How to post on FanFiction.Net: documents, categories and ratings

FanFiction.Net is the oldest of the major fanfiction archives still standing: Wikipedia's article records that it went online on October 15, 1998, built by Xing Li as a fan-story repository, and that it held over 12 million registered users by 2023. It is also one of the hardest platforms to document, because the live site now sits behind an aggressive bot check that refused every plain fetch attempted for this guide. The pages used here are the site's own, as preserved by the Internet Archive: the Content Guidelines (a snapshot from December 2024), the Terms of Service (January 2025), the FAQ (2005, the last publicly archived copy), and FictionRatings.com, the rating system the guidelines point to. Where those pages are silent, this guide says so instead of guessing.

Registering

The archived FAQ states the terms plainly: to register you must be 13 years of age, agree to the Terms of Service, and have a valid email account; registration is free, and an activation email with a link finishes the process. Wikipedia describes registration as optional, with reading open to anyone and sign-in (direct, or via Google, Facebook or Twitter) unlocking story submission, reviews, beta reader applications, private messaging and favorites lists. The TOS adds the standard obligations: accurate account information, a password you keep secure, and never using another person's account.

Publishing: the document system and chapters

FFN's own pages describe publishing as a two-stage system. The FAQ's Document Manager section puts it in one breath: "To submit creative entries to FanFiction.Net, you must first upload your saved word processor file/document into the Document Manager. At a later time you can convert the document to a FanFiction.Net story to be published on the site." A holding area for uploads, converted into a published story later. The 2005 format list ran from Microsoft Word (.doc) through WordPerfect, OpenOffice, StarOffice, HTML and Rich Text to plain text. A word of honesty here: the editor inside today's signed-in site is named the Document Editor, but its live help pages could not be fetched for this guide, and the archived FAQ predates the rename, so what this guide can verify is the Document Manager the site grew from.

Formatting is stripped on upload, and the FAQ lists exactly what survives:

• Only the HTML tags u, b, i, p, br and hr are kept; anything else is removed.
• Non-language keyboard characters such as ~, _ and ^ are removed; dividers should use the HR tag or a plain dash.
• Extended spacing is collapsed, and double spacing is the maximum between paragraphs.
• "Please avoid all fancy and gimmicky layout decorations", in the FAQ's own words; non-language characters can cost you the story.

Chapter management, as the Content Guidelines page states it: submit chapter one through the "Create Story" page, then add chapters two and up through the "Edit/Upload chapter" feature in the left menu after login. The rules around it are absolute and stated twice: chapters of the same story are never separate entries, all chapters and segments must be grouped into one story, and "there can only be one copy of any unique story on the entire site. No exceptions." Author notes may be added "to the beginning or at the end of stories but never as individual chapters", and the chapter system itself "is not to be used as placeholder for non-story content such as author notes". (For how to use those note slots well, see author's notes on serial platforms.)

Categories, and the absence of tags

Wikipedia's article describes the filing system: nine top categories (Anime/Manga, Books, Cartoons, Comics, Games, Miscellaneous, Movies, Plays/Musicals and TV), with each story carrying a sub-category, a language and a content rating, and with crossovers filed under two sub-categories instead of one. The guidelines make placement absolute: "Entry must be placed in proper category. No exceptions", and rewriting the names of characters or locations to upload one story into multiple categories is a listed violation. By Wikipedia's rounded count of the largest fandoms, Harry Potter (roughly 852,000 stories), Naruto (444,000) and Twilight (223,000) head the archive.

What no fetched page describes, and what the article's account of the site confirms, is anything resembling a free-form tag system: no relationship tags, no character tags, no additional tags. A story on FFN is a category, a sub-category, a language, a rating, a title and a summary. That is the entire discovery surface, and the summary carries real weight because the rules govern it too: "Entry title and summary must be rated K for all audience. No exceptions." (The craft is the same as any selling description; see how to write a book blurb.)

The ratings: K, K+, T, M, and the rating that does not exist

FFN adopts the FictionRatings.com system, its guidelines page says so explicitly, and the definitions below come from FictionRatings.com's own ratings guide:

• K: intended for a general audience 6 and older; free of coarse language, violence and adult themes.
• K+: 9 and older; minor action violence without serious injury, mild coarse language, no adult themes.
• T: teens 13 and older; some violence, minor coarse language, minor suggestive adult themes.
• M: not suitable under 16; strong but non-explicit adult themes, references to violence, strong coarse language.
• MA: mature adults only; may contain explicit language and adult themes.

Then the famous line, from the guidelines page itself: "FanFiction does not accept explicit content, Fiction Rating: MA, and the rating is only presented for reference." MA exists in the reference table and nowhere else on FFN. Wikipedia records the history behind it: NC-17 material was banned on September 12, 2002 and removed a month later following a high volume of complaints about adult stories, and the MPAA-style letter ratings were dropped in 2005 after cease-and-desist demands from the Motion Picture Association, which is when the FictionRatings letters arrived.

The rest of the rules, as FFN states them

The guidelines page lists what may not be posted, and it is a longer list than most archives carry:

• Non-stories: lists, bloopers, polls, previews, challenges, author notes and the like.
• One or two liners.
• MST, comments inserted between the flow of a copied story.
• Stories with non-historical, non-fictional characters: actors, musicians and other real people (Wikipedia dates the celebrity-fiction ban to around 2003).
• Any form of interactive entry: choose-your-own-adventure, second-person and "you"-based fiction, Q&As.
• Chat/script format and keyboard-dialogue entries.
• Multiple entries of the same material.
• Copying from a previously published work, including musical lyrics not in the public domain, which is the songfic ban Wikipedia dates to 2005.

Two more structural rules. Original writing is not welcome: FanFiction is "not an archive for non-fanfiction literary works", and the guidelines send non-fanfiction to FictionPress, the sister site Wikipedia records as hosting over one million original works. And the page names the authors and publishers whose worlds it will not archive at all, out of respect for "the expressed wishes" of each: Anne Rice, Archie Comics, Laurell K. Hamilton, Nora Roberts, Robin Hobb and Terry Goodkind, among others.

Moderation is reactive rather than up front. The guidelines open by stating that "FanFiction does not filter content and is an open system that trusts the writer's judgement", Wikipedia states the site "does not operate a screening or editorial board" and relies on user reports of misrated stories, and the enforcement line is plain: "Failure to comply with site rules will result in the removal of stories and/or suspension of account." The content question still has live consequences: Wikipedia records that in July 2024 the site went dark for two days after its domain registrar deactivated its DNS in a dispute tied to explicit-content concerns.

Reader features: favorites, follows, reviews

What you get on the other side of posting, per Wikipedia's account: readers can favorite a story or an author, with favorites displayed on the public profile (the article calls them "similar to likes, hearts or Archive of Our Own's kudos"), follow a story or an author for email notifications when it updates, and leave reviews. Review control is split: writers can moderate or block anonymous reviews, but signed-in reviews "cannot be moderated or disabled". Private messaging runs an inbox and outbox with blocking and can be disabled entirely in settings. Registered users can apply as beta readers, run up to 10 forums and 25 polls each, and build communities, the staff-moderated story archives FFN calls C2. What none of this adds up to is a monetization surface: the TOS prohibits commercial use of the service without written authorization, and no page fetched for this guide describes any author payment mechanism.

One rights note before you post anything: under the TOS you retain ownership of your submissions, but you grant the site "a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable license" to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform them in connection with the service. Read that sentence and decide comfortably.

FFN versus AO3, honestly

The comparison follows from the two platforms' own pages, and the root difference is content. FFN bans MA-rated explicit content outright; AO3's Terms of Service FAQ states the opposite rule, "If it's a fictional fanwork that is legal to post in the United States, then it is welcome on AO3" (how to post fanfiction on AO3). From that root, the mechanical differences:

• Ratings and warnings. FFN caps at M and requires a K-rated title and summary; AO3 offers five ratings up to Explicit plus four required Archive Warnings, with an adult-content confirmation for readers.
• Tags. FFN files stories into fixed categories with no free-form tags; AO3 runs a wrangled tag system across fandoms, relationships, characters and additional tags, which is what makes a rare shipping or slash fiction story findable at all.
• Feedback. Favorites, follows and reviews on FFN; kudos plus comments on AO3.
• Entry. Free registration at 13 on FFN; AO3's invitation queue on the other side.
• Scope. FFN points original work to FictionPress; AO3 accepts it under the Original Work tag.

Choosing is mostly a content question. A story that sits at T or M inside a big mainstream fandom still meets FFN's enormous legacy audience where it stands; a story that needs explicit content, warnings or tags goes to AO3, which was built for exactly those. Posting the same work to both breaks neither site's rules as fetched here, though AO3's own importing documentation names FanFiction.Net outright as a source that does not work with its importer, and FFN's TOS, for its part, prohibits accessing the service through automated systems, so a cross-post is a copy-paste, not an import.

What no fetched page says

No page fetched for this guide states a word or character limit for documents or chapters, so this guide quotes none; a precise number you meet elsewhere did not come from FFN's guidelines, TOS or archived FAQ. The platform publishes no traffic figures itself: the counts above (12 million registered users, the fandom sizes) are Wikipedia's, not FFN's. Nothing in any fetched page mentions official mobile apps; the TOS's only use of the word is generic, defining the service to include "the FanFiction.Net domain name, apps, and any country-specific domains". And the site's own pages do not describe the current signed-in Document Editor beyond the older Document Manager account quoted above. For everything after the first chapter posts, the craft is platform-independent: choosing a release schedule, endings worth returning for, and how to end a story for the fics that actually finish. The writing side starts with how to write fan fiction; the wider map is where to publish a web serial.