What is a prompt?

[brightknightie]

My apologies to anyone I confused with my previous post!  I do plan a "Ficathons 101" for fkficfest; please consider this an installment on that future orientation.

What is a ficathon?  A ficathon (or fest) is a game in which people write stories, usually with some common element (e.g. fandom).  The two main types of which I know are "exchange" (in which each player writes and receives a story, with prompts assigned), and "claiming" (in which players pick a prompt from a list and write a story to match; they may or may not receive a story).  fkficfest will be an exchange game, in which players submit (and receive) three prompts, and submit (and receive) one story.

What is a prompt?  A prompt is a seed for a story.  It is the request that the writer fulfills.  Four examples: 

• Two prompts submitted by me, for which other people wrote FK stories:

Characters: Nick Prompt: Comforted	Characters: Nick Knight, Rebecca Prompt: On a much-needed vacation that he had to be persuaded to take, Nick runs into Rebecca from "Dying for Fame" in her new life.
Story: "A Strange Comfort" by leela_cat	Story: "the fall rolled in on the back of summer" by abby82

• Two prompts submitted by other people, for which I wrote FK stories:

Characters: Fleur de Brabant Prompt: "I love thee, I love but thee, / With a love that shall not die, / Till the sun grows cold, / And the stars are old..." -- Bayard Taylor, "Bedouin Song," 1854	Characters: Natalie Lambert Prompt: We know practically nothing about Natalie's past except it's loss after loss, which she faces with compartmentalization, humor, perfectionism, self-blame and avoidance.
Story: "Starwort" by Me (Prompt by falcon_horus)	Story: "A Delicate Balance" by Me (Prompt by amilyn)

Comments

[leela_cat]

I'm confused. Do we need a ficathons 101? Won't most if not all people participating have played in a fest or ficathon before?

There's a definition here on the fanlore wiki: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Ficathon

[brightknightie]

Actually, in the comments on LJ, one person said she was lost, and two people seemed unsure what I was talking about.

I know that we will have at least one player who has never played a ficathon before, and at least two others are on my f-list. I imagine we may have more, coming from fkfic-l, as with the one I know for sure.

(Also, this swing to favor for an "opt-in" model in which one "orders up" a dream prompt ("I will accept only these kinds of prompts with only these characters in only these time periods") seems unworkable for a small fandom and worries me. I hoped that giving examples of prompts might make the usual mechanism more clear.)

[leela_cat]

Okay, then you clearly need something. You might want to check and see what's already out there (on Fanlore, for example) and leverage their content.

Frequently, when I participate in a fest, I know that I'm going to write pairings and characters that I wouldn't otherwise consider writing. That happens to me over and over again. I find that kind of push out of my comfort zone to be a very good thing. It's why I sign up for fests.

I do my best with the prompt and pairing combinations that I'm assigned, and I hope that my recipient enjoys the story. There's no guarantee of that, of course, but that's all I can do.

I have a couple of non-negotiable "won't writes" in FK: Nick/Nat het relationship story and LaCroix as part of the main relationship. I just can't do either of those things. Outside of those boundaries, I'm willing to consider writing almost anything.