human behavior: the anya zone

Fanfiction

This here is a sample site. It will show you the do's and don'ts of a great writer's resource for BtVS Guild Wannabes, and for the rest of you, it'll give you pointers on how to create a pretty damn excellent fanfiction archive with extras.

Frankly, this is the most time-intensive and also the most necessary part of the site: the fanfiction archive. Start here with the hard work and getting essays, resources, beta readers, et al will seem downright easy. So how do we make this as painless as possible?

Begin by finding all of the fanfiction for your zone subject that you can find. In the case of Anya, one might want to begin with Lil Patriot, Anya: Totally Tactless!, the BFA, and of course, as many of the Anya shipper sites as you could find, like The Game of Life (Anya/Xander), Untamed Desires and Magic Man (Anya/Giles), Spankya and Moving On (Anya/Spike), and A Lot More Lesbian... (Anyaslash). I am sure there are more, but why not start there? Make a list by author, tote up the totals, and get to emailing for permission (and do email for permission, girls and boys. Otherwise, tacky.) You might also want to google and check out UCSL for more fic.

Now, you may be saying, "but Jen, that's a lot of fanfiction and I don't....I...I..." and this is where I need to slip in practical advice: never make a site just to be the Guild site. The Guild is not a goddamn club. About all you get out of joining Guild is joining the webmaster's ring and membership on the zonemaster's list. If your site needs work, being a Guild site that needs work won't make it any more popular. The Guild is all about centralizing community. I bet you all didn't realize all those Anya sites existed, did you? That's exactly why an Anya zone...or any zone...exists. To be a centralizing point. Now, whether or not your zone needs to be the all-encompassing fanfiction site is up for debate. For example, say you want to be the Buffy/Xander zone. There are thousands of stories archived at B/X sites that are no longer the zone. You don't need to be the person who re-archives all those stories. You'd be better off being the person who provides a guide to really good B/X, or sharing where all that yummy B/X is, and how to write the good stuff. Meanwhile, there isn't really a central fanfiction archive for Anya. You would be doing a big favor for the community in starting a general "anyafic" mailing list and establishing yourself as the place where Anyafic is.

In other words, don't look for kudos...find something you want to do in the community and for the community and do it...and then discover how much people appreciate it...and they do.

Also, I'm not saying wait 'til all that fic is archived: nah, nah. Start with about 20 stories and add a set number of stories a week. By the way, this is a GREAT way to maintain the necessary updates for a Guild zone for a "classic" pairing like Willow/Oz that doesn't get written as much anymore. I also tend to think 10-200 stories is a totally doable goal for an archive and MOST zones have about that much fanfiction, and you'd be surprised how little work this is once you get a routine going.

That all said..what should be on this page? Well, if it's a fic for someone like Anya, you can keep the titles all on one page (anything with under 75 stories or so). If you're a little more picky, make this the place where you divide the sections of story, like stories by author, stories by title, or titles A-F, titles G-M, and titles N-Z.

I would also suggest that your entry for a fic look something like this, though there's a multitude of ways to do it:

Magic Love of Anya and Giles by Anon E. Moose (NC-17)
Summary: Giles and Anya are in love and have sex.

In any case, the title, the author, the rating, and the summary should be there; I tend to warn for slash because some people tend to get snitty about that, though your call. Others would ask for spoiler warnings. Any extra info is your call.

 

 

couple
fanfiction
resources
site
site