How-to: Make Your Story Page Interesting — Part 3: Tags · 5:23pm May 19th, 2014
This title image was a bitch to assemble.
Glad to welcome you back once more! With the title and the cover art chosen, the next thing that’ll be go be discussed is the selection of the tags your story will have. There are three groups: story tags, character tags, and rating tags.
Begin!
Story Tags
Remember when I said the cover image is the only part you can use to get some color into your story? That’s not entirely true, as the story tags also have colors that make them unique. And just like you learned in arts class when you were younger, mixing them incorrectly together will give you a really ugly brown or otherwise unpleasant to look at color, certain combinations make a story less appealing by default. We will talk about them here.
The average reader will usually claim he reads anything, but that’s not true. With so much content available you need to have a certain way to separate the good from the bad. This is most often done by taking past experiences and merging them into a result to make decisions easier. Sadly, these past decisions are often from bad memories.
Raise your hand if you think Crossover is the most prone to fail story tag.
A good Crossover can be done very well and be an enjoyable story, but the sheer amount of terrible fics ruined their reputation way more than one might like to admit at first.
That of course doesn’t mean Crossover immediately makes a story bad, but it makes the initial appeal worse. What is the primary reason people come to this site? Stories about ponies. And what is a Crossover? A story that isn’t (just) about ponies. The difficulties of merging two universes together for the reader nor to feel awkward about it is much harder than most people think.
On top of that, even if you are an ultra top fan of an underground anime and want the world to know about it, most people will ignore your story because of that. Likewise, even the most popular franchise can get you into trouble if people don’t care about it or think it simply shouldn’t be mixed with ponies (I think Halo crossovers are a good example for that).
Quite a bunch of words on Crossover, but there are more tag problems. Another one is the combination Dark, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Romance, Tragedy or really any variation of it. These fics give (for me at least) the impression of some bad guy ruining everything and in a cheesy way evoking bad feelings in the reader. This doesn’t work, guys, and I want you to know that.
In the special case of Tragedy I need to mention one thing very explicitly as well: When you select your tags, double—no, freaking quadruple check if your story is, in fact, a tragedy! There are so many people who get it wrong, and that (sadly) harmed the reputation of this tag greatly. There is a clear definition on the FAQ page, but I will try to summarize it for you: A tragedy is a story where the hero causes their own fall downfall. It’s not necessarily a story with a bad end, heck, it’s not even required to be sad. All it needs to be is where the protagonist fails in the end, and it’s their own fault in some way. That is literally all that decides if a story needs this tag or not. Up until the end you can’t tell if it’s a tragedy or not.
Lastly, there is Human and Anthro. Both of these tags, especially the latter one, are just asking for trouble. If you write a story for this site that is either anthro or humanized, you better have a damn good reason to do so. Literally, the only reason I can think of is to give boobs to the ladies in clopfics. That’s all. Never write a story with these tags if their species isn’t a central plot point. I know of quite a few authors who wrote such a story (that wasn’t clop) simply because they found a nice cover image and adapted it just so they could use that image. Do NOT sacrifice story quality for absolutely any outside attributes.
The last thing is just a general tip: Don’t use more than three story tags at once. FIMFic allows you to use up for six, and I’m damn glad that limit is there. But don’t make the mistake and think the more you can do to categorize your story the better. Here, once again, applies the rule “less is more”. Tags are used to tell the reader what they can expect of a story, and if you use too many tags some genres will get swallowed.
Example, I have a story tagged Sad Romance. I immediately know it’s probably a shipfic and it has feels in it. Then I see a story tagged, Dark Adventure Human Tragedy Sad. What does that make me see? A HiE with an evil badass who eventually fails and everything goes down? Yeah no thanks.
Three is the recommended maximum, but if you can help it, try to keep it at two. Sometimes you just really need to ask yourself, “Is this tag 100% required to appear on the story page?” You’ll find that the answer is often no.
In the end, try to decide what the reader should understand the story as. Should he laugh? Comedy and/or Slice of Life. Should he feel miserable? Sad/Tragedy/Dark. And so on.
Generally said, there are two types of story tags: The ones which describe what a story IS (e.g. Slice of Life) and the ones which describe what a story CONTAINS (e.g. Alternate Universe). In almost all cases the former one is better to categorize your story.
There is one more thing to add in general when it comes to story tags. Since the selection we get is very limited, it is often recommended to add some extra tags into the description (more about meta content for descriptions in the next blog). You usually (only) do this for clopfics, if you want to highlight out specific fetishes for example (here they are often labeled as Triggers or Trigger Words). Examples are F/F, Futa, Rape, Tentacles, Gurom etc. Basically, anything your reader should know before they dive into your story.
Character Tags
Now the other part of color that comes with tags. Character tags are vital to tell your reader who your story will contain. It is important that you don’t give away too much while still being clear.
First and foremost: Do not include all characters that appear in the story. That is just about the worst thing you can do. My Little Dashie, the most popular story in this fandom, did the stupid mistake of telling me right from the story page that the others of the mane six as well as Celestia will make a latter appearance. That’s stupid. If you want to take your reader by surprise with characters, don’t mention them at all.
But even more so, do not include characters that only have a very minimal and almost useless appearance. There isn’t a way to separate the leading cast from supporting characters with these tags, so don’t put the latter on the same level as the former.
Well, there is a trick you can use for that problem. If you want to write a story that contains all Cutie Mark Crusaders but is mostly about Sweetie Belle, you can enter her individual tag on top of the CMC tag. The same goes for the mane six. Alternatively, you can also just use the Other tag.
Speaking of it, let’s talk about the two meta tags: OC and Other. Let me start off by saying this fandom hates of OC fics. It doesn’t even matter if the OC is the alicorn daughter of Celestia or some unimportant fool that has two lines of dialogue; when people see the OC tag they’ll immediately think of the worst. I’ll admit that even I am guilty of this. So really, only include this tag if you absolutely feel like you need to.
The Other tag is mostly harmless. Its original intention was to mark out characters that don’t have their own tags (such as Twilight’s parents). However, I also often see it used as a sort of “This story contains other characters, but they aren’t important that much.” Basically, what I described above with the CMCs, just more generalized.
Final note: You’ve got up to five slots here, but once again, don’t use them all if you can help it. I personally like to stay at three most of the time here as well.
Rating Tags
Ratings tags include the actual rating (Everyone, Teen, Mature) and the two bonus tags that pop up if you pick one of the latter two (Sex, Gore). Since these are pretty basic things and are a major definement of the basic concept of your story, I can’t really say much to this. All I can do is share some thoughts.
First off, when I see Everyone the first thing that rings through my head is the word “harmless”. Ahead of me is something that might not be child-friendly like the show, but swearing, extreme violence and death scenes, sex, and related things won’t be there. That indirect censorship gives me the impression of a good story that managed to stay in its own limits.
Teen is when I start to see the story more progressive and maybe even a little bit aggressive. Often times it’s used in a way to go beyond the borders of what we know from the children’s cartoon we all love, mixing more adult humor and themes in it, while still trying to keep the thing somewhat at bay.
Teen/Sex is a case-to-case thing. The usual idea I have is either innuendo or shipfics with hinted sex. Teen/Gore on the other hand is something I see as a story that has some darker themes to it and maybe touches the topic of death a little harsher.
The big rating, Mature, is usually to be avoided. Not only because it doesn’t appear for many people and has a heavy censorship policy on this site due to AdSense, but also because there rarely are any cases where you will need it. In general, the only two cases I can think of are extremely dark/grotesque themes or explicit sexual themes. Both of these are covered by their added tag, so there is almost never a reason to have a standalone Mature story.
Mature/Sex instantly spawns the image of a clopfic. Combine that with the Romance tag and a suggestive cover art and you got yourself the straightest clopfic page you can get. Mature/Gore is where things get… messy. By that I mean it’s usually a story that doesn’t do anything apart from being bloody, and in many cases unnecessarily explicit.
Now, just one last word: There rarely is a reason to mark a story both Sex and Gore. It gives the impression that the author fails to decide if he wants to write about killing everything or making love to everything. Either way, it is not recommended, so once again, your reason for doing so better be damn good.
Well damn, this time I really got overboard. If you made it all the way down here and even learned a thing, I’ll be happy. Next up is going to be the biggest and by far most important part of your story page: the description.
Stay tuna!
I have seen so much improper tagging, that it's not funny.
Tag only main character(s). If you have more than 12 main characters, you are doing it wrong. There should not be more than 5 POV switches per chapter. Otherwise it gets annoying as hell.
Also having 1 joke does not make story a comedy.
Someone doing something is not adventure.
Dark tag is meaningless, as no one writes actual dark stories. There is gore, and there is sad. Closest ting I have seen to dark tag is rape clopfics, and they usually are not tagged as such.
Also you forgot to mention trigger word tags.
Gay, M/M, F/F, foalcon, dipers, watersports, tentacles, rape(mind manipulation, exc), necrophilia, cum inflation, organ mutilation (especially circumcision(why the hell people think its normal, and don't mark it? It's genital mutilation, for fucks sake)) are all things I would like to know, if they are in story. Seriously I have seen all of these without them being tagged. Some people don't want to see some of the stuff.
Surprises are nice, but surprise corpse fuck is completely different matter.
Stuff like this is really great and the fact that you go into details makes it all the more helpful. Thank you.
2125863
Oh, in-description tags are a good indeed. Let me quickly write another paragraph about it. Thanks!
2125967
Thanks, I tried.
How would you describe the Alternate Universe tag? Is there a range or requirement?
2142324
I personally think Alternate Universe describes a story that is based off the show we know, but with a significant difference. Examples: "What would've happened if X didn't do Y?" or "In this universe every character is fucking stupid."
What I don't like is stories using this tag just because they want to write something that doesn't really have much (if anything) to do with the original universe. I see it as a cheap excuse by the author to post their story on his site. Examples: Anthro Spike self-inserts (hate those) or stories where the characters are seriously OOC and the author shoves it off as "That's because it's AU!"
Basically, I like stories where the AU is a selling point of the story and not just a side thing because it has to be there.
2142358
Okay, what if there are characters in story from another country, which its origins can be traced back from Celestia?
2142469
Highly debatable. I wouldn't read it.
2142475
They aren't a primary focus in Equestrian Earth, but i was wondering of existence of such a thing in the story would prompt it to be alternative universe.
Oh and just for clarification, the country is basically the old lands of the 3 Pony Tribes, abandoned after the Windigos took over. Then after the creation of Equestria and Celestia came to power, she sent her finest soldiers to take back the lands from the ice demons. Thus why this country has such a close tie to Equestria.
2142512
As soon as you start to ask yourself if something is AU or not, it usually is. What you said in your second paragraph just further underlined that fact, because you talked about an alternate sci-fi storyline that doesn't have anything to do with the established show.
2142530
ok thanks
Good job making this list/ helpful guide, lots of writers need it, myself included.
2734968
I didn't even know there were still people out there who knew about this blog series existing.
Thank you.
2736053 I found it yesterday :D