Poptard's Amazing Guide on How to Make Your Own TVTropes page! · 9:37pm Mar 2nd, 2014

So, are you a troper? Enjoy a good fanfic and wish there was someway you could give it the respect it deserves? Want to actually do something with your time instead of spend it merely reading? Or maybe becomes moderately internet famous? Say yes.

Well, I know just the way. Make your own TV Tropes Page for your favorite story today! What's that, you don't know how to? Well, good ol' Poptard can show you how, in this easily comprehensible guide!

Step 1: Be a Troper

This one is kinda a no-brainer, but you both need to be kinda familiar with enough tropes, and you need to have a TV Tropes handle. Believe me, setting one up is easy. You just put in a name, a password, and viola. No email, no hassle. That's it.

Step 2: Find a Story You Want to Trope

This part might come a little harder. Is the story you're troping "good" in an objective sense? Does it have good characterization? Internal continuity? Humor? Avoid cliches and is unique? Grammar good enough you don't want to drive a nail through your eyes? Believe me, it's hard sorting through all the stories you want.

Finally, you pick your story. To demonstrate, I'm going to be troping Glory by Rune Soldier Dan. Partly because it's a great story, partly because it's unique, and partly because I have enough unfinished stories I need to keep updating.

One note: Please, please don't trope your own story. Trope pages are recognitions of literary merit, and no matter what, you're always biased whenever you're considering the quality of your own work. Sturgeon's Law applies to everything and everyone, and troping your own stories is quite presumptuous. If only the person who wrote the story is interested, what does that imply about the quality of your story?

Step 3: Make a "To Do" Entry

This is where you'll get yourself organized before blarfing all your word onto your new page. Here, you can give yourself a list of which stories you like to trope and prepare the trope list for the stories you're about to add. Think of all the tropes you can, copy their wikiwords, and maybe actually start your descriptions if you're so bold. Hyperlinking doesn't work, so I'd advise you not to perform the exact trope markup you need. I'm doing it because I'm a professional.

If you think you've got enough tropes, feel free to skip to the next number. If you're not satisfied, leave and come back, adding stuff when a burst of inspiration strikes you. You can find your "To Do" list from a link on your watchlist.

Try not to get too distracted by all that junk you might have down there. Please. Your To Do list can be a purgatory for those stories.

Step 4: Procrastinate

Trust me, it's going to happen. I'll explain ways to get yourself out of this whole, but I have a... thing... to do first. I'll get around to it.

Step 5: Get Serious

You ready to release your work from your To Do List? ...You're probably not, but whatever. The next part is making your entry. TVTropes is pretty simple when it comes to making a new page. All you need to do is put a link somewhere, and it's made. Use a WikiWord, which means compressing a phrase while keeping the capitalizations. If I wanted to link to the trope Everything's Better With Princesses, in the page editing I would literally type Everything'sBetterWithPrincesses to make the link. If you're troping a fanfic, make your link Fanfc/StoryNameHere (the "fanfic" part won't be displayed) or Fanfic/{{Story}} for one-word titles.

When you launch page, the link is going to appear red. A red link usually indicates a mistake in linking, but not in this case.

...Except when it doesn't, like when there are other works that use the common name "Glory."

Step 6: Copy-Paste Your To Do List, Then More Edits.

Just put it in, make a few edits. This is where you can correct your formatting, stuff like that. You're starting to get there!

Step 7: Post That Baby!

Just hit the save button. Look at your glorious piece of work! You must feel so proud! Now, Prepare to feel horrible as you see all your errors and more tropes you need to describe.

Back to work.

Step 8: Moar Edits!

So, click the edit page again, and get to work. You're not allowed to just add a trope and then put no description: every single trope needs a description. And try to make reading the trope descriptions interesting as well: you're probably representing this fanfic to potential readers on TVTropes, and if it's a bore to read and not engaging, it's unlikely they'll feel like clicking that link to your favorite story.

Also, at this point, you might want to add an image to the page. Find the "tools" on the left toolbar and find the "image uploader." The maximum dimmensions are 350x350, so you probably might have to shrink it. MS Paint is what I use for that task.

Looking good! You're pretty much done...

Step 9: Link it! Link It Everywhere!

Except that you're not! You're only halfway there. At this moment in time, pretty much only you and those who neurotically patrol the fanworks page know of its existence. I can think of two awesome stories I was planning to trope myself only to find out they already had trope pages and I've been completely unaware. If you don't make the connections, your page will sit in solitude.

To make the connections, click on those same hyperlinks in the list of tropes. Then, find the "Fanworks" folder (or whatever folder you're looking for, if you're actually troping *gasp* Not-Fanfiction), then link back to your own trope page while also describing how it's used in the story. Note 1: You can save time by just copy-pasting the text from the fanwork page onto the trope page itself, but it looks lazy and you really shouldn't. Yes, even if I just did it! Note 2: Make your entry damn interesting. This is literally the gate for potential readers to enter your story. You have a few sentences to describe how awesomely this story uses this trope, so that they'll click the link and maybe get interested enough to go read the story itself. Make it look nice!

Since I'm taking a break from the hard work of making this story, let me show you what I mean with another one of my trope'd works, the Cadance of Cloudsdale Series by Skywriter.

See? Link to the trope on the fanwork page, link to the fanwork on the trope page. How beautifully symmetrical!

You can also check how many articles and pages your trope page is linked to with the "Related" button up top. It also shows you how many people came to the page directly from a link on a non-TVTropes website.

That brings me to the next part: Tell the author you troped their page, either in a private message or by leaving a comment on their story. This will give you your initial influx of viewers and potentially enough to get some Wiki Magic flowing. Also, maybe you can become Best BFF Friends Forver with the author, like most of the people following me. Love you guys!

Step 10: Keep It Monitored

Unless if you've decided to go with a fanfic that is completed, you're probably going to have a regularly updated story on your hands. Unless you're me, who seems to be cursed to have his favorite stories cancel after he tropes them). Anyway, add a watch on that page, add new tropes and edits when new chapters get releases, and pray to your favorite deity that the story doesn't get cancelled/nosedive in quality/both.

Finish!

Hooray, you're done! You've spend several hours/days/weeks writing stuff about other stuff that people wrote! It's not easy, so you should feel proud of yourself. With luck, you become moderately renowned by grateful authors. If not, keep trying, because it's not like you can stop troping or something like that.

Just keep in mind, you're never guaranteed to get interest on your trope pages. I'd say maybe half of the trope pages I launched got significant attention from other tropers, and this goes double for old, completed fanfics. Even if you don't get more interest, hold your head high, keep updating it, and maybe pick a more trafficked story next time.

Now, if I don't see a massive influx of new trope pages, then I have failed you. And if you're read this far, you're awesome. Or really bored. I don't care which.

Until next time,
Poptard

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