[Discussion] Tags

Do you tag your works? On fanfiction websites like ao3, tags are important.

When I first post in AO3, I don't use the additional tags, just mostly the characters and relationship(s) and hope people will check out the story through its summary. Later on I learn additional tags are important so I try my best to tag what is appropriate. Still, tagging for me is much harder than writing summaries because I don't tend to use the usual fanfic tropes in my writings.

I use tags mostly to cover the broad strokes of the work: stuff like genre, kinds of relationships, rating, presence of canon characters, fakémon vs no fakémon, that kind of stuff. Other than that I mostly tag the characters and their species, for people who want to read specifically works about Nidorans (they're cute aren't they) and, for the one time I had to do it, CW about stuff like major character death.

But I don't do any of the "tumblrina" style tags such as "conversation in the tags" and the like.

I don't really outside of sticking genre tags on my books when they publish. I mostly only do other writing here on PC which doesn't have a tag function like that.