Before You Start

Read The Big List of Overdone SCP Clichés. If your idea falls under one of these, seriously consider not making it. If it's your first article, then DEFINITELY choose a different idea. If you have to justify it by saying, "My <insert cliché here> is different," then no, it is not different, don't do it, choose a different idea, good DAY sir.

Read The Guide to Newbies. This is your "New Hire Handbook", and you should treat it as such. This will teach you all you need to know for your first few weeks at the Foundation. Quick links to help files, a list of well-known staff, and lots of tips, this will make your transition much smoother.

Also, be humble in your first few days. There are a lot of old, entrenched admins here, and when someone splashes in with an introduction post complete with full back story, over-arching plot, and a vote for what SCP-001 should be, it makes us very… jumpy. Say hi, comment on the site, maybe mention a favorite SCP, and integrate slowly. Introduce yourself in the Realtime Chat (and don’t forget to read the Chat Guide). Once you've proven yourself a bit, you'll gain much more freedom and acceptance. However, remember that these things have to be earned. Nothing will touch off a shooting rampage quicker than a sense of entitlement….

Getting Ideas

The basic idea, thinking up an interesting effect or object to write about, is often the hardest part. Here are some tips for getting ideas:

• Think of what scares you. Footsteps following you down a hall, swarms of spiders, being totally alone, needles, the dark, anything. These things are great ways to come up with some sort of effect for your SCP entry.

• Find a good picture. If you can find a really odd picture, you can get inspired very quickly, and the right picture can turn a decent SCP into something extraordinary.

• Think odd, not dangerous. Yes, a thing that will liquefy bone in a quarter-mile radius is very dangerous, and would need special containment, but it’s not interesting. The best SCP gets your brain working, makes you wonder how it came to be, how it could be used. You want to make people interested, so they keep thinking about it long after they read it.

• Visualize. The most important, and most useful: play these things out in your head, build a back-story, and see what it does to people and things. The SCP document is a tiny window into that world. Snip out details, and leave just hints of something more going on. You want people to ask questions, to dig at it.

• Avoid overused and clichéd topics like vampires and other well known mythos. It's fun to parody, but it's eye-rolling to read a completely unoriginal rip-off. Minotaurs, harpies, werewolves, and the like — please avoid. That said, if you can pull it off in a creative and unexpected manner, you might not be maimed.

• Also, try and avoid the cliché of having an SCP that'll maim/kill/insanify personnel on sight. It's just a little too common; not all SCPs have to be these hideously destructive things. The organization takes up items that are extraordinary, not just destructive, so they can be quirky, or mind-bending, or just plain creepy.

• If you're thinking of creating an SCP based off a living thing (animals, plants, fungi, protists, and bacteria), realize that you'll have to outdo Mother Nature — and she's taken the best ideas already.

Tips for writing SCPs

General Writing and Format Tips

• First and foremost, please use correct English spelling and grammar — though you don't have to convert everything to US English. British spellings, for example, are perfectly fine.

• Keep your writing clinical, detached, and orderly. This is a report, so keep to the format. Avoid writing in the first person.

• If you need to remove a few words (e.g. names, places, dates), copy the Unicode character █ (U+2588, FULL BLOCK). If you need to cut out substantial sections, use [DATA EXPUNGED].

• Be vague. If you explain something, people will say, "Oh, I can handle that" — but if you don't, people will imagine the things they can't handle. And that is true horror. Err on the side of vagueness.

• Brevity is a virtue. That said, you should explain your SCP well enough that people understand what's going on.

• Do not write dramatically. These are statements of fact, nothing more. Make observations, not inferences.

• The secret underground shadow government doesn't resort to typing with the caps lock on when they want to emphasize that something must be done "at all costs".

• Expressions such as "approximately 57.23545445 cm" appear foolish. Also, there's no need to go down to nanometers when you're writing an executive summary.

• Try to find a picture for your SCP. A picture is worth a thousand words, and all that.

• Use metric. That's what you use in a research report. Miles, pounds, etc. may be included in parentheses, if deemed necessary. Also, Ghost will murder you if you fail to do this.

• If you're including scientific information, please fact-check. There's nothing like being completely thrown from immersion due to sloppy science. Granted, due to the nature of the site, much will remain unexplained — but write that, instead of trying to make up BS.

• Avoid directly ripping things off. This is a creative writing site, and so we encourage creativity.

• Don't refer to the subject of your article as "the SCP". It's sloppy and unprofessional, so avoid it in the text of an article. It is, however, acceptable as an informal piece of slang; feel free to use it in interviews or incident logs or what have you.

Creative Writing Tips

• Don't start sentences with the word "So," as in, "So I went down to the Cafe Maduro today and there was a thirty-foot dragon rampaging the downtown area." It's bad form and it makes you sound like you're from South Jersey.

• Avoid panaceas. This is a particular problem in science fiction, which much of the writing on the SCP Foundation borders or outright plunges headfirst into. Nanotechnology is particularly bad about this. There's no telling how many awful goddamn stories have been written where the answer to the problem at hand is "nanobots", which most people seem to wield as a slang term for molecule-sized leprechauns with fathomless alchemical power over the very atomic structure. This is a literary cop-out. If your solution doesn't have some kind of consequences — preferably horrible trauma-inducing consequences — then it's probably a bad solution.

• Try not to use the same words over and over, even in adjacent sentences. Redundancy is arguably bad grammar and poor sentence structure. Attempt to use synonyms without being dramatic (for example, the alternate use of 'try' and 'attempt' here).

• Avoid giant blocks of text. They're visually unappealing and unstimulating. Break up walls of text with paragraph breaks, sub-headings, or bulleted lists.

• Watch out for plot holes, because if someone notices one, it can really detract from the SCP. Just read over your SCP a couple times and make sure it makes sense.

• Descriptive writing should be just long enough to give your reader a taste of what the subject looks like, and just short enough to keep from sounding like a weapons system demo brochure. When in doubt, always leave something to the imagination. This applies to any physical object, but it's most important for people, and especially women. Contrary to what Robert Heinlein might have you believe, women are people, not accessories or collections of feminine affectations. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever specify a woman's breast size measurement in a story. Especially if it is the woman herself who is specifying it. Especially if she is your main character.

• If you can't write intelligently, write comedically. If you can't write comedically, write offensively. These are the three kinds of stories people remember: ones that make them think, ones that make them laugh, and ones that piss them off.

• And finally: don't be afraid to lose. Tragedy abounds in both the real world and the fictional one, especially the latter.

'Terminate'

• The word 'terminate' is entirely overused in SCPs. Find some new words. Eliminate, eradicate, euthanize, eviscerate, execute, exsanguinate… you get the picture. Go nuts.

• The word 'terminate' is not totally synonymous with 'kill'. Don't use them interchangeably. 'Terminate' is a specific euphemism for when Foundation personnel are authorized to purposefully kill someone or something. In most other contexts, 'kill' works fine.
  • Bad example: "Subject D-167 was terminated by SCP-058."
  • Good example: "Subject D-167 was killed during an attempt to terminate SCP-058. Five other class-D personnel survived and were subsequently terminated for their cowardice."

• You cannot terminate an inanimate object. Use 'destroy' instead.

General SCP Tips

• You should always aim to create something that scares the living daylights out of people, not something cool. If you think, "Huh, I'd like to have this SCP", you're doing it wrong. If the knowledge this object is in your house doesn't make you jump out the window into the garden a story below, you're probably doing it wrong.

• Act as if every SCP will be the first that someone will read. That means do not put too much in there that requires knowledge of anything else on the site. While many people enjoy linking things together into a larger story, it really improves the quality of the work when each SCP can be enjoyed in full as a stand-alone work.

• For the same reason governments around the world keep samples of deadly, highly communicable viruses in quarantined labs, the Foundation contains SCP threats without outright destroying them. One day you might come up against a similar threat and need the experience and advantage of previous experimentation to contain it. There's also the possibility of using one SCP threat to fight another.

• Don't go overboard on the containment procedures. Hideous drains on resources without a corresponding threat make for a poor SCP. Every part of the procedure must have a reason behind it (see SCP-017, SCP-091, and SCP-847 for good examples of this). The Foundation is not going to use a nuke to open a pickle jar.

• If you're dealing with a humanoid, or sentient SCP, avoid excessively referring to the SCP as he or she. It's fine to use them infrequently, since it's ridiculous when you have to use SCP-XXX two or three times in the same sentence. But when every sentence begins with "He is", "She likes", or "He did this", it doesn't read well and detracts from the clinical, detached tone the SCP should have.

• Always try to be objective. Yes, it's more fun to write more interestingly, but this is a scientific report. "Subject's eyes are devoid of pigmentation" is perfectly fine. "His eyes are a pale wintry white, that drive deep into your soul due to the longing for mortal finality" is right out.

• Don't be afraid to ask for help. There's almost always a bunch of us in the chat room and on the forums who are more than happy to give a hand or a read-through.

• Do not muck about with an established SCP without getting some feedback first. If you offer up an interesting idea for altering or destroying an SCP, the original author may very well be good with it, but please, ask first. If the original author is not known or not around, then ask a member of Senior Staff before making any major changes.

• Avoid threats of Keter duty for misuse of SCP objects. Besides jarringly changing the tone of an SCP, they've been overused to the point of inducing eye-rolling when they're spotted.

Object Classes

Each SCP must be assigned an Object Class based on how hard it is to contain. If, after reading up on Classes, you're still not sure what class to make your SCP, try the Locked Box test:

• If you can lock the thing away somewhere, leave it alone, and nothing will happen, that thing is Safe.
• If you lock a thing away somewhere and leave it alone, but there's no telling what will happen, it's Euclid.
• If you lock it away, leave it alone, and all hell breaks loose, it's Keter.

Humanoid SCPs

Humanoid SCPs tend to suffer from some common weaknesses, collectively known as the "X-Man Syndrome". Basically, it means that there is a fine line between a humanoid SCP and a comic-book superhero.

Take the example of Wolverine: he's indestructible, he's got razor-edged claws in his hands, and he has the senses of an animal. The Foundation would have a hell of a time containing him. Would he make a good SCP? No, because all those things that could be creepy are played for camp. His mutant healing factor gets used more to explain how he gets out of situations than for real horror effect. His claws are played more for coolness than for creepy. His mutant senses are mostly used to let him do things like outwit shapeshifters.

Okay, now take Wolverine and make a simple change: turn him from a wisecracking, teeth-gritting superhero into a fifteen-foot long hard-to-destroy reptile that hates humanity. Notice how some of the same powers have a much different effect.

The thing is, there is no set way to determine whether your humanoid SCP really fits the site, or whether you've created an X-Man. But over time, a bunch of common signs have become apparent that point decidedly towards the latter. Before you post your humanoid SCP, look down the list below: if you answer "yes" to a large number of these questions, you are probably writing an X-Man, not a humanoid SCP, and should make changes as necessary.

• Is it a human? (Duh.)
• Is it young and attractive? (There is a dearth of ugly, middle-aged humanoid SCPs.)
• Have you described, in inordinate detail, its tastes in music, food, fashion, and/or TV?
• Is it one of the nice guys?
• Does it work for the Foundation in one of the Mobile Task Forces?
• Have you gone into inordinate detail talking about how much people like it?
• Have you spent an inordinate amount of time talking about its relationships with other SCPs?
• Would you want to be this SCP? (If the thought of being this SCP does not fill you with dread, then you're probably doing it wrong.)

Next, here are a few points that, if they come up, you should immediately expunge, unless you are an experienced SCP writer:

• It can "bend reality to fit its will". (One of these triggered Clef's original rampage.)
• It has a bunch of powers that don't really fit together except to be really awesome. (The original SCP-351, "Coldplay", was one of these.)
• Everyone is compelled to like it. (Another SCP who died in the rampage, SCP-122, was one of these.)
• Special Containment Procedures come down to "Give it What It Wants." (The Foundation contains SCPs. They are not held hostage by them. Most requests made by SCPs should be denied.)
• Any SCP not based on sex whose containment procedures include sexual favors.

Finally, here is a hard-and-fast rule:

• If it's more of a superhero than SCP-076, start over. This is the "Able Line".

A few examples from the archives:

• SCP-076 is the very upper limit of what should be done with a humanoid SCP. Indestructible, regenerating, strong, can pull swords out of nothing, this guy should be a vote for immediate decommissioning. But, he works, for several reasons: first of all, he's not nice. Secondly, he's not the SCP: the coffin is the actual SCP, and he's just linked to it. Thirdly, his reasons for turning around make sense for his character: he lost interest in fighting the Foundation and would prefer to fight SCPs instead. That and a thousand other small things make him work: if he were any more borderline, he'd cross over into suck territory.

• SCP-105 is an attractive, nice female who works for the Foundation and has a lot of her personal tastes described. However, her abilities are limited, and more importantly, all is not bubbles and champagne: 105 is growing more and more depressed due to her confinement.

• SCP-507 is an otherwise normal guy with a neat but uncontrollable power. He works mainly due to the consequences of this lack of control (and also because he's not a cute girl).

• SCP-116 works because… well, go read it and see if you want to be him.

• SCP-132 works for a different reason: this is an SCP who is contained not for the safety of others, but for its own safety. The horror comes from wondering what it is like to BE it, not fight it.

This is SCP-10101. It is a joke SCP. Your SCP should look nothing like 10101. If it starts feeling the same? You need to rethink your SCP. On that same note, any SCP that refers to being better than more than one other SCP is likely going down the bad road. It's fine to include references to other SCPs, but the new one shouldn't have this list about how and why he's better than old ones.

Further Reading

For more information on a particular topic, you can also read these articles.

Classified and You
Understanding Memetics
And if you're thinking of writing a joke SCP, read this.

Templates and Formatting

Article Template

You can start writing your SCP by copying the code between the double lines below into a new document:

[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]

[[div style="float:right; margin:0 2em 1em 2em; width:300px; border:0;"]]
|||| [[image COPY-AND-PASTE-IMAGE-URL-HERE width="300px"]] ||
||||~ ^^TEXT-DESCRIBING-THE-PIC^^ ||
[[/div]]

**Item #:** SCP-XXX

**Object Class:** Safe/Euclid/Keter (indicate which class)

**Special Containment Procedures:** [Paragraphs explaining the Procedures]

**Description:** [Paragraphs explaining the Description]

**Addendum:** [Optional additional paragraphs]

Alternatively, you can also download the RTF file.

How do I format text?

There are two ways to add formatting to text. First, you can format text by highlighting it and clicking one of the buttons at the top of the edit box. This will add the proper syntax that will bold, italicize, underline, etc., text when the page is saved.

Secondly, you can manually type in the characters necessary to add formatting to your article. Formatting syntax is generally pairs of symbols around the text to be formatted. Some of the most common text formats, and how to get them to show up, include:

**bold** -> bold
//italics// -> italics
__underscore__ -> underscore
--strikethrough-- -> strikethrough

A complete list of supported formats and how to get them to show up can be found on the Wiki Syntax page.

How do I insert a link?

Since links are just a special type of formatting, they can also be added by either the formatting buttons or by typing in the proper format. The format of the link will depend on where the target page is, and what you want the link text to be. Some examples:

[[[SCP-173]]] -> SCP-173
[[[SCP-173|that creepy statue]]] -> that creepy statue
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervical_vertebrae neck bones] -> neck bones

A complete list of link formats can also be found on the Wiki Syntax page.

How do I add a picture?

At the bottom of the page you created (NOT this page), click Files, click "Upload a file from your computer", click "Select Files", browse to the folder with the pictures to upload, select your picture, and click Open. You can upload multiple files at once; when all the files to be uploaded have been selected, click Upload Files. When naming your image files, make sure that the filename doesn't have any spaces and that it ends with a valid extension, such as .jpg. Also note that filenames are case sensitive.

Next, copy the image template into your article:

[[div style="float:right; margin:0 2em 1em 2em; width:300px; border:0;"]]
|||| [[image COPY-AND-PASTE-IMAGE-URL-HERE width="300px"]] ||
||||~ ^^TEXT-DESCRIBING-THE-PIC^^ ||
[[/div]]

Since the picture was uploaded directly to the page, you can replace the words "COPY-AND-PASTE-IMAGE-URL-HERE" with just the filename of the picture. Otherwise, you would need to include the entire URL. Add a caption below the pic by replacing "TEXT-DESCRIBING-THE-PIC" with your own words.

Do not use a drawing or illustration and call it an "artist's rendering" unless there is a clear in article reason that the Foundation could not get a photograph. Even then, if you can help it, don't do it. It's tacky and damages suspention of disbelief.

How do I add a rating module?

You can allow site members to vote on your page by adding the following module to the very top of your article. Copy and paste:

[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]

What your SCP should look like

Item #: SCP-XXX

Object Class: Safe/Euclid/Keter (indicate which class)

Special Containment Procedures: [Paragraphs explaining the Procedures]

Description: [Paragraphs explaining the Description]

Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]

If you would like to add fluff to your article in the form of a log, incident report, or interview, there are templates for those, too.

Log Template
Incident Report Template
Interview Template

A note on Test Logs

Test logs are great for showing off aspects of an SCP's effect not shown by the writeup. SCP-093, for example, is pretty boring until you read the test logs, which open up literal worlds of information not addressed by the article proper. SCP-914, meanwhile, is basically made of test logs. The reason the Foundation continues testing 914, though, is that it doesn't do the same thing every time.

For some SCP articles, though, test logs can weaken the article and damage suspension of disbelief. For example, if an SCP object creates two apple seeds when Dr. King puts a dollar in, and four when he puts two dollars in, it's not likely that the Foundation would continue testing. If your SCP has a consistent effect, test logs are unnecessary.

How to Post Your SCP

Once you've written your masterpiece and are ready to show it off to the world, follow these steps to add your SCP to the list:

• Create a page. In the SCP Series page, find an unused number (one marked [ACCESS DENIED]). Click the link for the nonexistent article, and when prompted that the page does not yet exist, click Create Page.

• Fix the title. By default, the title of a new SCP page is in the format "Scp 999". Capitalize and hyphenate the title to bring it to standard format: "SCP-999".

• Paste the contents. You did write it up in an external word processor, didn't you? Either way, enter the contents of the article into the text box.

• Preview. Underneath the comment box (marked "Short description of changes") is the Preview button. Use it often— this will show how your SCP will really look on the wiki. Check the preview to make sure the SCP looks right, and read through it one last time to check for lingering errors.

• Add a comment. You should add a comment to every change you make to the wiki. New pages are no exception, even if the comment's just "New SCP".

• Save. Once you've looked over your SCP for the umpteenth time, click Save (down next to Preview).

• Upload pictures, if necessary. See "How do I add a picture?" above. Once uploaded, refresh to make sure the pictures show up like you expect.

• Add tags. Click Tags at the bottom of your new page. In the text box, add "scp", the class, and any other descriptors that would be applicable. Check the Tags page for ideas.

• Add the new SCP to the Main List. Edit the SCP Series page to change [ACCESS DENIED] to whatever you want to name your SCP.

• Announce your new SCP. Go to the Announcements section of the Forum, click the current New SCP Announcements thread, click New Post (at the very bottom), and announce your creation. Be sure to link to your new SCP by typing, e.g., [[[SCP-999]]] to get SCP-999. You can also announce your new SCP in the Realtime Chat.

• Do not vote on your own work. This applies to Foundation Tales, logs, incident reports, and anything else you post to the site in addition to SCP articles. Self-upvoting is allowed only to counter malicious downvoting, in which case you should talk to a mod beforehand. Self-downvoting… well, let's not even talk about that.

After Posting

Posting your SCP on the wiki is not the last step of the writing process. Once you post your SCP, follow up on it and watch for comments. If you get negative comments, don't be afraid to delete it or edit it. Don't be offended if people offer hints for edits or rewrites. If they care enough to offer you help, consider it carefully. It's better than getting a terse "suggested for deletion" a few days or weeks down the line.

If your SCP does survive the gauntlet, after it's been up a few weeks or some months, go back and reread your SCP. You may discover a way to improve your article that you hadn't considered before.