A group is a shared shelf of stories with a name, a description and a label. Any logged-in user can create one. This page covers the three labels, fan fiction, the continuation lock, the shared brief, running a group and reporting.
Its owner picks a name, a description and a label that says what kind of stories it holds. Open groups can be joined by anyone with an account. Invite-only groups are joined by invitation, and only their members see the shelf.Groups need an account: they are never shown to visitors who are not logged in. The first time you open Groups you accept the group rules once.
This page is help content and gives no legal advice. The binding rules are in the Terms, Section 8 "Groups".
Labels and fan fiction
Original groups hold your own stories. Public domain groups hold retellings of works that belong to everyone. Fan-fiction groups hold new stories with someone else's protected characters or world.Adding a story to a fan-fiction group marks it as fan fiction for good. It keeps the visibility you chose, only logged-in readers can see it, and its continuation lock is switched on.Fan fiction borrows protected material, and in Germany sharing it can need the rights holder's permission. When a rights holder reports a story, it is hidden at once. Some authors have asked fan-fiction sites not to host stories based on their books. If your source is one of them you see a warning when you create the group. You can still go ahead. See copyright & public-domain stories for the wider publishing rules.
The continuation lock
Every story has a switch next to Visibility: *Only I and people I invite can continue*. With it on, other readers can still read, but only you and your invited co-writers can add chapters or choices, and only they can build crossovers from the story.Fan fiction starts with the lock on. You can switch it off on the story page.
The brief
A fan-fiction group can carry one shared brief: the characters and facts new stories in the group draw on. The owner and moderators write and edit it from the group's Brief tab. Any member can suggest a change instead. The owner or a moderator accepts or dismisses it from the same tab, and a notification tells the member which.Starting a fan-fiction story in the group offers a free copy of the brief. Ticking too much of it warns you, since a story with many characters costs the story model more room to work with. From there the copy is yours: editing it never changes the group's brief, and new entries the group adds later arrive unticked so they don't change a story already under way.Find more asks the AI to add characters or facts to a brief. Pick model knowledge for a quick, free-form pass, or a live web search for a slower, sourced one. Both cost credits, shown on the button next to the model that will run, and only add entries: nothing you already typed or edited is ever rewritten.A brief character can become a full character-builder character. Owners and moderators open Develop this character. From the AI's knowledge fills what the AI remembers about the work, which can be wrong, so check the result. Fill plausible also invents the rest, and marks each invented field so. A web search gives the best coverage, at a higher price. A group character stays visible to members only, and it can never be published to the public gallery.A story built with group characters shows a Room for characters meter, since a fully developed character takes more room than a one-line summary. You choose which builder parts, such as looks or background, each character brings into a given story.
Before a fan-fiction story starts, a check reads your idea against the brief. If it retells a scene the source already tells, it suggests a new angle, such as another character's point of view, and you take that angle or rewrite your idea before you can continue.
Running a group
The owner edits the group, names moderators and can hand the group to another member. Owners and moderators invite people, and they remove stories or members.Members can start a new story right on the group page: Write a story here offers an Infinite story or a Short story, and the story joins the shelf once it is created. In a fan-fiction group the wizard opens on the fan-fiction note first. Members add stories they already wrote from the story page with Add to group. A Private story can only go on an invite-only group, where members can read it. Leaving a group takes your stories off its shelf.
Reporting
Use Report on a group page. A copyright report on a group needs your name, your email and a description of the work, and it hides the group at once while the team reviews it.For a story on a shelf, the copyright report is the same claim form every story page has. Other reports are reviewed before anything is hidden. You get a confirmation by email and the outcome afterwards.
Best practices
Read the group rules once, they apply to everything you create or join.
Share fan fiction through a fan-fiction group so it's marked, login-only and locked by default.
Use Add to group from the story page rather than hunting for the group.
A copyright report on a group hides it immediately, use it only when you mean it.
Switch the continuation lock off on the story page once you're ready to let others build on the story.
Suggest a change to the group's brief rather than editing your own story copy, so every writer in the group benefits from it.
Under the hood
Labels: ORIGINAL, PUBLIC_DOMAIN, FAN_FICTION. The fan-fiction mark is stored on the story and stays after the story leaves the group.The block list (source works some authors have asked fan-fiction sites to avoid) is matched on the normalised source work, whole words only, and only warns, it never blocks group creation.Groups are behind the `GROUPS_ENABLED` flag.Browsing, joining and creating a group costs no credits. Everything is gated only by login and by the one-time rules consent.A group brief holds up to 100 characters and 100 facts. A story copy holds up to 60 facts and a character budget of 12,000 rendered letters, shown by the Room for characters meter.Find more and Develop always run on the house AI key, never a member's own key, and bill whoever clicks the button.