The road less travelled...

Since the PMs have a limited number of letters, I thought it would be easier if I made a post that we can edit to make it easier for you to refer to if and when you need it. (You can save it to your favourites by clicking the little heart or the words 'Add to Memories' so you can come back to it easily.)

BTW, I'm assuming you know nothing at all about coding or about LiveJournal. Even if you understand the basics, I hope this will help.

Okay, let's get started. The most important thing you need to know is the following symbols, this one < and this one >

These sit on each end of your coding. You put things between them to change the appearance of your text, hide it, and do all sorts of other clever things.

BTW, I have turned off my auto-formatting in this post so that you can simply copy and paste if it helps.

Personally I find the following codes to be the most useful on LJ:

<b> - this makes everything after it bold

<u> - this makes everything after it underlined

<i> - this makes everything after it italic

To turn this formatting off again, you repeat the brackets, but with one little difference.

You add this symbol /

Therefore:

</b> - this stops everything being bold

</u> - this stops everything being underlined

</i> - this stops everything being italicised

Bold probably stands out the best, followed by underline and italics. Bold, therefore, is useful for headings, etc. I use italics to emphasis things when I'm writing, although other people use underline. It's totally up to you.

So let's move on to the way to format your story and any other fics you post to doctor_donna. I will copy and paste your fic from your LJ and play with it a bit. The first thing that was mentioned was the header. This tells your reader about the fic they are about to read. This is a blank version you can use for yourself simply by copying and pasting it (I have just seen that you posted the fic to doctor_donna yourself, but I will still leave this here for you to read).

<b>Title:</b>
<b>Author:</b>  
<b>Rating:</b>
<b>Summary:</b>
<b>Disclaimer:</b>
<b>Word Count:</b>
<b>Characters:</b>
<b>A/N:</b>

I make them bold because it's a bit eye-catching, but you don't have to. 


Ah, but what do we fill the various sections with? Let's move on and see.

The most important ones are the first two:

<b>Title:</b>
<b>Author:</b> <lj user="oroberts924">

These will give the reader the title (obviously) and will encode your name with the little LJ head. People can click on it and jump to your LJ.

<b>Rating:</b>

The ratings used on doctor_donna are:
G(eneral)/K = appropriate for people of all ages; it does not include adult language, sex, or violence.
PG/K+ = stories may include a small amount of adult language and "action violence", but no drug use or adult themes.
PG-13/T(een) = stories may contain some adult themes, violence, and mild adult language.
R/M = stories may contain adult themes and more explicit violence, language and sex.
NC-17/MA = stories may contain graphic violence, drug use, and sexual content.

<b>Summary:</b>

Obviously a quick snapshot of what the fic is about. You can either write a summary or use a quote from the fic.

<b>Disclaimer:</b This tells the world that, sadly, you don't own the Doctor or Donna

<b>Word Count:</b>
<b>Characters:</b>

This is quite an important one. There are people who get rather prickly if, for instance, a fic only seems to contain Rose and Nine and is being posted at doctor_donna. It's always better to mention Donna if she is going to turn up later or explain that she is involved.

<b>A/N:</b>

You only use these if you have something you want to add, e.g. dedicating the fic to someone (you can use the link I made for your LJ and change the name to reflect that person, for instance 'I'm dedicating this fic to <lj user="beautifulntime"> who helped so much with the coding.')

Okay, moving on to LJ-cuts.

These are great for when you have a really long post (or one that has a lot of pictures) and you don't want to take up too much space either on a group or on your friends' pages. The code for doing so is here:

<lj-cut text="Read more">
</lj-cut>

Everything you want to hide goes between those two sets of brackets. Just make sure you put something where the 'read more' sits so that people have something to click on. I personally favour a quote from my fic, but others prefer 'Chapter 1' or something similar. It's up to you!

Finally, creating links. There are two main types of links - links to other websites and links that will allow you to post pictures.

Links to websites: <a href="http://www.example.com/">This is a link to an example website</a>

Links for pictures:  <img src="http://www.example.com/image.jpg" alt="title or description"/>

You put in links to the relevant websites in the http part and, at least in the first one, make sure you put in a minimum of one word in the 'This is a link' part or people have nothing to click on.

For posting to doctor_donna, once you have put in your heading, it's always good to add the link back to your LJ. In the case of Surprising a Timelord, that would be:

<a href="http://oroberts924.livejournal.com/725.html?nc=2>Surprising A Timelord</a>

Of course, you will change the http code for each new fic.

I find it best to use LJ cuts on my own journal and the linking code for doctor_donna and other groups. So, for instance, the coding for Surprising A Timelord on your journal might look like this:

<b>Title:</b> Surprising A Timelord
<b>Author:</b> <lj user="oroberts924">
<b>Rating:</b> G
<b>Summary:</b> The Doctor is in for a surprise.
<b>Disclaimer:</b> The Doctor and Donna are owned by the BBC and Doctor Who creaters
<b>Word Count:</b> 
<b>Characters:</b> Doctor/Donna
<b>A/N:</b> I am new,so please be nice. 


This will hide the text of your story on your journal and then you copy the header details onto doctor_donna like so and below them, instead of an LJ cut, you use a link:

<b>Title:</b> Surprising A Timelord
<b>Author:</b> <lj user="oroberts924">
<b>Rating:</b> G
<b>Summary:</b> The Doctor is in for a surprise.
<b>Disclaimer:</b> The Doctor and Donna are owned by the BBC and Doctor Who creaters
<b>Word Count:</b>
<b>Characters:</b> Doctor/Donna
<b>A/N:</b> I am new,so please be nice.

<a href="http://oroberts924.livejournal.com/725.html?nc=2">http://oroberts924.livejournal.com/725.html</a>

The reason we differentiate like that is so that all of the lovely comments end up on your journal where you can find them rather than on the community where you will have to hunt back through entries to find them. Having a header like that on your own LJ means that people who come looking for fics can find them more quickly without having to read through every single post you make. 

I think that's the basics and should be able to get you started. Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions!