It's interesting that horror is on its own, rather than in a category with speculative fiction (more normal for spec-fic readers I think, as a spec-fic obsessive). I also think some stories should be in two categories eg mine is paranormal romance, so people who search purely for fantasy (as I do) would enjoy it, but not see it if it was only listed under "romance".

So should we all go and re-edit our stories with this feedback in mind??

It's spread to everything now, even the "choose a channel" page, and of course "Enchanted" (ie my own story).

The lizard pics in "Christy" made me laugh out loud. What a brilliant device for characterising people.

One of my eps has emotional footage of the graves/covered corpses of real firefighters as it's a forest fire story. I'd like to have a specific trigger warning for that ep I think. I'll put it there, but a link to an individual ep would help.

I read a thread on the IF forums that suggested a visible timer is essential in keeping the reader good-frustrated rather than bad-frustrated. I absolutely agree, since I found that even on my own simulator!

Noise for drafts (I think to distract me from the blank-page fear) and silence for editing.

With these stories, I've been linking to youtube songs and playing them over and over as I write, since they're meant to set the mood and establish character and theme.

All my main characters are university-age people so I used my friends' old facebook pictures. That meant I had a lot of different pictures, several in unusual garb, several in combinations (including romantic-looking combos, which is handy for my genre), and in a variety of settings, but very much the kind of photos that uni-age people share on social media. Some people I really wanted to use said no (one because his wife said no; one because he's from Gambia and his family would find the concept of people changing into animal form EXTREMELY offensive). I'm really glad I have a lot of photos of my main characters, and that if there's something I really badly need I can probably do a photo shoot (even if they'll look older than they should).

I've done a little bit of photoshopping (eg. a campus crest) and will hopefully do more (it's not easy to find a stock image of, say, a polar bear and a cheetah!)

Other than those photos, however, I'm leaning more and more on stock images and youtube videos. They're so powerful that at times I feel like I'm "cheating" which I think is a good sign. It's technically unrealistic to have a group of friends constantly taking professional-quality photos on their phones, but it's worth it.

Thank you! Even if the phrase "based on what you've done Felicity" had me instinctively running for the hills.