A Guide to the Beginning Fan Work Author

Ratings and The Audience

This is the most important, most heavy thing I can tell you when posting a story: Please rate the story properly.

I have run into so many issues on this with writers looking to get discovered. Writers want to get discovered so they post the stories as General or Teens but then post explicit content in it. I want to make this perfectly clear: SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT IS NOT FOR TEENS! IT COUNTS AS PORNOGRAPHIC CONTENT AND SHOULD NOT BE VIEWED BY ANYONE UNDER 18!

If there is a movie with an explicit scene, including nudity, gore, sex, drug usage, or excessive raunchy humor, it is rated R for restricted. 

Only people above 18 are allowed to see rated R in theaters and need to display identification. The same goes for online works. On deviantart, you must input your age to view mature content. On Archive of Our Own, you have to rate things that have Explicit content Mature or Explicit and give proper warning. If not, your works can be reported and taken down.

Know. Your. Audience.

If you are part of a fandom that has mostly adolescents under the age of 18, put warnings on your content and rate them properly. Not everyone is comfortable with explicit and violent content. As an adult myself, I don't read things above mature if they are rated so for explicit sexual content. It is something I am uncomfortable with. In my own works that deal with abuse, I tag it as such and put warnings so that people know what they are going to read and are not exposed to content that may trigger them.

If you want to have family friendly humor and fluffy, innocent romance, it's rated G or PG.

If you want to write some suggestive jokes, teen romance, implications, swearing, not heavily graphic violence, it will be rated T or PG-13.

If you put smut/lemons/erotic content in a rated G or Teen section, you may be allowing under-aged teenagers and preteens to view content that is not safe for them. NO CHILD UNDER 18 NEEDS TO SEE THAT. Whether you want to read it or not is not mine nor anyone's problem. Read and post in mature sections if you want to share something like that.

If you are going to put something that may trigger something in a person, please put appropriate warnings. Movies do this all the time. Does your story contain any form of abuse? Put a trigger warning for it. Does it have torture, physical, mental, or otherwise? Put a trigger warning for it. Does your story contain kidnapping, drugs, home invasion, massive amounts of death, or gruesome violence? Put a trigger warning on it. 

I myself become emotionally distressed at scenes of home invasion, terrorism, gore, and gruesome torture. It is a trigger and movies containing it may trigger me to have an anxiety attack. There was a situation where a substitute teacher had put on a rated R film that portrayed a gruesome murder and home invasion, despite me warning her that I was extremely sensitive to that kind of content. I had an anxiety attack because of it and it caused me a lot of distress that followed.

DO NOT RISK DOING THAT TO ANYONE.

Don't take this as me trying to censor your writing. It's a cautionary tale. No one should see something that brings back terrible memories or plagues on a terrible fear they have. Know that there are people out there who have experience the things we write about. There are victims of abuse, survivors of violent crimes, recovering drug addicts, and victims of drug related incidents. There are people who are uncomfortable with sexual content and don't want to read or watch things with it.

Respect peoples boundaries and post it in sections where people who want to see it, can see it. Be sensitive and mindful. This is one of, if not the most important things I can tell you. Spare someone the heartache and discomfort and spare yourself the guilt. Please.