Mooagain Testing

Before You Start

Step Zero

If you want to write an SCP or any other page for the wiki, you need to have an account. You can learn how to make one of those and join the site here. Make sure you read the entire page at least once before submitting anything.

You've done that? Good. Now use that new account of yours to read more SCPs. I mean a lot more SCPs, tales, or whatever format you want. Just read more. The number one way to get better at writing is to get better at reading. While you read, consider what you like or dislike about the thing you're reading.

Try to diversify what you read as well, don't just read highly rated contest winners. There's a lot of stuff on the site, from curated lists to recent gems, to the random button. Who knows, you might even discover some new parts of the SCP universe you want to explore in your own writing.

Ratings

Just about every page has a rating module on it. Everyone who reads that page can leave a vote on if they liked it or not, and if the majority of people don't like a page it gets deleted. This is not because people don't like the author. This is not because the author is a terrible writer. This is because most people who read the page didn't enjoy it. As per the deletions guide, any page that's at -10 twenty-four hours after posting gets deleted.

Many authors' first page on the site gets deleted, usually due to inexperience.

This is not an excuse for not even trying
This is not a curse befalling all new members
This is not just a fact of life or a universal truth

This is a challenge

You don't have to fail. Some authors have written fantastic first SCPs. You can do that too. The key to success in writing is feedback. Seek help, talk to people about your ideas, see what other people like and don't like. There will always be something else to learn.

There's even a whole other tab about this, it really is that important. You can scroll back up to the top of this page and click on it, or any of the other tabs.

Developing an Idea

Getting Ideas

Every story starts as a simple idea. Usually it's not even a good idea. But bad ideas can become good, it only takes a bit of care and effort.

Coming up with a new idea can be tricky, but there's always something you can try. Think about things you feel strongly about. What scares you? What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? There are a lot of emotions you can play with, and they all have their uses in storytelling.

Every good story makes the audience feel something. Knowing what you want your audience to feel gives your idea a direction, and can turn a mishmash of random thoughts into one coherent narrative.

While this site may have once been horror focused, it's really up to each individual author what genre they want to write.

If you're really having trouble thinking of something, just look around you. Perhaps some element of your own life would make for a compelling narrative, or some aspect of your culture you feel is underrepresented in the media. And if that doesn't work you've got the entire internet at your disposal, there's bound to be something there that can inspire you.

Originality

There's over 10 000 pages on this site. Statistically speaking, someone has already come up with a similar idea to yours. They've probably also wrote it, and it was likely written well.

This does not matter. Just because someone else wrote a story about an anomaly getting caught by the Foundation and feeling lonely doesn't mean you can't also write that. The thing that really matters is your voice. You can write that basic idea in your own way, maybe put a clever spin on it and subvert the tropes. You just need to write that story the way only you can.

If you're not sure about something, you can ask in the chats if anyone has read a story like that before. It can be useful to read similar stories to see what they did well and what you can do differently.

Bad Ideas

Not all ideas are workable. Sometimes they're too bland, sometimes they're too complex, and sometimes they're just pointless.

One of the biggest pitfalls for new authors is the action-figures-thrown-in-a-blender approach. Throwing 682 and 173 and whatever other SCPs into each other and watching them fight does not make for a very interesting story for a number of reasons. The first thing is that you didn't write 682 or 173. While it can be fun to use popular characters from the wiki, a lot of the old ones are very overused and people are tired of reading about them. Unless you're doing something really cool and special with them, you should just make up your own characters. The next reason is that two monsters fighting doesn't have much depth. Sure, it can be fun to watch in a movie theatre, but this is words on a page. Action can work, but there needs to be a deeper meaning behind it within the narrative.

Another mistake that many people make is overly edgy grimdark nonsense. Blood and gore does not inherently make things more interesting, especially if it's not coming out of a character the audience cares about. You can violently kill off a million faceless background extras, but if you really want the audience to feel something you craft an interesting and relatable character for them to get attached to and then do horrible things to that character.

Writing Characters

Humanity

At the heart of any good story is an interesting character. The main character(s) of your story are going to be the driving force of the narrative, and they're going to be the people who get the audience invested in everything.

Characters can be anything you need them to be. You can write about an anomaly in or out of containment, a scientist trying to understand the unknown, a Mobile Task Force exploring an strange place, people from some other Group of Interest, anything. It's your blank page.

The one thing you need to make sure of is your characters feel like people. Even if they're not human, they still need to have human qualities to get real life humans to relate to them. Give them an interesting personality, perhaps they're hopelessly optimistic, or they hide their trauma behind comedy, or they're harboring a dark secret. It can be anything you want, whatever works within the story you're telling.

Another important thing to know is their motivation. People generally have reasons for what they do, even if they don't know it or their reasoning is irrational. Actions need to be motivated by something. If a scientist is going to be mean to the anomaly, maybe it's because they blame the anomaly for something bad in their past. If an anomaly is going to help save a scientist's life, maybe that scientist was kind to the anomaly when nobody else was. The list goes on.

Lastly, your characters should change in some way between the beginning and end of the story. It doesn't have to be a big change, it doesn't have to be every character, but something has to be different so that the events of the story matter. Perhaps a bright eyed new recruit is hardened by struggle and becomes more cynical. Perhaps a powerful anomaly is humbled by the Foundation locking it up with ease. Again, you can do pretty much anything as long as you do something.

Dialogue

Whether it's an interview log, an MTF exploring a haunted forest, or security footage from a containment breach, bad dialogue can ruin a story. Writing good dialogue may be difficult for some people, but it's the most effective way to show off what your characters are like.

To write dialogue that feel natural, read out loud as you write it. Maybe do voices if you can. Hearing the dialogue come out of an actual human mouth will really help you spot when something feel unnatural.

Another thing to keep in mind is subtext, saying things without saying them directly. Saying something directly can come off as robotic. Implications can take you a long way, and make things feel more real. Humans don't always say exactly what they mean, even though the message still gets across.

Doctor E: Good morning SCP-9876. How are you feeling today?

SCP-9876: I am feeling bad because I do not like being in containment.

Doctor E: Good morning SCP-9876. How are you feeling today?

SCP-9876: I'm locked in a cell, you tell me.

Things You Didn't Make

Crosslinking

Bit about using GoIs, crosslinking, canons, and just writing tales with pre established characters.

Formatting

General note: for further reading, please see the Wiki Syntax page, Advanced Formatting and You, SCP Style Resource, and Anomaly Classification System Guide.

Basic Article Template

[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]

**Item #:** SCP-XXXX [Replace the XXXX with a real number once you're ready to post]

**Object Class:** Safe/Euclid/Keter (Click here for more information on these)

**Special Containment Procedures:** [Paragraphs explaining the procedures]

**Description:** [Paragraphs explaining the description]

**Discovery:** [Optional details about how it was found, some people just include this in the description]

**Addendum:** [Optional additional paragraphs]

[[footnoteblock]]

[[div class="footer-wikiwalk-nav"]]
[[=]]
@< [[[SCP-XXXW]]] | SCP-XXXX | [[[SCP-XXXY]]] >@
[[/=]]
[[/div]]
[[/code]]

Interview Template

[[div class="blockquote"]]
**Interviewed:** [The person, persons, or SCP being interviewed]

**Interviewer:** [Interviewer, typically a doctor or researcher]

**Foreword:** [Small passage describing the interview]

**<Begin Log, [optional time info]>**

**Interviewer:** [speech]

**Person:** [speech]

[Repeat as necessary]

**<End Log, [optional time info]>**

**Closing Statement:** [Small summary and passage on what transpired afterward]
[[/div]]

Note: When inserting block quotes with the > symbol, make sure you add a space after each > you use — otherwise your text won't show up as a block quote. When inserting block quotes using the [[div class="blockquote"]] syntax as shown above, you don't need to worry about that.

Text Formatting

These are some of the most common formatting styles used:

Code	Effect
**bold**	bold
//italics//	italics
__underscore__	underscore
--strikethrough--	strikethrough
[[[SCP-173|On-site links]]]	On-site links
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page External links]	External links

A blackbox (█), also known as FULL BLOCK, is used to censor information that would reasonably be removed from the document. You can either copy-paste this from other articles, or press [ALT]+219 to get the character. You need to use your keyboard's numpad for this.

A complete list of supported syntax can be found on the Wiki Syntax page. Additionally, underneath every text editor you encounter on the site, you will find a link to the Quick Reference. You can also find many commands available in buttons above that text editor.

Rating Modules

You need to place a rating module on every tale or SCP you create, using the following code:

[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]

Placing an Image or Media File

Media is optional but generally improve an article, so long as they are appropriate for the subject, don't break realism, and follow all of the site rules. If in doubt, consult the site's Image Use Policy.

Do not use a picture if:

• It is an illustration and realistically a photograph would be used instead
• It has visible watermarks or copyright notices (Removing the copyright is not acceptable, either, that's illegal.)
• It contains illegal or pornographic material (This is cause for immediate removal of the image.)
• It looks too unrealistic or doctored.

To place an image on your article, you must upload your image onto the page. Please do not hot-link directly to an image hosted on another website. To do this, first be sure that any images uploaded are in the proper format (.jpg, .jpeg, or .png) and are downscaled to the proper size (please don't upload multiple-megabyte images), then follow these instructions:

1. Go to the page you want to add an image to.
2. Scroll to the bottom, then click on the Files link.
3. From there, click Upload a File from Your Computer.
4. Locate and select the image(s) you wish to use, and click Open.
5. Finally, click Upload.

At this point, the image has been uploaded to your page. To insert the image into the article with the proper styling, all you have to do is include the following snippet of code in the appropriate place (If you want the image in the top right of your article, place it right above the start of the first line and below the rating module or any ACS components you may be using.)

[[include component:image-block
| name=THE NAME OF YOUR IMAGE FILE
| caption=THE TEXT YOU WANT SHOWN UNDERNEATH YOUR IMAGE
]]

Note that you can place all of this on one line. We broke it up here to avoid getting a horrible horizontal scrollbar. Be sure to replace everything after the equals ("=") sign to the pipesymbol ("|") or the closing brackets ("]]") with what's relevant to your article. It won't work if you mindlessly copy-paste the above.

Note that by default, the standard image block is set to 300px width. If you need it to be a different size (such as if the native size of the image is less than 300px), then you can optionally add a width attribute to the image block as shown here:

[[include component:image-block
| name=THE NAME OF YOUR IMAGE FILE
| caption=THE TEXT YOU WANT SHOWN UNDERNEATH YOUR IMAGE
| width=300px
]]

The height of the image will automatically adjust to the width. If you have an image that you'd like to be the full width of the page, you can set the width to 100%. If you have any problems or questions about using images on articles, please contact a member of the Image or Technical Staff Teams.

To place a media file on your article, you must upload it onto the page in exactly the same manner as uploading an image, as explained previously. To insert the file in the article so that it is played with an HTML5 player, please use the following syntax while referencing the file as was done in the example for placing an image:

[[include :snippets:html5player
| type=audio
| url=THE URL OF YOUR FILE
]]

If using a video, simply switch the 'type' from 'audio' to 'video'.

Test Logs and Records

Test logs are also optional, but can make or break an article. They come in a variety of formats, from the in-depth:

__**Test A - Date**__
[[div class="blockquote"]]
**Subject:**

**Procedure:**

**Results:**

**Analysis:**
[[/div]]

or

__**Test A - Date**__

> **Subject:**
>
> **Procedure:**
>
> **Results:**
>
> **Analysis:**

To the casual:

 *Time*: Event

Create a format appropriate for your article and use the same format for every entry in the log.

Collapsibles

Collapsibles may be used to hide long logs or lists without taking up page space. To get an effect like this:

+ Title for showing text

[YOUR TEXT]

Use this code:

[[collapsible show="+ Title for showing text" hide="- Title for hiding text"]]
[YOUR TEXT]
[[/collapsible]]

You should of course replace the "+ Title for showing text" and its companion for hiding the collapsed text with something relevant to your article.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to put additional information into an article without breaking the flow of the text. To get an effect like this:

Text.¹

Use this code:

[[footnote]][YOUR TEXT][[/footnote]]

Other Stuff

Some articles use more complex and unusual formatting. There's all sorts of wild things you can accomplish with css if you know what you're doing. But if you don't know what you're doing you can always find a page with cool formatting you'd like to emulate, scroll to the bottom and open the page source to copy and paste the css directly into your sandbox. Once it's in your own sandbox, just tweak little bits of the script until it does what you want it to. It can take a bit of trial and error, but you'll open yourself up to a wide range of formatting possibilities.

Style

Clinical Tone

The SCP format has a specific tone that some find hard to write in. This is normal, and there's nothing wrong with re-doing the entire page to sound more clinical.

The main thing to consider with the clinical tone is that you are writing from the perspective of a scientist. You need to keep a cool head, write with little emotion from an objective standpoint and don't use slang terms. When describing the anomaly, only give us the hard facts. Don't tell us that the anomaly is a cool monster, but you can tell us features about the anomaly that allow us to come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, a cool monster.

One mistake to avoid is too much Thesaurus. Just because it's a scientific report doesn't mean you have to use voluminous phrasing to arrive at a straightforward interpretation. That doesn't sound professional, it sounds weird.

Now, you may be asking how you're supposed to tell a compelling story with meaningful characters and emotional weight through all this technical stuff. That's the challenge, and there's a lot of ways to overcome it.

The general way around this is addendums. The Special Containment Procedures and Description may have a bit of a strict structure, but you can attach many things in the addendums. A very popular form is interview logs, wherein your characters can speak freely without as much professionalism and objectivity. If you want to write in some action, you can use a video log. In the event you've got one character who needs to show off their deepest inner thoughts, you can use excerpts from their diary or journal.

Alternatively, you can always just write a tale. Tales can follow any format you want, or no format. It's entirely up to you.

Receiving and Applying Feedback

Getting Better

Many pages are deleted every day, and many of those pages are from new authors. This is usually due to a lack of experience, or an overconfidence in one's own abilities.

This doesn't have to be you though. The SCP wiki has a great many resources to help aspiring and experienced authors improve their works through feedback. You can make a post in the idea forums or join one of the official chats, and you will probably be able to find someone who can read your idea or draft and tell you what works and what need fixing. Keep in mind that the feedback process can take time, often weeks. Do not be impatient, there are a lot of new users and only so many people who can review things.

It's strongly recommended that you seek feedback on your idea itself before writing up a full draft, but once you have done that or if you just want o skip ahead to the drafting you can write in the sandbox. This site is functionally identical to the SCP wiki, so anything can be safely copied over from one site to the other and stay the same. Once you've got a draft ready, it's time to go back and seek feedback on that.

While it can be difficult to hear harsh feedback, it's a very important step in growing as an author. Please assume all feedback is in good faith with the sole intention of helping you improve your writing abilities. Talk to a member of the criticism staff team if you truly feel that someone is genuinely acting in bad faith or violating the criticism policy.

Above all else, when receiving feedback remember the human you are talking to. Unless you've made some kind of agreement to trade feedback with each other, that person is a volunteer offering their time and energy to help you. Please be respectful towards them.

Once you've received feedback, you can post to the site proper. It's entirely up to you how much feedback you get before posting, and you'll be the one who makes the final call when it's ready to go.

Failure

But what happens if your page does get deleted? There's a few options, you can take it back to the workshop and keep improving it and getting more feedback until you think it's better. If you'd rather try something else, you can let that story go and start a new one.

But no matter what happens, there is one thing you can never do.

You can not give up.

Maybe people don't like you're writing. Maybe you're a bad writer. I know it's hard to admit that, but some people are just bad at writing. But they don't have to be that way. There is always room to improve, no matter where your skill level is at.

Please do not walk away. Please do not let your dreams die. Take this opportunity to better yourself and one day, you will succeed.

Getting a page deleted isn't a failure in writing. The only way to fail at writing is to give up before you get good.

Posting

Posting an SCP

1. Go to the current series page² linked on the left sidebar and search for a link with no SCP attached. Unused SCP slots will appear yellow and be titled [ACCESS DENIED].
2. Click the link. It will tell you there's no page with that name and ask if you want to make that page. Click the button at the bottom to create a new page.
3. Copy the text from your sandbox page into the editing box on the new page. Make sure to include a rating module and change the SCP number to match the page link you put it in.
4. Fix the page title (above the text editor) from Scp XXXX to SCP-XXXX, where XXXX is your chosen number. Do not write the title or name of your SCP in this box.
5. Click the save button, not safe draft.
6. Go back to the series page and scroll down to where your SCP is on the list. Replace [ACCESS DENIED] with the title of your SCP. Click save on the series page.
7. If you want to, you can announce your SCP in the current SCP announcement thread in the announcements forums or in the chat.
8. Go back to your SCP and enter the discussion at the bottom. Make a comment on your article with whatever you'd like as an author post. It's customary to use this to thank anyone who gave you feedback as you were developing the story.
9. You're done! Just sit back and wait for people to start reading and voting on it.

Posting other stuff

1. Go to the Contribute link (in the green box labelled Getting Started at the top of the sidebar). Find the box titled Tales, GoI Formats, Other Articles and type your desired page name into the slot in that box. Wikidot will automatically replace any spaces with dashes, but keep the page name simple. If your tale's title is "Something went wrong at Site-18 on the 27th of December 2011", don't type all that in the box, it'll just cut off at some point anyway. Instead, you might decide upon "something went wrong" for your new page's name. Then click the Create Tale button.
2. Copy the text from your sandbox page into the editing box on the new page. Make sure to include a rating module, and if the page title didn't translate from the url properly edit that as well.
3. Click the save button, not save draft.
4. If you want to, you can announce your page in the current page announcement thread in the announcements forums or in the chat.
5. Go back to your page and enter the discussion at the bottom. Make a comment on your article with whatever you'd like as an author post. It's customary to use this to thank anyone who gave you feedback as you were developing the story.
6. You're done! Just sit back and wait for people to start reading and voting on it.

Footnotes

1. [YOUR TEXT]

2. Currently Series VIII, unless an article was deleted in one of the previous Series.