Fanfiction minimum lengths & customary lengths

[brightknightie]

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.

• 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.)

Comments

[kalloway]

I think there is a lot more variety in exchanges and that having lower minimums probably draws in a larger pool for otherwise niche topics. A lower minimum also allows for a shorter overall event timeframe, which allows for more exchanges overall and the grinder continues on. (Like, even before I walked away from posting to AO3, I was pretty much done with exchanges because they'd stopped being fun and instead became a real soul-grinder.)

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.

[brightknightie]

Thank you for sharing these reflections!

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.

[kalloway]

If you're interested in expanding on it, may I ask what you mean by "the grinder" of exchanges?

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.)

[brightknightie]

Thank you for explaining and sharing your experience! I'm in a very small, very old corner of fandom; I'm often without context. :-D