The following tabs contain the information you will need to post successfully on the Wild Hare Project.

 

This site uses a front-end publishing form. That means you will always post straight from the website. You do not have to go into the WordPress admin panel.

The first tab contains tools or resources we recommend for publishing on the Wild Hare Project.

The next two tabs, titled Images and Formatting, provide both policy and instruction on handling these two topics. Please read them carefully to ensure you don’t violate any site rules.

The rest of the tabs match the sections on Wild Hare’s publishing form. There are instructions for every field, so please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the content on this page before you publish and refer back as necessary when you have questions.

Please be aware that there is some field duplication. Some fields on the publishing form are for display purposes, while others are for organization. Limitations of WordPress require we handle these separately. Please pay careful attention to how the display and organization fields are filled in differently.

If you have a question and the answer cannot be found here, please use this contact form to request assistance.

www.grammarly.com

The browser plug-in for Grammarly works very smoothly on the site. Currently, they have a browser extension available for free for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Grammarly is just one of many tools you can use to help hone your craft. It’s not perfect but it is helpful and we suggest you use it.

Wild Hare Project does not provide specific fields to credit for beta, art, inspiration, etc. Or to make note about permissions. The author note field is available for this purpose, or you may add additional notes of this type at the top of the content section.

Art credit can also be noted in the caption rather than the author note. It doesn’t matter where you host the art from, if you didn’t create it, you need to provide credit to the person who did.

Also, if you are publishing something on Wild Hare that exists online under another name, you need to specify that in your author note! If we get a report of you plagiarizing someone and you haven’t done this, we have no way of knowing that it’s your own work.

If you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox with their permission, you need to say so and provide a link back to the original author.

Seriously.

We expect all authors on this site to be able to handle these topics without prompting.

Wild Hare will not host images on its servers. If you wish to use images in your post, you’ll need to link to them from your privately controlled photo archive. That means your account on Photobucket, Flickr, 500 Pixels, Smug Mug, or whatever. Hotlinking to public images is absolutely forbidden on Wild Hare.

Please do not link to excessively large images. They can slow down page load times. Keep the longest edge 1000 pixels or less.

Since the initial publication of this guide, Photobucket has stopped allowing linking with free accounts. One of our member authors has written a tutorial on how to link from Flikr. Thank you, Icy!

To Add Images:

• Put the cursor where you want the image to appear in the ‘Content‘ area
• Click the ‘Add Media‘ button on the top left of the ‘Content‘ area
• From the options on the left panel, click ‘Insert from URL‘
• Paste the URL to your image in the box and click ‘Insert into Post‘
• If you need to edit the image (such as add a caption), click on the image and select the pencil from the mouse-over icons.

Things to Remember:

• Make sure the image is the right size in your photo account
• You cannot resize an image posted via URL.
• Too many images may make your page load slowly.
• If you want to do a cast page for a multi-chapter work, it’s recommended that you create the cast page on your first post only, and link back to it in subsequent posts. For more information on inserting tabs or tables to support a cast page, see the “Advanced” tab.
• Even though you’re linking to external images, if your image is art created for you by someone else, you should credit the artist. Either in the caption of the image or as a note in your author note field.
• Best display size for images is less than 800 pixels on the longest edge, however, no images larger than 1000 pixels should be linked to.

An Example of an Image Posted via URL:

 

This section contains basic posting guidelines and instructions on how to properly format your source file so it pastes cleanly into our content form. Details about how to setup your documents and troubleshoot formatting problems are on the ‘Formatting Advanced’ tab.

The most grievous formatting sin is the giant wall of text. It’s simply unreadable. If you’re in the habit of using line breaks instead of carriage returns, when you paste into any WordPress-based editor, the dreaded wall of text is a very real possibility. Formatting your document properly is the first step to getting a clean paste into Wild Hare’s content box.

Something else to avoid is excessive space between each paragraph. Many of us learned to insert space after a paragraph by pressing [ENTER] twice, but on the web that creates an extra blank line you don’t want.

Important Terminology:

• Return (also: Carriage Return) = pressing [ENTER]
• Line Break = pressing [SHIFT] + [ENTER]

Standards for publishing on Wild Hare:

• Set up your document to have space after each paragraph (not each line). There are instructions below for various word processing programs.
• Press [ENTER] once after each paragraph
• Do not use double returns to create space between paragraphs!
  • WordPress converts each return into a Paragraph tag in HTML
  • Double returns create excessive white space
  • Do not use line breaks in place of returns
• Do not use tabs, hanging indents, first line indents
• Place a separator of some sort between scenes. Common ones are:
  • * * * *
  • ~*~
  • – – – –
• Do not use a scene separator longer than ten characters
• Do not use white space to indicate a scene break
• Do not use an HTML line as a scene or chapter separator
• Line breaks should be used sparingly and specifically for where you do not want space after a paragraph.

Advanced formatting and troubleshooting

How to set up your word processing program to have space after the paragraph:

• In some programs, you can change your default style so this is done automatically for every document. Consult your user’s manual.
• Some software has an “auto” feature that works well, others you have to set it by pt size.
• A caveat about Word’s “auto” space after feature: it doesn’t work with Word online. If you use Word online, you’ll want to set your space after manually (usually 12 pts).
• The amount should be roughly equivalent to your font size. For instance, if you type in 12 pt font, you’d probably want 12 pts of space after each paragraph.
• This setting is about your visual preference, so you can play with it. If you type in a big font, you wouldn’t want 6 pts of space after. You wouldn’t even be able to see the space.

Note: the instructions below are for a blank document. If your document has text in it already, be sure to select all the text before you make the paragraph formatting change. Usually Ctrl+A (PC) or Cmd+A (Mac)

Word:

• From the menu, select: Format  |  Paragraph…
• change the spacing After to be either Auto or equivalent to the font size you type in.

Google Docs:

• From the menu, select: Format  |  Line Spacing  |  Add Space After Paragraph

Scrivener:

• From the menu, select: Format  |  Text  |  Line and Paragraph Spacing…
• Enter the number of pts you want after each paragraph

Pages:

• From the Format Inspector, click Style and click the down arrow to the left of Spacing to see the additional spacing options
• In After Paragraph, input the number of pts of space you want after each paragraph

If you use something like word pad, note pad, or other quirky things that don’t support true rich text formatting—say when you’re on your phone or tablet—you may have an extra step of posting into a proper word processing application and cleaning up your story before you can post on Wild Hare. Crappy formatting isn’t okay.

A note about HTML: If you are web savvy and prefer to code the formatting for your story, that’s fine, provided you show a level of competence about the whole thing and we aren’t having to fix your post. If you can’t handle HTML code without assistance, don’t do it. The admin team is not here to fix your coding errors.

About removing line breaks and extra paragraph marks

Are you sitting there freaking out about line breaks and extra paragraph marks? It may be an easy fix depending on the application you use.

First, the bad news. Most online editors have no easy way to handle this. It’s an arduous, manual process. There are a few things that might help, but the easiest thing to do is fix your shit in Word and then move it back into a properly formatted blank document in your online editor. If you don’t have access to Word, hit up a friend who does. But, there are a couple suggestions below for people who use Google Docs.

Microsoft Word

• Line Breaks — line breaks can be found by searching for ^l. Go into Find & Replace (ctrl+shift+h) and search for ^l and replace it with ^p
• Double Paragraph Marks — Find & Replace, search for ^p^p and replace with ^p
• Note: if you have errant spaces, you might miss some of your double paragraph marks. See below for how to fix this.

Order of operations that will help you succeed in cleaning up your Word document:

1. replace all double spaces with single spaces — Find [space][space] Replace [space] (where [space] is pressing the spacebar)
2. replace all line breaks with paragraph marks — Find ^l Replace ^p
3. remove all erroneous spaces in front of paragraph marks — Find [space]^p Replace ^p where [space] is a blank space, and there is no blank space for the replace field. Replace all until the search box reports “no matches”
4. replace double paragraph marks with single paragraph marks — Find ^p^p Replace ^p  — replace all until the search box reports “no matches.” This will catch and errant triple or quadruple marks.

Once you get the hang of it, you can do all four steps in less than a minute.

Pages

You can replace symbols in Pages for Mac, but it’s not intuitive or easy. Follow these instructions and good luck. The order to find/replace listed for Word works in Pages as well but you have to do it in the manner outlined on that website. Searching for ^l or p is a Word feature.

Google Docs

There’s a workaround to fix your issues and it involves the WordPress editor, which is very sophisticated about stripping out formatting codes.
If your problem is line breaks creating a wall of text:

1. Create a blank Google Doc that is set up for space after the paragraph. The doc must be formatted properly first!
2. Paste your content into the Content box on the publish form on Wild Hare in the Visual mode (not Text view).
3. Select All (Ctrl/Cmd+A)
4. Copy to your clipboard (Ctrl/Cmd+C)
5. Paste it into the GDoc you prepared in Step 1 (Ctrl/Cmd+V)
6. Select All (Ctrl/Cmd+A)
7. Copy to your clipboard (Ctrl/Cmd+C)
8. Paste it back into Wild Hare Visual Content editor (Ctrl/Cmd+V)
9. Believe it or not, this odd process of pasting back and forth between a WordPress editor and Google Docs strips out line breaks and makes them paragraph marks. Single ones at that.
10. You should now have space after every paragraph and no line breaks.

If your problem is double paragraph marks:
You’re in luck. When pasting a double return into WordPress from GDocs, WordPress strips out the extra carriage return. This is not true for Word. Word will give you a bunch of extra space, so fix your doc before you post.

• List the name of your story and chapter number if applicable.
• Do not list author name or status in this field.
• If it’s the final chapter of an ongoing work, you may note that.
• If it’s an episode in a series, list the series then the episode

Example of One-shot: Dangerous to Know

Example of chaptered work: Courting Hermione Granger – Chapters 1-10

Example of final chapter in ongoing work: Courting Hermione Granger – Chapters 11-20 (End)

Example of an episode in a series: The Horsemen – Episode 1 – Breaking the Seal

Rough Draft

• This is something of a cautionary tale to let your readers know the story is subject to change and hasn’t been edited.
• Even if you’re done writing, if it’s a rough draft, it’s not actually “Complete.”
• Rough Draft isn’t the same as un-beta’d. Some authors work without a beta reader. Rough Draft means that it’s the first pass. There could be any number of things ahead of you still to do: editing, betaing, plot holes, missing scenes, etc.
• A spell check before posting is a really good habit to have
• Rough Draft should be used with one of the other statuses such as WIP, NeverEnding, Mexican Siesta, Abandoned.

Work in Progress

• Use this status if you’re posting a chapter in a work that is not completed, or if the work is complete but you’re drawing out the publication for some reason. Even if you’re posting a chapter a day, it’s a WIP until the day you post the last chapter.
• When you finish your work, you’ll need to return to each individual chapter and change the status to “Complete.”

Complete

• For completed works only, whether a one-shot, multi-chapter, or episode in a series.
• If you’re posting a completed work, but drawing out the publication, you may not mark the individual chapters as complete until you actually post the last chapter.
• If you’re posting a multi-chapter work all at one time, on the same day, mark each chapter complete as you go.

The NeverEnding Story

• This is a bit of a joke status, but some of you may just know this is right for you. Everyone, yourself included, might find the honesty refreshing.

Abandoned

• For works you never, ever intend on finishing and no longer work on.
• If you abandon a story, all posted parts of that story need to be marked abandoned.

Mexican Siesta

• Our hiatus status. If the joke is lost on you, don’t worry about it.
• If you’re posting a story that is on hiatus at the time of post, mark all chapters as Mexican Siesta
• If you decide to put a story on hiatus and it has multiple chapters, at least the first and last chapter need to be changed, but it would be polite to change them all.

The Wild Hare Project uses the Motion Picture Film Rating system of G through NC-17.

• G – Suitable for all audiences
• PG – May contain material not suitable for younger children.
  • Minor swearing, allusions to sexual situations, mentions of violence to the degree you’d feel comfortable relaying to a child.
• PG-13 – May contain material not suitable for anyone under the age of 13
  • Stronger language, more explicit (though not graphic) sexual references, non-graphic violence
• R – contains adult subjects or themes not suitable for younger audiences.
  • Sex—though not extremely graphic, swearing, graphic violence but not extreme graphic violence, mature themes
  • Some of the warnings by themselves earn an R-rating, such as: cannibalism, incest, rape, etc.
• NC-17 – Really, it’s 18. Anyone under the age of consent should not read, not even if their mom and dad say it’s okay.
  • Could be dark themes, mature themes, certain warnings, graphic violence, or just a lot of really graphic sex.

• If your story contains any of the listed warnings, you must disclose them.
• We really don’t care if it ruins your surprise.
• If no warnings apply, select the *No Site Warnings Apply.
• This is a type-select field. If you don’t want to scroll through the list every time, simply start typing and select your choice from the list

A full list of site warnings can be found in the Style Guide’s Appendix A. There’s also a link to full warnings list on the top of the publishing page.

If you’re publishing a multi-chapter work, the first chapter should include the warnings for the entire work. Subsequent chapters should have warnings for that chapter.

Is there a warning we’re missing? You can submit a request to have it added. Please note that the site moderator may not agree with you that this warning should be a mandatory warning. You’re free to use your author notes for additional warnings.

This is a free-form text field for the fandoms for your story. In general, it should match the organizational fandoms you select at the bottom of the Publish form. See: Fandoms and Relationships tab

• Comma separate the list of fandoms. Example: NCIS, The Sentinel, Stargate SG-1
• Use the standard convention for the fandom spelling. Meaning, NCIS is not ncis or Ncis. Stargate: Atlantis is not SGA. Harry Potter is not HP.

This is a free-form text field for the relationships. Unlike the combined Fandom and Relationships field used for organization, this field may differ to a degree.

• A / in a relationship is a pairing. Do not put a slash in a father&son or friendship “relationship”
  • If you want to convey a familial or friendly relationship, do it with the ampersand. Example: John & Rodney friendship. Never John/Rodney friendship. The slash denotes a relationship. Stop letting fandom newbies mess with you.
  • Non-romantic focal relationships may be noted only here, but not in the fandom/relationship organization field.
• You may list your OC relationships by name in this field. Only canon names are allowed in the organizational field. So if you’re writing Evan Lorne and Matt Sheppard, here you could write Evan Lorne/Matt Sheppard, but in the organizational field, it would be Evan Lorne/OMC.
• You may list whatever relationships you want people to know about, but remember that you don’t need to list every relationship in your story. If they’re truly not central to the plot, just say “other minor pairings.” The header is about the focus of your story, not every single thing that happens.
• If there are no focal relationships, say “Gen” or “No Pairings.”
• Pre-relationship pairings can be noted here. If your story is primarily pre-John/Rodney, that would be the correct pairing format.

• Please select however many genres apply to your story.
• Be reasonable. If ten genres truly apply, pick the most relevant few.
• This is a type-select field. You don’t need to scroll down to find what you’re looking for. Just start typing and then select from the list.

You can find the complete list of genres in the Style Guide’s Appendix B. There’s also a link to full genres list on the top of the publishing page.

Is there a genre we’re missing? You can submit a request to have it added. Select any field and note that you’re requesting a genre. Please don’t confuse genre with tropes. Fanfiction has some unique genres, but in general, you can find genre lists on any bookseller’s site.

Enter the word count of your story content for this post ONLY.

• Exclude author notes, headers, etc.
• Exclude other chapters, episodes, series—just what’s in this post.

• This is a mandatory field, so if you have no author note, you may enter N/A.
• You are limited to 100 words or less to convey critical information to your readers.
• If you have more to convey than will fit in 100 words, put it at the top of your content section.
• If your story is beta’d, the first thing in your author note should be acknowleding your beta.
• Do not use the author note field or the story content to:
  • beg for feedback
  • blackmail or guilt your readers
  • give updates on your cat/dog/hamster/imaginary pet unicorn
  • class schedule
  • health
  • Uncle Bob’s anything
• You are not obligated to explain why your update took so long or why the next one may take even longer. This is for your fiction, not your life story. Try a blog.
• This is not your summary!

If you’re not sure what you might put in an author note, some examples (none of these are required):

• Timeline – where in the series is your story situated. For instance, “This story takes place pre-movie” or “Season 8 for NCIS and Season 1 for Hawaii Five-0”
• Spoilers – particularly relevant if you’re writing current or very recent seasons of a TV show or a movie that’s still in theaters
• Major canon changes you can’t explain easily in the narrative – did an episode “not happen”? This is the place to say that.

You’re limited to 100 words for your summary.

• If it’s a multi-chapter work, you can either repeat the story summary or give a summary for each chapter. Chapter one should always be the main summary.
• Chapters 2+ could also be a short excerpt rather than a summary.
• Summary only. This is not a place for additional author notes, warnings, etc.

The Content area is for the body of your story, but you may also have additional author notes if necessary, playlists, cast images, etc.

The content should be between 500 and 35,000 words. More than 35k can cause problems for WordPress.

Note: if you’re a drabble writer (less than 500-word shorts), please use the contact form to discuss the issue with a site admin.

Spell check. Run it. We’ll judge you if you don’t. The WordPress editor has a spell check feature if your writing app’s native spell checker isn’t reliable. Also, the Grammarly plug-in for some browsers will work on a WordPress editing window.

Please refer to other tabs on this page:

• Formatting—Wild Hare’s guidelines for formatting the body of your story.
  • Please remember that there must be space between each paragraph. If you post a wall of text on Wild Hare, your story will be put back into draft and possibly removed.
• Images—image guidelines.
• Advanced—information on tables and tabs, including creating a cast page.
• Author Note—information about what types of author notes are not acceptable.
  • Fanfiction creates a unique situation with author notes in that you may have to explain the timeline or events that cannot be addressed in the narrative—such as canon events that you’re ignoring, etc. Author notes, even in the content area, are not a substitute for writing! Do not treat them as such.

As a reminder, when you signed up to be an author on Wild Hare, you were informed that the sexual objectification of children is not allowed. Chan and pedophilia are strictly forbidden.

This is for site organization and is where the menu of fandoms and pairings is derived from.

• There are two hierarchical lists. The first is fandom, the second is relationship.
  • Select the appropriate fandoms that apply to your story or select “Original Fiction”
  • If your story has no romantic pairings, be sure to select *No Relationship
• All must be pre-defined in the system.
• You may request additional fandoms and relationships at any time. It’s recommended to be pro-active about this so you aren’t waiting when you’re ready to post.
  • If you’re ready to post and don’t have the fandoms or relationships you need, leave those fields blank and save it to draft until your requested entry is added.
• The field is type-select. Rather than scrolling the long list, simply start typing the name of your fandom(s), and then repeat with the relationship(s).
• Instead of fandom, you could choose original fiction. In this case, for the pairing, select one of the OC tags. OFC/OFC, OMC/OMC, OMC/OFC. If there’s an original character combination you need that we don’t have, just submit a request.
• Only canon characters may appear in the relationship list by name. Do not request that a relationship entry be created for an original character. However, if you’re pairing your canon character with an original character, you may submit a request for a canon/original category. Such as: Tony DiNozzo/OMC
  • Do not send requests for stuff like: Tony/Entire Cast of Criminal Minds. Seriously. Don’t. Put Tony/OMC and then in your “Relationship” text box, you can note that he’s sleeping with the entire cast of every procedural crime drama on TV. (Tony, you manwhore.)
• You don’t need to list every fandom and relationship.
  • If your story is about three fandoms, but you’re borrowing characters from another five, don’t list the five!
  • Which fandoms are truly relevant to your story? List those. What’s a relevant fandom? Which fandoms’ canons do you need for your story?
  • Same for relationships. You don’t need to disclose every pairing in your story if they aren’t central to your plot. There’s a relationship tag of “other minor pairings” and it can be used to cover one or more non-essential relationships.
  • If your relationship is primarily pre-whatever, select the pairing and note in your author note field that it’s pre-relationship and select the genre of pre-relationship.

Note: Please do not submit a big list of pairings and fandoms you might like “someday”. You should know what you’re going to need in the near term (week to two weeks). Submitting a wish list of fandoms and pairings creates work for the admins, and if you never use them, we’ll be annoyed.

This is the header for your story and appears on various pages throughout the site to give information about your post. Yes, it’s repetitive to some of the fields above, but this is for advertising your work, not creating your post.

Images do not belong in the excerpt.

There are two types of Excerpts: One for one-shots or chapters within a larger work, and one for something within a larger series. Both can be found in the Project Excerpts File available on the Publish page (look for the links at the top). Select the appropriate code from the file and paste into the “Project Excerpt” field and fill in the blanks after the colons.

Please be sure to add your info AFTER the colon. Do not replace the words between the HTML code. This will create a big bolded block. There is an example of the filled out code in the file. Example of a completed form, as it would display, is below.

There is an excerpt for one-shots or a new chapter in a multi-chapter work, and another excerpt for works in a series.

If properly filled out, the project excerpt will display like this, which is what’s visible on the main site pages. See the site Home page for additional examples.

Title: Breaking the Seal
Author: Jilly James
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis, The Sentinel
Genre: Slash, Romance, Het, AU, Fusion, Sentinel/Guide
Relationship(s): Alex Sheppard/Laura Cadman, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Torture, canon-level violence, explicit sex, no beta, death of a minor character…
Word Count: 5,000
Summary: Days before the wraith siege, reinforcements are sent from Earth including new expedition leaders.

Just enter your title. That’s it. Not the larger series, the title of the work THIS POST is for.

If your story is part of a larger series, see the Series tab. One-shots and single-post episodes do not benefit from the Title Tag in that there are no other related works, but the field is mandatory so please fill it in and move on.

• Enter the title tag exactly the same way in every post.
• No fandoms, no relationships, no chapter numbers.
• No commas or other punctuation in the Title Tag field.
• If you have a really long title, you can create a shortened title tag but you have to use the SAME tag each time.

Example:
If my title is “If Found, Please Return” I can either do “If Found Please Return” every time (note, NO COMMA) or use “If Found” as my Title Tag. Exactly the same on EVERY post.

This field is optional and is only for works that are part of a larger series. Not multi-chapter stories, but multiple stories part of a larger body of work.

Simply type the name of the series followed by your author name.

For instance: The Horsemen by Jilly James

There are different procedures for tagging the series depending on the type of work.

• One-shot, or single-part episode: The title tag would be the title of the story or episode, and the series would be the overarching series name.
• Multi-chapter fic or multi-part Episode: The title tag would be the title of the story or episode, and only the first post of the multi-chapter work would be tagged for the series.
  • If you tagged every part of a multi-chapter work for the series, your series list could get overly long, and instead of being a list of works within your series, it would be a list of chapters, duplicating the work of the title tag field.
  • Part 1, chapter 1, post 1… these are the only posts you tag with a series. Everything else, leave the series field blank.

 

Tables, Tabs, etc.

If you are not familiar enough with WordPress and web publishing to navigate tables and tabs without support, then don’t do them. Learn from a tutorial or something, but Wild Hare is a consortium of writers, not a web class.

However, if you have experience and know what to do with this, you can find the code you need in this file.