Amalthia's recs and fan works

I'd like to be clear up front, this post is for people who are merging fan fiction into a single file, though it is possible some of the tips may help authors who would prefer their fic to retain as much of the original formatting as possible and not lose whole sections of their stories, or lose section breaks when someone else merges their story.

Common Mistakes

Missing Chapters

My most common mistake when I merge stories hosted on LJ is I sometimes miss chapters. The easiest solution I've found is to first write to the author and ask if they have a single file Word Doc or HTML version of their story. Generally speaking authors don't mess up and forget to add chapters to their own story. Remember to ask politely because they are doing you a favor.

If the author does not have a single file version of their story you'll have to merge the story the old fashioned way, which is to copy and paste into a new empty document. I currently have a program called Office Tab installed on my computer which gives me tabs for every document opened in Microsoft Word. I normally, if there aren't too many parts, open all the parts of the story first in Word. I then go down the row of tabs copying and pasting each part into a new empty word doc file. After I finish pasting the chapter into the new single file document I close the chapter so it's no longer listed on my tabs. I've found that since I started this process I've had fewer missed chapters and parts.

However, one thing to watch out for is that you actually have all parts to the author's story. One of the easiest ways to find out if you've actually gotten all the story is check the author's word count against the new single file version of the story. If they match up you're good to go. If there is a big discrepancy it probably means you missed a part. This can happen when the author does not have a master post for their story or all parts listed. Be sure to scroll to the bottom and check to see if they have a Next link.

For stories listed on a website do not assume because it's on a regular website it's in a single file. Sometimes they are not. Scroll to the bottom and look for more chapter links.

Missing Scene Breaks

Missing section breaks are when the pov switches and you don’t realize it's happened until you're a paragraph or two in and realize this is someone else's pov.

Most authors use **** or ~*~ or something obvious to indicate the scene is changing. However, not all authors use obvious symbols. Many use extra blank paragraphs which on HTML browsers works fine.

This is why this error is harder to catch after the story is converted. Calibre when it converts HTML to Mobipocket or Epub removes all blank paragraphs and indents the paragraphs. Generally speaking this is good except when an author has used blank paragraphs to indicate a scene change.

There are two ways to fix this. One is to add ***** to those extra blank spaces yourself in the single file Word version before you convert to HTML, which is my preferred method. Or after you've converted to HTML add this HTML code

<P>&nbsp;</P>

to create the scene break in the proper locations. The second fix is harder because generally when you convert to Plain HTML those blank paragraph spaces in Word are removed completely so it's harder to find the scene break.

If you try using < br > to create the space it does not work on epub. So you'll be left with no scene breaks.

I tried to think of other areas where mistakes can easily happen but kind of came up blank so if anyone has any recommendations or advice please feel free to share.