Last thing I want to be doing when watching an old detective movie and suddenly bam, rampant homophobia and someone being murdered for being gay and the protagonist being a ok with it.
Censorship, no thanks. Having a heads up on horrible shit, yes
@AuthorHelp@clacksee@authorindiespeak@writingcommunity I recognize the use of TWs, but I'm unsure how to work out which ones to apply to any given story? Because (a) if I wrote it, I don't get triggered by it (just like I can't spot my own spelling errors either), and (b) how micro-targeted should they be?
Big stuff like rape or noncon are obvious: but ... trypophobia? Antagonist-character-says-transphobic-shit (but is disapproved of by narrative PoV)? Bibendum? (cf. "Pattern Recognition".)
I think the spelling errors analogy is very apt and the same approach works for finding things that need CWs.
You're likely to employ an editor and a proofreader, both of whom will help you find things you don't see in your own work. They may be able to offer CW feedback, too, or you could employ a sensitivity reader.
Be as thorough as possible, but something will slip through (also like typos), so don't overthink it.
@JetlagJen@AuthorHelp@clacksee@authorindiespeak@writingcommunity I'm trad published, which actually makes things harder: I don't directly employ an editor or proofreader, they're employed by the production editor at $PUBLISHER, and the whole workflow is designed precisely to stop authors meddling with it.
@cstross@clacksee@JetlagJen@AuthorHelp the obvious solution here would be to have all of the editors at all publishers spend 2-4 (paid) hours per week on AO3, reading fanfics and learning (and keeping up to date with) all common CWs and tags that readers may expect. :D
(yes, I can see myself a number of reasons why this would be impractical to the point of non-feasibility, and I'm sure I'm missing at least a few more)
@valhalla@clacksee@JetlagJen@AuthorHelp What makes you think they don't ALREADY hang out on AO3 and other fanfic/webnovel sites? (I know that my agent, for one—who used to be a trad pub editor—is a big fan of Worm by Wildbow … just can't figure out how she'd be able to make him any money (as an agent, she's on a percentage commission).)
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