Posting Guide

Posting day has three main components: posting the fic, posting the art, and submitting a masterpost to the Pinefest blog. You'll find each aspect of posting day outlined in detail below.

If you're looking for your posting date, you'll be able to check it on the current round's Posting Schedule once it becomes available.

## Posting Your Fic

Your complete fic must be published in full on Ao3 on your posting date. Serialized posting is not acceptable for this challenge, including serialized posting on a secondary site. If you do not have an Ao3 account, you can join the waiting list for an invitation here. At the time of writing this, the average wait time to open an account was around three days.

We strongly recommend that you upload and save your fic to Ao3 as a draft a few days in advance of your posting date. This reduces the chance of unforeseen issues such as last minute formatting errors and Ao3 outages causing long delays. When it's time to publish, make sure to change the publication date on Ao3 to the current date. You'll find this option directly above the Language field.

The Pinefest will have a new AO3 collection set up for the year, so search “DCPF\_2021” in the “Add to Collection” field when posting your work.

As the collection is moderated, it might take a little time for your work to appear under the DCPF umbrella--basically, one of the mods will have to manually approve the fic as a part of the challenge. We’ll try to do this as soon as possible after you’ve posted, but it may sometimes take a few hours depending on the time of day that you post.

We also ask that you tag your work with “deancaspinefest” so that we can track it down if there’s a problem with the collection.

Lastly, please make sure to link to the artist's post in the notes, regardless of whether you have embedded the art. Remember to provide your artist with a link to your fic as soon as it is available.

### Formatting The Body Text

Occasionally, copying text from your word processor to Ao3 can result in some strange formatting issues such as giant paragraph breaks, disappearing italics, or missing spaces. While it is possible to fix this manually using the Rich Text Editor, it can be really time consuming.

To save yourself the trouble, we highly recommend using this Google Docs resource to format your text for Ao3. Step by step instructions are below:

1. Follow the above link to the Google Doc
2. Click on **File**, then on **Make A Copy** in the toolbar, and your copy of the file should open automatically
3. Delete all of the text in the file -- yes, **all** of it
4. Paste your fic text into the file
5. Click on **Post to Ao3** in the toolbar
6. Wait a minute for your text to reformat
7. While you're waiting, open up a Post New Work window on Ao3 and make sure the Work Text field is set to HTML (this should be the default)
8. Once it's done, copy the text, and paste it into the Work Text field on the Ao3 post page
9. You're ready to preview and post!

### Embedding Art

It is up to you and the artist you're teamed up with whether you'll embed the art in the body of your fic where it matches up with particular scenes, embed it at the top or bottom of the fic, or just include a direct link to the artist's post within the fic notes. That said, if you choose to embed the art, you may find you have some trouble formatting text around it.

A helpful resource to ensure that this doesn't happen is the following code, kindly shared by Dr-Dean and CenedraRiva during a previous year’s challenge.

`<img src="`**EXAMPLE**`" alt="Header with cute paw prints" width="100%" />`
`</p>`

To use this resource, simply copy the code above, replace only the word **EXAMPLE** with a direct link to the image, and paste it wherever you want your art to appear inside the “Work Text” field. This will ensure that your images are full sized and centered for everyone viewing the fic, regardless of whether they are reading on their phone or computer.

## Posting Your Art

As an artist, it is entirely up to you where you host your art. Most artists use their Tumblr blogs to host their art, but you are welcome to use whichever platform you prefer--the sole requirement is that your art should be accessible via a direct link without having to log in or use a password.

We strongly recommend that you upload and save your art to your chosen hosting site as a draft a few days in advance of your posting date. This reduces the chance of unforeseen issues such as slow internet, or site outages causing long delays.

It is up to you and your author to decide whether to embed the art in the body of the fic where it matches up with particular scenes, embed it at the top or bottom of the fic, or just include a direct link to your separate art post within the fic notes.

Please make sure to link to the fic in the description, and provide your author with a link to your art post as soon as it is available. If your hosting site allows enough space, please also include the fic summary.

## Submitting The Masterpost

In the lead up to your posting day, teams will need to decide which individual will be responsible for submitting the masterpost to the Pinefest blog.

If you would prefer that the mods make the post for you, please let us know at least two days before your posting date. We’ll queue your masterpost for publishing on your posting day. Step by step instructions are below:

1. Visit the Submissions page on the Pinefest Blog
2. If the artist in your team has created a header image or title card for inclusion in the masterpost, select **photo** as the post type
3. If you are not including an image, choose **text** and leave the title field blank
4. Copy and complete the template below in the body of the post, and hit the **submit** button when you're done

**Author**: Author’s Ao3 Username (link if desired)
**Artist**: Artist’s Username (link if desired)

*Include your final summary here in italics.*

**Link to fic**  |  **Link to art** (If both are combined in one place, include a single link and write “Link to fic and art” instead)

**Pairings**: Dean/Cas (list any past or background pairings in parentheses)
**Warnings**: (include all major archive warnings here, plus any others that are relevant)
**Tags**: (This is just for Tumblr, so please only include three major story tags. If you’re not sure what to include, feel free to ask the mods or your fellow authors for advice in the Discord chat)