why do I keep getting surprised when I learn that people don't know about the "Share" button on the top of AO3 fics that will create a tumblr post (or a tweet) with all of the relevant information about the fic (ship, characters, rating, tags, word count, summary, etc) and add a link all neatly formatted for you?*
*the Share button is at the top of every fic unless the author has selected the "Hide the share buttons on my work." option enabled in their privacy setting, so you can use to promote your own writing, or even recommend a fic to your followers.
I mean, look how easy this is:
step 1: find a story you want to share and click the "Share" button at the top:
clicking that button will create a pop-up that looks like this:
step 2: you can ignore the html in the text box; you don't need it for this. instead, click the "Tumblr" button, and (if you are logged in to your tumblr account) it will create a tumblr post that looks like this: (*this auto-generated post will automatically use tumblr's default color palette for the preview regardless of what you have your preferences set to*)
step 3: if you like the way the post looks, just click "Post". (*if you have more than one blog, make sure to double check that you are posting to the correct blog before you post it!*) or if you want, you can add an author's note to the post, maybe add a photo or a teaser of the story, or make other edits to it before clicking the "Post" button. the choice is yours.
it's so simple, and only takes a few seconds to do. it's literally just three button clicks: "Share" -> "Tumblr" -> "Post". you don't have to worry about forgetting to add important info about a story in your tumblr post; or rack your brain trying to figure out which information you should include; or even figure out how to format the post to make it look neat and easy to read.
one thing to note: if you (or the author you are recommending) have your fics locked for AO3 users only, the link at the top of the tumblr post will look like this instead:
other than that, the rest of the post will look the same as above with all of the relevant story information, minus the fic title and author name which are normally displayed in the link preview. you can manually add that missing information to the post yourself before sharing, so your followers will know what story they are clicking on.