - Misleading summaries. You don't want to draw in people who will be Shocked and Upset. Describe the plot in the summary.

3 - Too-clear indications of slash in the summary. Those draw anti-slash trolls. You put the indication that it's slash in the A/N inside, after the person is clicked on it via the summary. This may seem like a contradiction to 2, but it isn't. If you have a good story, slash isn't the most important element.

4 - Bizarre squicky pairings. It's a fact that many R and even PG-13 stories with, say, Dumbledore/Snape pairings have been pulled down because some readers couldn't handle it. If you put them up, don't put the pairing in the summary, describe the plot.

I've tested this. A friend put up a Dumbledore/Snape story that was R-rated but doesn't have more than a kiss in it. At the same time I deliberately put up a steamy Harry/Ron anal-sex scene. Hers has been pulled down several times. Mine's never been touched.

5 - If someone accuses your story of violating the TOU, even if they're wrong -- pull it down of your accord. Wait a while. Then you can put it back up. Otherwise you'll probably have all of your stories examined with a fine-toothed comb. I did this with 'Rising Sun' which is a very high R (skimmed the rating very close on FA and had to work with Heidi and CLS to make sure it fit the standards).

Note that 'Rising Sun' violates rule number one: the sex comes first, then the plot develops. The accusation was actually a positive review, someone gloating that I was among the authors who were putting up NC-17 stories and calling them R-rated. They noted it in their livejournal for others. I pulled the story immediately.

Remember. On ff.net, obscurity is your friend.

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Now, see, if everyone did that, I would go back to using ff.net as my proving ground. Then I'd post Snape Manor as a WIP and change it around as I saw fit not worrying whether or not it worked or sucked because no one would be reading but a few die-hards.

Then I'd finalise it, get it beta'd, and post it FA. Then I'd broadcast the story on the Yahoo groups.

That's what I did with Primer to the Dark Arts. It worked great.

Icarus

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting way of doing it that I hadn't considered. Hmm.

I think my perceptionon the whole thing is colored by the fact that I'm only 5% writer to 95% reader.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I was 95% reader until I ran out of good Harry/Ron stories. I finally decided I'd have to write my own - *sigh.*

Then I started writing, I couldn't stop.

Icarus

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

Heh. "Now children, today we'll be talking about how writers are born..."