I was about to put in a chart with AO3 Tagging stuff, then I remembered that that's what the AP3 guide is for. Not to mention this guide is for Wattpad. Anyway...
I would like to point out that Wattpad has a tag limit of 25. Which is tiny! At least 10 tags are recommended by Wattpad.
Now, here are a not so few things to tag. The order is what I think is their importance and what priorities they should have. Again, 25 tags is tiny, you may need to be choosy. Decide for yourself for what tags you think are more important than others.
The most important is the category. While yes, you can choose a category, what story falls just under one? Many fanfics can be considered Action or thriller, or romance. Tag these, too! Communicate their secondary categories!
Following that in my opinion are the fandom tags. Besides #fanfiction, you may want to tag #animefanfiction. And of course the fandom itself. Or two, if it is a Crossover. Or, if you write One Shots, you may want to check if your fandom has a One Shot tag.
Some fandoms, like Rise of the Guardians and nany Anime fandoms, have multiple ones. The animes a romanji version of their japanese title, and Rise is split in two due to a misspelling. Rise of the Gardians instead. Turns out, many writers in that fandom struggle with the word Guardian.
You may tag the main characters. Additionannly as adverb!Character to just their name. Even if you already tag a ship this character is part of. In that vein, you may need to tag the ship multipe times. A x B, B x A, cus some people switch the names, or a shipping name. Some fandoms tend to use multiple ship names for a ship.
In case of Danny Phantom, Cereal Badger and Pompous Prep (or was it posh?) refer to the same duo of characters, but CerealBadger is used for their platonic dynamic, while Pompous is for the romantic ship. Or the ship is so niche that no one is aware of the already existing ship names.
Remember the adverb!Character tag I mentioned? Tag tropes. Even fandom specific tropes like DumbledoreBashing! Oh, and if you have a female main character, tag #femaleprotagonist!
Of course, if you haven't reached the 25 tag limit, you could tag themes. Amnesia, memory, an indicator what the plot is about.
Now, you may reach the limit of 25 fast. You need to decide what to prioritize when tagging.
On r/Fanfiction and r/AO3, a common question is "Should I tag the fic this ship?". Somewhere, someone answers, "Just ask yourself, would the foc satisfy someone who searches for X?"
This could be taken as advice for any tag. Would a reader who searches a certain tag be satisfied with your work?
What tags do you think are the most important? What tags are most used in your fandom? Maybe you only need to tag one variant for the ship? Check how other writers tag their works.
I hope this is helpful for anyone.
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Absolute Fanfiction Writing Advice
FanfictionI wrote and read Fanfiction for five years. In these five years, I learned many things. But these is still a lot to learn for me. To celebrate my five year anniversary, I want to collect said knowledge. While not all is stuff I learned over the last...
