How to fix the formatting when you write your fic in Google Docs and it double paragraphs and makes huge gaps in AO3
If this is a problem you come up against, know that I struggled to find any quick or comprehensive guides to fix it for a long time, but got fed up with hand-removing all those second paragraphs before posting shit.
The way I write these days is usually having the full doc online, so I can write and edit from desktop or my phone, depending on where I am. I tend to do a lot of writing on my phone, which has terrible consequences because my phone's keyboard and auto-correct do random capitalisation and shit I really hate. (It IS possible to set your google doc to not do double spacing but I find if you don't do it from the start before writing, it will default to double anyway, it sucks ass).
So Before I post a chapter to AO3, I copy the whole thing out to MS word processor to fix and spellcheck and whatnot. So if you have a program that works the same as MS WP, this should also work for you.
TWO SIMPLE STEPS:
1.) Once your chapter is pasted, go to Editor > Find and replace. Type in the In the FIND line: ^p^p Type in the REPLACE line: ^p Hit REPLACE ALL.
This should fix all your double paragraphs. If it doesn't, the WP you are using may have a different shorthand for paragraphs (^p) you should be able to look it up and do the same thing with the other symbol
2.) Highlight your entire text and go to 'Line & Paragraph spacing'. Select 'Line Spacing options'. In the dialogue box, you should be on the tab 'Indents and Spacing'. Go down to 'Spacing', select Single as your line space option, and then in the after or before box (I usually just do after) put in the font size you want for your spacing. I usually go with 7. Then hit OK.
And that should be it, feel free to go about spellchecking and whatever other edits you wanna do, then copy and paste from the WP to Rich Text Editor when posting on AO3.
