Tutorial for Updating Fanfics

Alternate title:

Fanfic Efficiency by Website

Scenario: You're reading your fanfic story and notice a misspelled word, so you fix the error.

This is not only a tutorial for updating stories in the three major fanfiction websites, but it also shows the number of mouse clicks needed to fix the error, demonstrating user-friendly efficiency.

Tallies are based on a user who is already logged in, the chapter is not already exported for Fanfiction.net, and the story is on the first page of the fandom for AFF (no digging through 50 pages of old stories to find yours).

Starting point - being on the posted chapter visible to the public.
Ending point - returning to the same chapter without using Back button.

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Fanfiction.net

1. Click on User's name at the top right corner
2. Click Publish
3. Click Manage Stories
4. Click on story title
5. Click Content/Chapters
6. Click icon for Export
7. Click link for Exported document
8. Fix the error
9. Click Save
10. Click Manage Stories
11. Click on story title
12. Click Content/Chapters
13. Click Replace/Update Chapter
14. Click Select Chapter
15. Click desired chapter
16. Click Select Document
17. Click desired document
18. Click Replace Chapter Content with Document
19. Click Properties
20. Click link
21. Click drop arrow for chapter navigation
22. Click desired chapter

TOTAL: 22

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AdultFanFiction

1. Hover over Member Tools and click Author Panel
2. Scroll to desired genre and click Edit
3. Click Select Story
4. Click story title
5. Click Select Action
6. Click Edit Chapter
7. Click Edit
8. Click Choose Chapter
9. Click desired chapter
10. Fix the error
11. Click Edit Chapter
12. Hover over Archives or Anime/Games Archives and click which genre
13. Assuming genre has multiple fandoms, click letter grouping
14. Click desired fandom
15. Click on story
16. Click chapter selector
17. Click desired chapter

TOTAL: 17

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Archive of Our Own

1. Click Edit Chapter (for one-shots, click Edit at the top of the story)
2. Fix error
3. Click Update Without Preview, story will update and return to the fixed chapter.

TOTAL: 3

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As you can see, AO3 has far superior user-friendly controls for the author, allowing editing to be done directly within a chapter and returning to the same chapter when editing is finished, rather than navigating to an editing panel like AFF, or Fanfiction.net's need to return to your main login page just to leap back and forth between editing and managing.

Writers I have spoke to have said that Fanfiction.net's convoluted editorial process is so confusing, they don't even bother fixing known errors. This translates into far inferior quality on the site as error-riddled stories are left alone because the author doesn't want to spend 10 minutes managing, exporting, and importing.

When it comes to editing, Fanfiction.net is way behind its competitors. Rather than focusing on their forums and filters, their next major upgrade should be to the user-friendliness on the side of the writer. 22 clicks to edit a chapter, versus AFF's 17 clicks, and sadly AdultFanFiction is infamous for its outdated layout and extremely non-user-friendly design. Even worse, comparing it to AO3's 3-click easy updating is a painful example of how far Fanfiction.net needs to evolve.