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brightknightie) wrote2024-07-10 07:33 am
brightknightie) wrote2024-07-10 07:33 am
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Fanfiction minimum lengths & customary lengths
I've been wondering about the ongoing development of minimum lengths in fanfiction events and customary lengths in fanfiction in general. What have you observed? What do you think and feel about lengths? Both in terms of events (exchanges, challenges, games), specifically, and in broader terms of preferences -- what do you personally like best to read and write, and what do you think today's audiences like best to read?
Having a minimum length for an event, of course, aims to set a shared baseline for predictability and fairness, so that no one is unpleasantly surprised or feels poorly-done-by.
(Maximum lengths seem always to have been rare on all platforms. Where they existed, they seemed to be driven by capacity (how many words or bytes fit in a single post) and the importance of stories in an event being complete units at sharing, not serials or WIPs.)
Having a minimum length for an event, of course, aims to set a shared baseline for predictability and fairness, so that no one is unpleasantly surprised or feels poorly-done-by.
- In recent years on DW and AO3, the standard minimum length of an exchange story seems to have gone from 1K words (as in the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words") to 500 words.
- In my email list days, exchanges weren't really a thing, but challenges were. As I personally remember it, we had few if any length requirements, just implicit customs and expectations. Most stories were 1K+ words; anything smaller was called a vignette, sketch, or ficlet, not a story. (Drabbles were exactly 100 words.)
- For paper zines, of course everything depended on the editor/publisher/compiler! Most of those I've seen have all their stories at 1K+ words, with only poetry and 100-words-precisely drabbles at lower word counts.
(Maximum lengths seem always to have been rare on all platforms. Where they existed, they seemed to be driven by capacity (how many words or bytes fit in a single post) and the importance of stories in an event being complete units at sharing, not serials or WIPs.)
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It might be very subjective, but I think the amount of shorter one-shots increased a bit lately, but that might just be in my fandoms. In general, I think that having a minimum length is a good thing. I was okay with 1k, but I can also understand if people say they feel pressured and prefer 500 words.
Personally, if the story really intrigues me, I prefer reading fics between 20k and 180k words, but I also enjoy one-shots at 3-8k words, or vignettes and other small scenes, when the topic is something I like (i.e. what if in this scene Character X had says the opposite of what he did", or "what happened after the cut in this scene").
I used to read WIPs, but got quite weary, because if I really like a story and the author decides to abandon it, then I will never find out how they intended it to end. If authors post an already finished fic on a schedule, then it's different. There was a Marvel Series that was posted over the span of 4 years. It made my Wednesdays always a bit better, knowing, that there would be another chapter to look forward to.
(And I learned the hard way to never ever again post something I hadn't already finished. XD )
When I started writing fanfiction in 2020 I thought I'd never be able to write more than a couple of thousand words for a story, but well, practice does indeed improve skills, so I got better at developing plots and story arcs.
Writing a short (word limited) fic can be as difficult as writing a long one. In both you have to know what to describe and what to leave out to make it a good reading experience.
As to what lengths people these days read most... No idea. I see long and short fics alike getting kudos and comments. What's your experience? Might it also be depending on the fandom?
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Yes, length and interaction customs most surely and indisputably vary by fandom, and also by gen versus romance, and other parameters. I was curious about overall trends perceived.
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Writing? I prefer the 1k minimum for exchanges. I find exchanges that have moved to the 500 minimum but give you 3-4 months to write lead to either a lot of last minute pinch hits (oh I can knock that out closer to the deadline/oh no I forgot about it) or a so-so performance in readers from outside the exchange participants. Granted, this is just a casual observation from those metrics that are visible on those exchange fics.
As to my personal preference for writing? The length needed to tell the story. I love popping drabbles and ficlets off for small concepts, missing scenes, character introspection. But I have had a number of fully plotted fics in recent years (not your fandom, BK, unfortunately) that have been novella and even novel length.
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Yes, I've been thinking lately about the "one chapter at a time" posting style, which was actually kind of enforced on the email lists back in the day, come to think of it. Each person was permitted a maximum of three posts per day per list, so on the fiction list, where there was a maximum reasonable length you could expect the listserv and people's email programs to process, you could post a maximum of three parts per day. I definitely read only completed stories -- I learned my lesson about WIPs long ago -- but chapters! A few parts at a time for a while was very nice, all around.
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That being said, it's nice to have variety. There are some exchanges that have a higher one - Just Married is 1.5K, and I think a couple of the others are 2K, and then of course there are the 10K ones. I'm glad they don't all do it the same way!
I do think having some kind of minimum or standard for an exchange is necessary, though, because that way participants go into it knowing what kind of gift they can expect at minimum.
I've only personally participated in a couple of exchanges with a maximum - the drabble ones, of course, and also Purimgifts, which IIRC sets the max at 1K per fic. It's definitely challenging in a whole different way.
I read fic all over the spectrum, and I always have. I love long fic, but it's also nice to read something short. (Though I admit that a complete, drabble-length fic is not usually my cup of tea, unless it's a tantalizing snippet of a bigger story; I tend to want a little more than that. No shade on drabbles, which I have also written!)
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I'm very interested and a bit reassured to learn that you're still seeing a fair variety of minimum lengths out there. I had felt that I'd observed a kind of wide-scale collapse of minimum lengths, but of course I may have gotten something mistaken stuck in my head on insufficient evidence. And I live in a very small corner of fandom!
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I'm sure the greater variety of minimum lengths nowadays is helpful for people who prefer to write shorter or longer stories. They can avoid the exchanges that don't suit them and still have plenty of opportunity to participate. For my own preferences? Well, I've written all sorts of lengths, depending on the needs of the story (and also the length of time allowed, how busy I am, and whether inspiration strikes easily). As a writer, I know that some plot bunnies want to be written short. As a reader, though, I have to admit that I do like to get my teeth into a good, meaty longfic!
Nowadays there do seem to be more exchanges—and more variety in exchanges, of which minimum length is only one variable. Of course, quite a few of them only run once. Others start out hopefully, but after two or three years the mod decides they've had enough. Sometimes new mods take over; but that's not always the case. Whatever the minimum fic length, long-running exchanges like Yuletide (or FK Fic Fest, though it's now a prompt challenge) are a great boon. One plans one's year around them.
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As a writer, I guess it's just whenever the story is done. So far, that's been in 14.4k words or less.
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There are also events like
I find that longer stories - much longer stories, 100-200K - get a lot of attention in my fandom. I have a friend finishing a 500K one, posted as a WIP. I'm super excited for her, because she has a group of readers that enjoy the heck out of it and leave her excited comments, and once she's finished even more people will dig into it because they've been waiting for it to be finished.
I...am not that person, hahaha. I've gone from typically writing 1-5K to regularly writing 7-11K and more. I read anywhere from 1K up to maybe 150K; higher than that is a pretty big ask for my attention span. I do read a lot of WIPs, though, and the word count on those creeps up when you're maybe only reading 5K at a time, but 5K weekly for months.
I think it's very dependent on the fandom, though. These are just the norms in BTS.
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I'm very interested to learn that you're seeing games where WIPs are allowed, as long as they meet the minimum length; that's a wholly new idea to me! I note carefully that you specifically designated these as prompt fests, not exchanges, which is an important distinction.
I had not been thinking about the "mini gift" gifting games when I posted this. I'm not sure why, as I listed
Thank you for sharing this!
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I've never seen a length definition for "story", before. I think there was a vague divide of 1k being the line for "fic" vs "ficlet".
I appreciate that a lot of fests have loose guidelines where it's just "write a thing" and if it's a six-word story or a haiku or whatever, that is fine.
Over the years, I've realized I don't have a lot of longer ideas in me. Most of what I want to explore isn't anything big. "What if [x]?" tends to be 800 words, not 80k+ and that's okay. I wish I'd realized that sooner; I'd have fewer eternal-limbo WIPs!
As for reading, most of what I'm really into right now doesn't have (English) fic-writing fandoms, if transformative fandoms at all. I'll read random recs or things friends write even if it's not a fandom I know well, but that's about it. Even then, I'm probably not going to click on anything above ~10k if it's not something I'm incredibly interested in.
I guess, the older I get, the less time and brain-power I have for a lot of things and I appreciate stuff like IddyIddyBangBang having a 5k minimum, and all the fests that are just 'do whatever!', because that's about what I got in me.
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If you're interested in expanding on it, may I ask what you mean by "the grinder" of exchanges? I couldn't quite tell whether you were praising the efficiency of shorter timeframes and lower minimums, or abhorring the whole idea...?
I have 3 exchanges/fests that I participate in every year (FKFicFest, HLH_Shortcuts, and Everywoman), all of which have been running (in one form or another) for over a decade. Many years, I also fit in a fourth, which is almost always a new event that the mod sincerely intends to be recurring, but which never recurs.
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Mostly how it's easy to say 'oh, I'll do one more, it's low-minimum' and get burned out for the whole experience. There are people who can participate in dozens per year but I was not one of them. Utterly burned out on the whole experience, though I'd intended to be a prolific pinch-hitter until AO3/OTW decided to show its whole arse.
(I don't actively post to Squidge but I'd probably take part in something happening over there. I do love doing fests and whatnot on DW.)
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