The Foreword Page and Tagging

Having the foreword page of your story on point is paramount. You don't have to have a poster, but I like them. It's like judging a book by the cover. Like the title, they should be relevant to the story the reader is about to read. If the poster is all dark and gloomy, I expect the story to be angsty and dark. If it's brightly colored with a lot of hearts, I expect a 'cute' story. It can help set the tone. Keep in mind, that you want eye catching, not distracting. And people make them for FREE! Well, some are now starting to charge karma points, but that's fine.

Titles:

Titles are the first thing people judge your story by, and also the first thing they see. Titles are important. They should be easy to remember and relevant in some way to the story you are writing. They can be hard to come up with, I know. As a suggestion, use the search engine on AFF to see how many other stories have the same title as the one you're thinking of. If there are more than 50, think harder.

They should be eye catching, without having a bunch of asterisks and exclamation points and in it. And please be spelled correctly. Oh, and if the story is in English, the title should be in English. I know we all aspire to be a bit more Korean, but leave the Hangul out of it. Please.

OMG!! My Step Father is My Ex-boyfriend!?!? . . . .

. . . . Is not a good title for a story. It tells you everything.

A Tale of Love . . . .

. . . . is too vague.

What do you mean LuHan is gay?!?!

. . . (okay, that's kind of funny, lol. But I still wouldn't read it.) Titles are 'proper', they should always be capitalized.

A stry about a boy and a gurl n luv

. . . . I don't expect much in the grammar department. And it's too long.

Can you see where I'm going with this? A 'good' title is something like, 'A Dangerous Love'. You can go in so many directions with that. Hell, I just wrote it and I want to know what's so dangerous about the relationship. I am intrigued by my own idea. Cool. . . .

Descriptions:

I've already covered them, but I'll say again that they should be short and sweet. If your description is two paragraphs long, that's too much information. They should be a teaser, not an outline.

The description section is NOT where you introduce all your characters with pictures. Frankly, I hate that. HATE IT! I don't want you to explain the cast to me with pictures, likes and dislikes, favorite foods and colors and all that ish. I think it's lazy. I want to learn about the characters as I read.

Forewords:

Technically, a foreword is supposed to be written by another person about the book. A PREFACE is an author note in the beginning.

On here, we SHOULD BE using the foreword section as a preface. It should be where we put any important information that the reader should know before starting the story. It gives you a chance to explain yourself ahead of time. I don't mind if the author tells me in that section that it's their first story. Good to know. It lets me know that I should be lenient about grammar in the beginning(though I really hope they improve as the story goes on.) It's fine if you tell me that it was inspired by a dream that you had a few days ago. That's where you should warn your readers about triggers and what not. That's the point of it. Use it wisely.

Tagging:

You want readers to be able to find your story. I don't know about you, but I browse by tag to find stories I'm in the mood for at that moment. And honestly, I tend to browse by the 'who', more than anything. If I want to read about Minho from SHINee, I will either look up Minho, or SHINee. If I want to find G-Dragon, I look up Jiyong, gdragon, kwonjiyong, or bigbang. Easy. As long as it's spelled correctly. I will be looking for 'taeyang', not 'tayang, 'or taeyan'.

And use all of your tags. You can use seven, then use all seven. Feel free to use drama, angst, romance and other relevant tags. Do not tag EXO if EXO is not in the story. And do not tag it as , if no one so much as holds hands until chapter 15. If it's tagged as , I expect some , dammit.

A word of warning. DO NOT MAKE UP YOUR OWN TAGS. Look through and use established/popular ones. That works out better in the long run. Be careful of 'ship' names. There might be 40,000 tags on the site, but as you go farther down the list, some have one or two stories attached. They are lost in obscurity, then.

Speaking of tags . . . . . .

Vs. AMBW

As I have said before AMBW stands for Asian Man/Black Woman. So when I browse the AMBW tag, I expect the leading man to be Asian of some sort, and the leading woman to be Black. I don't think that's complicated or controversial. If the leading woman in your story IS NOT BLACK, or even half-Black, please get off of our tag. Latinas are not Black. Indonesians are not Black. Black is Black. Of African decent. If your character is Brazilian and Korean . . . you don't get into the club. Sorry. If the coupling is a configuration is anything other than an Asian Man with a Black Woman, you should be using the tag. Got it?