Of course firstly you need to create a livejournal account. http://www.livejournal.com/ This is easy and free, though as you get comfortable with livejournal you may wish to progress to a paid account.
Sign in to your live journal account
http://www.livejournal.com/
I am signing in with my username and password
Once you have signed on you should see your account home page.
Immediately below your Username you will see the word Post
Click on Post and the page will open where you will be able to make your post
Clicking on the Rich Text tab over on the right lets you make your post just like writing a letter. Space the lines just as you like them and Livejournal will do the rest, you don't have to do any formatting or know any HTML, and it makes it so easy for the archivist (that would be me, lol) to scoop up your story after it's posted for SpanderFiles. Some of those formatting programs make my job a nightmare, the coding is all over the place.
The last thing is to put the bulk of your post Under The Cut
Basically this means that your post appears like a Google search result, just the heading and a short teaser, and the rest of the post has to be clicked on by the reader if they want to read more.
This is very very very important, some sites will ban you if you fail to do this, unless you are only making a very short post. (say 3 lines or so) and it's the hardest thing for the newbie to learn
The finished product looks like this, with the reader needing to click on the Read More link to continue
The picture below shows how a post looks on the Rich Tab page (I have drawn another wonky arrow to point out the LJ cut icon)
All the greyed out writing is now Under The Cut and the words Read More will be added by LJ when I post
To get the lj cut to open, click on the icon and then click on the Temporarily Allow Scripts permission editor that will apear at the top of your page. Then you will need to click on the icon once again, and approve or change the wording people will see at the start of your cut. It's a cumbersome 4-click system, and I haven't discovered a way to streamline the process. An option to always allow permission would be nice.
Sometimes (most of the time!) LJ stuffs up a bit (at least for me) and I have trouble getting my words into the grey area as it fails to open properly.
When that happens I open the HTML tab AFTER I have the LJcut in place and type a few words between the cut, just to get it started.
To do this you need to find these two tags which will be close together
and you must put your cursor between the two tags and separate them like so
And then put a few words between them to keep them apart
then you can go back to the nice easy Rich Text tab to continue with the rest of your post. You will have created a small greyed area you can then put your post into.
Another way is to just type your post or copy/paste your entry from a text doc and then use the HTML tab page to position the lj-cut tags where they should go.
I hope this helps a bit.
You could also try this to ensure you have a professional looking layout
Fanfiction Header Builder
Happy Posting!
