Guides Essays

Welcome to the Guide Hub!


If you're looking for answers or advice for the SCP wiki, you should be able to find both of them here. If you have an idea for an informational page that you'd like to see added to this list, please contact a staff member.

What are Guides and Essays?

• A Guide is a staff-sanctioned informational page intended to assist community members with contributing to the site and its affiliates.
  • The “guide” navigational tag is only assigned by staff, or with staff permission.
• An Essay is an informational page written about a specific topic, based on the author’s personal opinion. Essays also include “how to” resources as shared by authors who specialize in different aspects of site contribution (writing, coding, artwork, etc.).
  • The “essay” tag can be added by the author of the essay on their own, though it is advised to confirm with a staff member first.

Required Reading

These pages have information on the foremost basics of the site and its community.

For all community members:

• (G) Chat Guide: The guide to the Foundation's IRC chatrooms. Covers registering, connecting, bannable offenses, chat operators, discussion suggestions, and secondary chatrooms.
• (G) FAQ: Frequently asked questions and answers about the SCP universe premise, how the site/wiki works, and how to interact with the community.
• (G) Guide for Newbies: A guide that covers site applications, general site behavior, tips for being a good member, tips on writing, and more. Required reading for all site members.
• (G) Site Rules: You will be expected to know and understand the rules of the wiki. Being ignorant of a rule does not excuse you if you break it.

For all site authors:

• (G) how-to-write: Covers concept development, containment procedures, clinical tone, how to write humanoids, code formatting and more. Basic coding templates are here. Read this before writing your first article.
• (G) The Greenlight Policy: An explanation of the Greenlight forum policy. Read this if you want to get idea or draft critique, don't know what the Greenlight policy is, or want to get Greenlights.
• (G) Deletions Guide: An explanation of how, when, and why pages are deleted from the site. Read this before putting an article on the mainlist.

Policies and Staff Contacts

• (G) Contact Staff: A quick overview of the SCP wiki’s staff teams and whom to reach out to with questions, comments, concerns, etc.
• (G) Criticism Policy: The SCP Wiki's policy on giving and receiving critique.
• (G) CSS Policy: Regarding style component accessibility requirements, and what can and can’t be done with a CSS theme on the SCP wiki.
• (G) Donations Policy: Read here if you want to add donation options like Patreon links to your work.
• (G) Image Use Policy: Take a look here if you're planning on using images in your SCPs or tales.
• (G) Licensing Guide: For anyone who wants to make games, posters, merchandise, or any other derivatives based on the SCP Foundation. It explains the uses and necessities of Creative Commons as it applies to this site.
• (G) Meet The Staff: The full list of SCP wiki staff members.
• (G) Official Anti-Harassment Policy: Code of conduct applying to all SCP Foundation community spaces.
• (G) Rewrite Policy: A guide detailing the standard procedure for rewriting articles due to age, low rating, author request, and so on.
• (G) Tag Guide: The layman's guide to the navigational tags used by the site. Please note that we have a dedicated tagging team who can tag your pages for you.

Community and Navigation

• (G) Extra-Community SCP Sites Guide: A guide to making an extra-community SCP community, and being recognized by the main Foundation site.
• (G) Fixing logins on Chrome: How to adjust Chrome settings so we can enjoy the privacy benefits and log into Wikidot sites.
• (G) How to Contribute: A quick gateway for the basic types of pages created on the site, with easy page creation tool.
• (G) How to create a branch of the SCP-Foundation: Instructions on how to create a translation branch of the SCP Foundation.
• (E) How To Get Good Feedback: Strategies for getting the most out of the venues available to you when you're getting writing help.
• (G) Nico's Guide to Image Licensing, Sources, and other Esoteric Stuff: How to find, create, and use images that follow the site’s creative commons license.
• (E) Random But Useful: Basic overviews of writing scientific content, the community editing process, and a list of steps for adding a new mainsite page.
• Usertools: A list of tools for users to alter and hopefully improve your site experience. Downloadable tools include Night Mode, hiding the rating module, and more.
• (E) Zyn's Co-Authoring Tips: Information on co-authored pages, how to seek co-authors, and the process of multiple people writing together.

Guides for Writing

+ How to Write about the Foundation

Information on how to portray signature in-universe basics of the SCP Foundation.

• (G) About the SCP Foundation: An in-universe explanation of what the SCP Foundation is at the most basic level.
• (E) Conservation of WTF or, ‘Why does the rabbit need two brains?’: The mindset one should take when approaching anomalies while writing. How weird is too weird?
• (G) Crosslinks Guide: A guide that explains how linking to other articles can potentially improve your piece, and which kinds of crosslinks you should avoid.
• (G) Doing the Safety Dance: A guide to making reasonable, interesting containment procedures.
• (E) GoI Field Guide: Advice on what kind of voice, tone, and themes an article featuring a specific Group of Interest should aim for.
• (G) The Foundation and Evil: The Foundation is not cruel, but cold.
• (G) The {REDACTED} of the ██: So, you have some stuff to hide? Here's a guide for redaction in the SCP Universe.

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+ How to Write Clinical Tone

How to sound like a professional.

• (E) Classified and You: A brief rundown of what classified means, and how access to classified material works.
• (E) Clinical Tone: Declassified: tips for getting that ever-elusive clinical tone in your articles.
• (E) Clinical vs Complex: A short page about how to write with precision, and not use too many words.
• (E) Containment Hazard Control: Information on the different real-life ways scientists and professionals deal with hazards.
• (G) Technical Words: Various science-y and engineering-y words and what they mean.
• (G) Technical Writing: Most of us are authors, not scientists. This might be useful if you want to get that technical twist in your writing that you're having problems with.

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+ Specifics of the SCP Universe

How to write different kinds of anomalies, characters, and stories for the SCP-verse.

• (E) Hornby’s Audio Guide: A rather thorough explanation on how to construct an audio drama.
• (G) How to be Scary Without Saying Anything: Exactly what it says on the tin. Elision and the Five Deadly Phrases.
• (E) Let’s Talk About Character For A Minute: The key issues with supernatural Agents and Doctors in the SCP universe, a brief discussion of wish fulfillment characters overall, and how to avoid common pitfalls in your own writing.
• (E) Let's Talk About Writing Characters For A Minute: A simple process to start creating characters within the Foundation universe.
• (E) SCP-914 Experiment Log Guidelines: Guidelines on how to make a good entry on the SCP-914 experiment log, with notes on maintaining professionalism when writing experimental protocol.
• (E) So You Want To Write A Humanoid SCP Object: An essay that aims to give advice on the approach one should take when writing a humanoid SCP object.
• (E) Understanding Memetics: Explaining what the hell memetics and memetic effects are in the context of the SCP Foundation Universe.
• (E) untitled essay regarding scps, narratives, and how they can share a page: Different methods of introducing narrative into your SCP article.

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+ Formatting and Coding

Various resources to make your pages visually and functionally distinct.

• (E) Advanced Formatting and You: Instructions for how to do fancy things with wikidot coding!
• (E) A Super Easy Tool for Those Too Lazy to Update Their Author Pages: This component will automatically generate a list of all your works, in chronological order.
• (E) CSS Theme Preparation Tool: This thing with which you can make simple CSS Theme.
• (E) ListPages Magic and You: How to use this Wikidot module that selects and displays pages within a site.
• (E) Photoshopping Your SCP: An essay/tutorial for easily creating illustrations for your articles with Photoshop.
• (G) SCP Style Resource: An ease-of-access, quick 'copy-paste' resource for alternative logs and formats for SCP files. Includes fancy test logs, warning notices, and more.
• (G) Wiki Syntax: This is a reference for simple Wikidot syntax used often (or not) in writing SCPs.
• (E) Classification Committee Memo: An in-universe document detailing an updated classification format created by Woedenaz with help from djkaktus and friends.

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+ Writer Tips and Walkthroughs

Collections of information on the steps in the writing process itself, and tips from seasoned site writers.

• (E) A Few Examples Of Things Not To Do In An SCP And What To Do Instead: Common mistakes and how to fix them.
• (E) Essays on Style: a great compilation of insights from various authors about their writing process, tips, and tricks.
• (E) Ideation: A Guide To Making Good Ideas Out Of Nothing: This essay will explain how to make good ideas out of bad ideas.
• (E) Rules of Thumb: Short and snappy writing tips compiled and collected from experienced members of the site.

Walkthroughs and Series

• (E) How Not To Walk Your Dog: Poor Pacing In The SCP Format: Captain Kirby tells us about how to make a story unfold in an SCP article.
• (E) Roget's SCP Walkthrough: How to write an SCP for the first or tenth time. Written in understandable language for ease of access.
• (E) Your Very First SCP!: Meet up with your new friend and SCP-Helper, Skippy, as he takes you through writing your first SCP article!
  • (E) Essays By A Hack: Sentence Clauses: Skippy returns to help with construction of simple and complex sentences!
  • (E) Essays By A Hack: Writing Tales: Let's talk about writing tales (from Hippo, no Skippy in this one).
  • (E) Essays By A Hack: Terror: Let's talk about terror. So, how do you achieve it in a story?
• Aelanna’s Words to the Wise
  • (E) Common SCP Pitfalls: An outline on common recurring problems seen in bad SCP articles.
  • (E) Containment Protocols: Guidelines for how to write up plausible and concise containment procedures.
  • (E) Documentation Tips: Helpful tips on how to approach writing a story in a clinical SCP style and what to consider when planning your article out.
  • (E) Glossary of Terms: A thorough glossary of wiki jargon you will encounter here.
• Ayers’s Journey of Your First SCP
  • (E) Part I - Introduction & Ideation
  • (E) Part II - Narrative & Originality
  • (E) Part III - Drafting & Critique

These might be helpful, but are meant to be silly and not taken seriously!

• (E) Cliches And You: An Educational Film
• (E) Dr. Mackenzie's Guide to Author Stereotypes
• (E) Standard Form For Downvotes
• (E) The Big List Of Overdone SCP Cliches

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+ SCP Foundation Background Lists

Some of these pages are also accessible via the site’s navigational topbar. Note that some of these pages are long, and may take a while to load on some devices.

• (E) A Comprehensive List of Esoteric Classes
• (E) A Comprehensive List of K-Class Scenarios
• (E) A Comprehensive List of Mobile Task Forces
• (G) Groups of Interest
• (G) Mobile Task Forces
• (G) Object Classes
• (G) Personnel and Character Dossier
• (G) Secure Facilities Locations
• (G) Security Clearance Levels

Critter Resources

Various resources from site reviewers (critiquers, crit-givers, critters, etc.) on how to approach the review process and advising on common elements of writing for the SCP-verse.

• (G) Butterfly Squad Roster: A list of preeminent site reviewers and their specializations.
• (G) Expert Witnesses: Which users to go to for certain information, and what their credentials are. If you're writing an article that could benefit from specialty knowledge, consider going here.
• (G) Swamp Critter Roster: A list of contactable reviewers for posted works.

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• (E) A Dime A Dozen: An Essay On Critiquing Ideas, Community, and Making The Most Out Of Nothing: RockTeethMothEyes provides advice on how to approach critiquing different kinds of concepts.
• (E) An exercise in narrative based SCPs: Leveritas presents an overview on some ways to approach SCPs with narratives/backstories.
• (E) Conceptual Critique and Burnout, A Guide: Shanor provides tips on how to critique concepts and how to avoid critiquer burnout.
• (E) How to Become a Better Critic: Things to keep in mind when leaving reviewer comments and feedback.
• (E) Metacritique 1: The Critic's Duty: From Kalinin, some guiding principles for critique, and discussion about the place critique has in the SCP wiki and its community.
• (E) Metacritique 2: Anomalous Art: How to approach depictions of anomalous artists in the Foundation universe.
• (E) 'Things what do a thing'- An Essay On Anomalies That Are Things That Do A Thing: Nico talks about different ways to handle writing the most classic, popular, overused SCP formula.
• (E) Zyn's Crit Tips I: Reviewing Long Drafts: The Captain of the Forum Crit Team (aka Butterfly Squad) talks about how to power through reviewing long works.
• (E) Zyn's Crit Tips II: Reviewing Overhaul Works: How to approach drafts that need a lot of revamping without giving you or the author a headache.
• (E) Zyn's Crit Tips III: The Quick Crit: How to write helpful critique at a relatively quick pace!

Roget’s History of the SCP Universe

Site administrator Roget has taken it upon himself to write essays detailing the history of the SCP wiki.

• (E) History of the Universe Hub
  • History of the Universe Part One
  • History of the Universe Part Two
  • History of the Universe Part Three
  • History of the Universe Part Four
  • History of the Universe Part Five

• (E) A Brief History of the Russian Branch
• (E) A Brief History of the Korean Branch
• (E) A Brief History Of Foundation RP

• (E) Supplementary Material for Roget’s History Series.

• (E) An Interview With "The Administrator"