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[labellementeuse]

Soliciting opinions from y'all before I take this over to myriadwords. I think it's basically too late to run a YW fic challenge for the summer this year, and last year I was pretty disappointed by the rate of drop-outs and incompletes - er, including myself, so I'm not trying to be all judgy. But... I really want to get the comm. more active again, since we've had some people join lately, and someone recently asked me if I was going to run it again this year, so I wanna have something in the works. So: this is what I was thinking.

I think a good way to reduce dropouts would be to run the challenge as gift fic. Previously I shied away from that because I felt like it potentially put unreasonable pressure on participants and, if people dropped out, there would be a lot of disappointment. Also, I think gift fic challenges are a lot more high-maintenance. However:
- drop-out rates are really high. I think guilt would make them lower.
- I also think that the do-what-you-like model doesn't put quite enough pressure on people, to the extent that people slack off. A lot. I may be projecting here.
- god, dinner smells really good. OK, that's not actually a factor.
- that's pretty much all I've got.

On the other hand,
- aforementioned problems with effort put in by me and my happy band of volunteers - oh, wait, no, it's just me.
- need pinch-hitters. ahahaha.
- it *is* a bigger committment, so lower sign-up levels.
- I still need a runtime. Ideally I would really like to run this as a Christmas challenge, but, um, Yuletide is already the biggest regular source of YW fic, so... no. Due end of September? That would probably work if I started signups, like, tomorrow.
- need to figure out what kind of request submission would be useful, how to match people up, etc. By random? What about people who request slash from gen writers? all those questions.

So, people, I really need some opinions. I don't want to just let this go because I love my teeny tiny fandom. But I really don't know if any of this is feasible.

I would really value advice and opinions from all of you, especially people who have run challenges, people who have participated in challenges, and people in the YW fandom. plz send help!

Comments

[avendya.livejournal.com]

I would really value advice and opinions from all of you, especially people who have run challenges, people who have participated in challenges, and people in the YW fandom.

I'm the main moderator for dw_cross, the second or third largest ficathon ever in Doctor Who fandom. I'm currently participating in spn_gaiman and dw_cross. hp_summergen finished not terribly long ago. Does that mean I can chime in?

So, my suggestions for a YW ficathon and / or fic writing thingy:

First, a list of prompts without a deadline doesn't work very well, as it just doesn't put enough pressure on you. If you don't do an exchange, you should try to do a hard deadline (e.g. what femgenficathon does.

Fic exchanges do have the added help of guilting people into participation. As far as I know, fic exchanges don't have much of a higher drop out rate than non-exchanges. You can also threaten by saying you won't post someone's fic until their submission is received.

Back-up fic and matching present the same problem, although I don't think it will be too bad for YW fic. The chance of someone asking for Pont-centric fic (who has more screentime than many of the requested characters in most HP fic - Andromeda Black, etc.) or an NC-17 fic is fairly slim, considering the source material and fandom. In your sign-up post, just ask questions like this:

Writing:
Which of these are you comfortable writing: Het, gen or slash
Characters you are comfortable writing:
Is there anything you won't write?
What is the highest MPAA rating you're willing to write?

Reading:
Which of these do you prefer reading (pick as many as you'd like): het, gen or slash
Favorite characters to read about:
What is the highest MPAA rating you're willing to read?

Prompt:
Prompt:
Prompt:

Is there anything you don't want to read?

Something on that order, at least. (Obviously, that won't be the entire sign-up.)

I would avoid doing a ficathon during August and September. Most people in fandom are going back to school, and they don't sign up for new things. (In HP fandom, there's an hp_holidaygen, springtime_gen, and hp_summergen. Notice the lack of fall?)

If I were organizing this, I would have signups October through November, give people November and part of December to write, and start posting on January 1st. (Which would be a good way to start the new year, yes?) As far as yuletide, how many YW fics are there a year? Not terribly many, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. (Also, yuletide is intimidating for a newer writer.)

I'm not sure how large you want the exchange to be, but I might try viral advertising, and see if you can suck in a few more participants. In my experience, there are many more people who read and liked Young Wizard and are in other fandoms than know that there's a YW fandom. (I was one of those - wanderlight pointed me towards myraidwords.) For that, just add a line in the sign ups like:

(Optional) Have you advertised this ficathon anywhere? If so, link.

That's not uncommon - see hogwarts_elite. I think you could pull a fair few people out of friends of friends, etc. for a larger exchange. I can think of two people off my friends-list that would probably participate, and are not active in YW fandom.

As for time commitment - yeah, it is a bit nuts (depending on the size of the exchange). Trying to match and email and keep track of 30 writers by myself for dw_cross was harder than anticipated. Modding teams are wonderful things. I would volunteer to help you, but I'm currently on the fence about running an HP ficathon about the same time (why do I do this to myself?), but I can certainly help set it up & match.

About back-ups and incompletes, there will be a lot. My suggestion would be to post a notice right before fic posting starts asking people if they're willing to write back-up fic, and go from there.

... Er, now that I've written a novel, I should probably shut up.