Lesson Three: Basic Story Information

Today Alice had made sure to arrive to the auditorium early. She had glanced over the attendance sheet and had been surprised to see that her class had 14 students and several more who would attend if possible. Three people had actually approached her outside of class to talk about the material, one person had actually asked about today's lesson. She had to make sure everything was ready for when the students arrived.

She snapped for the lights to go on and walked to the black board to write the day's topic on the blackboard. Once she finished writing 'Basic Story Information' on the board Alice turned around to put her clip-board on the podium only to notice something. There was a piece of paper already sitting there and it was the one from the last lesson. The paper she had purposely pushed to the ground. As Alice stared at it suspiciously she noticed a note scribbled on the corner: ''Looks like you 'dropped' this.''

Narrowing her eyes Alice glanced up sharply as if there might be a clue as to the identity of the note writer, only to notice the first few students filing in. They appeared to be the same students that had spoken to her after the last lesson, demonbarber14, sapphire-eyed cat, and RebeccaRoy if she remembered correctly.

After a few more minutes it seemed no one else would arrive so Alice began the lesson, "Greetings class, today we will be going over correctly posting your story's information. Since this is something you wrote, you have no excuse for getting any of this wrong."

"First is your title. In short, it should relate to your story and must have proper capitalization. If you cannot come up with a title at all, pretend you had to summarize your story in four words or less. To be frank, most titles end up being just fine and can be changed if your first one really bothers you. If you do not know how to properly capitalize your title then know the first word is always capitalized and any word after that that is not an article is also capitalized. An article is a word used before a noun such as 'a', 'the', and 'of'; 'and' also does not get capitalized."

"Next," Alice continued after putting her clipboard down, "is the summary. While I covered this in Lesson Two, some of it bears repeating. A summary should summarize your story so make sure to sum up at least a few of the main points. This means that your summary, and I cannot stress this enough, should relate to your story and not give false information on your story. The summary should also contain warnings unless you have too many, in which case put them in an A/N."

"Your genre must also always match your story. Fanfiction offers 21 different genres and you can pick two per story, that leaves you with a total number of combinations somewhere in the hundreds. There is no way that there is not a single possibility that will properly represent your story, so simply chose the one or two that best fit. This is one of the simpler sections along with rating. Considering there are only four ratings," she said, "K, K+, T, and M, and fanfiction provides guidelines there should not be much confusion. Just- just make good choices."

"Now," Alice said, "We come to warnings, which will be the largest section of this lesson despite being mentioned in the Summary Lesson. The things you should leave a warning for, either in the summary or in an authors note at the start of the first chapter or the chapter where the given thing appears, are things some people might want to avoid, things people might be looking for, things that could trigger someone, and relationships. You know all these things and should label them as needed with little trouble."

"Things someone might want to avoid can be summed up as a common trope, something squicky, or bashing. Examples of common tropes are Wrong Boy Who Lived (WBWL), any OOCness and Betrayed!Harry. Examples of squick (things people might find gross and off putting) are incest and relationships with disturbing age differences. That is anywhere that a person in a pairing is younger than legal and the other is an adult. Bashing is exactly that- when you insult and bash a character and people who favor said character will not want to read your piece"

"You should warn for things people might be looking for in your summary. This way if a term is searched your story will pop up as a result, as such everything here is basically a trope. Examples are Wrong Boy Who Lived, Betrayed!Harry, OppositeGender!Anyone, Super!Character, and so on."

Seeing that the part on triggers was next, Alice frowned slightly and made sure everyone in the room was paying attention. This part may be brief, but it was probably the most important.

"A trigger, or trauma trigger, is material that could cause a serious reminder of a traumatic event. The more graphically you will be dealing with a triggering subject, the more important it is that you place a warning. Since triggers deal with traumatic memories they deal with serious subjects. For example, you should place a warning if you story has child abuse, rape, sexual assault, spousal abuse, or any abusive relationship. There are people who have dealt with those things and might prefer to avoid it at all costs."

"Finally," Alice said, "relationships. Make sure you put the right characters together when asked to pick. There are OTPs, which could get you views from other people who like that pairing, and NoTPs, the pairings that some people won't approach with a fifty foot pole. It's horrible to go into a story looking for a pairing only to get a completely different one or no pairing at all. It's equally as bad to go in expecting no pairing or one you don't mind only to be smacked in the face with a pairing that makes you feel sick. Just label what the pairing is if there is one, fandoms even have helpful shipping names to make this as easy as possible. And with that, we are done. I shall see you all next time."

As the students filed out Alice stood next to the podium and fiddled with her clipboard. As soon as the room was empty Alice carefully double checked that no one was in the room before taking the papers off the clipboard and split them into to piles: papers from today's class and papers that were still important. The still important papers went back onto the clipboard along with the sheet from last week while the rest were dropped on the ground. Lets see if the note-writer would strike again.

Alice picked up her clipboard and walked off stage, snapping for the lights to go off as she went. It would not be until later, as she sat eating dinner and wondering who the note writer could be that she came up with a suspect.

The lighting booth guy.

A/N: First, I'm sorry that this update took so much longer. The first three parts went up faster than normal for me and now I am in the home stretch of college applications. Needless to say, my free time has been limited.

Second, a shout out toThunder Krystal, FoostepsInTheSand02, Schurmann, shadowkat678, G. Novella, PotterAllTheWay64, and belleoftoronto. These are the people who submitted idea on the original and I thought they still deserved some recognition.