Drabbles and posting to AO3: how should we do it?

[snowgall]

slythindor100's Last Drabble Writer Standing competition is nearly over, and all this voting on drabbles has made me think Deep Thoughts (TM) about the ideal way to post such things to AO3 (because I think it's great when authors post their works to AO3, and I hope all the LDWS authors will do so after the competition ends!)

There seem to be three schools of thought when it comes to posting LDWS drabbles to AO3, and each has their merits and drawbacks:

1. All drabbles together in one chapter of one story

Examples:
unbroken_halo's 2013 drabbles
shadowofrazia's 2014 drabbles

pros:
--simplest format for short fics
--doesn't clutter up add as many fics to an author's list of works on AO3

cons:
--all the drabbles have the same URL (harder for linking/reccing)
--someone searching for your work by title at AO3 may not find it. "LDWS drabbles" is not a very memorable title
--readers can only leave kudos once and comments in one place
--ratings and tags can only be added to the work as a whole, and what works for for one drabble will not necessarily be applicable to all, and may be unnecessarily confusing (thanks to torino10154 for pointing this out)

2. All the drabbles in one story, but with each drabble in a separate chapter

Examples:
megyal's 2010 drabbles
leela_cat's 2011 drabbles

pros:
--each drabble has a unique URL for reccing etc.
--doesn't clutter up add as many fics to an author's list of works on AO3
--readers can leave comments on each chapter separately

cons:
--someone searching for your work by title at AO3 may not find it. "LDWS drabbles" is not a very memorable title
--you can only leave kudos on the whole story, not each drabble
--ratings and tags can only be added to the work as a whole, and what works for for one drabble will not necessarily be applicable to all, and may be unnecessarily confusing (thanks to torino10154 for pointing this out)

3. Each drabble in a separate story, but connected in a series

Examples:
uniquepov's 2011 drabbles
teprometo's 2011 drabbles
lamerezouille's 2012 drabbles
kedavranox's 2013 drabbles
icmezzo's 2014 drabbles

pros:
--each drabble has a unique URL for reccing etc.
--each drabble can be titled in a memorable way for easy searching/finding
--each drabble can get its own rating and applicable tags
--readers can leave separate kudos on each drabble

cons:
--a lot of story entries which will clutter up add more fics to an author's list of works

This is the sort of thing I spend way too much time thinking about!

Clearly the third option is the most popular one, and there are good reasons why that would be. However, I can see a strong argument for using the second format instead, as it will lead to far less clutter a more compact listing of fics in your list of works, especially considering that you might not consider drabbles to be of equal importance to novel-length fics.

But of course, it's up to each author to do what they think best. I'm curious if anyone else cares about these things, and what your preferred method would be!

(thanks to capitu for brainstorming some of the pros and cons with me!)

Comments

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't understand the con of cluttering up an author's list of works. While I'd love it if there were an option on AO3 to treat series like folders, in that the series would show up in your masterlist with an "expand" button so you could see all the works in the series individually if you wanted to--I'd love that to be implemented! But I write a lot of drabbles and shorter pieces that aren't always connected by any theme (or if they are, it's basically something like the anniversary drabbles I did, and they have a wide variety of pairings, etc.) and I don't understand the whole notion that they're cluttering my AO3 page by having them listed as their own work. You can filter someone's works very easily, sort them by word count and pairing and such if you're looking for longer works versus drabbles, etc.

[torino10154]

Yes, this very much. Unless they are a related series, it just doesn't make much sense to group them. I've done it in the past but looking back on it now, I actually don't think it makes sense.

I am editing to add a link to the things I have grouped in a series. So for example now the whole set has the warning for non-con or character death or underage when it most likely applies to just one. If you don't want to read one of those, how has grouping them helped anything? They couldn't be more different than each other. That can even be true of a single pairing though. I do fluffy H/D and non-con H/D. If you just skip from one chapter to the next, you're in for a surprise.

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

At least with a series, you can look at each work individually and see the different pairings and warnings/enticements/genre tags, etc. But like, if you'd put those series into one multi-chaptered fic (a la, example 2 in the post above) then yes--there's no way to indicate that chapter 4 has non-con or chapter 6 is fluffy mpreg, etc. Because originally I was thinking, well at least with LDWS there's only one pairing (H/D) but I didn't even think about the rest of the tags.

[torino10154]

Well, and a series are all still listed separately anyway so it doesn't help reduce "clutter". They just become part of the series.

And yeah, I'd never ever make chapters of unrelated things. To me that's reserved exclusively for sequential, related drabbles/ficlets, with a beginning and (eventual) end.

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

It seriously makes me sad to think of my drabbles referred to as "clutter", to be very honest. Like they're bits of paper in a junk drawer that need to be cleaned out.

[torino10154]

Considering "drabble" is my most used tag at AO3 save "slash", I hear you.

[snowgall]

I am very sorry if I made you feel that way. It wasn't my intent, truly! It was a poor choice of words on my part. I like drabbles, and I like *your* drabbles, and I don't think of them as clutter. I was thinking more in terms of the way AO3 limits listing and grouping abilities.

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

Honestly, you aren't the first person to refer to drabbles as clutter, and it's a bit of a sore point with me because it does sound as if they aren't worth the space they take up, if that makes sense. I appreciate the apology! And I do agree that more flexibility in how you show your masterlist of works on AO3 can only be a good thing!

[snowgall]

I have edited the post now to include this point.

[snowgall]

Your point about the tags needing to be different for each work, which isn't possible for chapters, is absolutely right, and I should have included it in my list of "pros".

I really was just noticing the different choices people make and thinking about why they may have made them.

[snowgall]

I think you're right about this. I like it when authors group actual sequels and such in a series. It's much easier to find them that way if an author is very prolific. But for unrelated works, it doesn't necessarily make as much sense. But it's also up to each author to do what they prefer. I wasn't trying to issue any demands, just spark a discussion, which it seems I did :/

[snowgall]

Oh of course - I didn't mean it as an indictment. Indeed, I generally prefer it when an author has all their works of whatever length on AO3, and I like it when each individual work can be tagged appropriately and titled on its own. So I like what you are doing!

My main issue is with AO3 (although really, I love the archive). As far as I know, whenever you browse a list of works, you always get the same large-size boxes for each work with all the details, tags and summary, and 20 per page. Even though the details are great and aesthetically pleasing, It can make it hard to scan through looking for one particular thing when there are dozens of pages to click through. So I can understand that some authors would like the idea of reducing the number of works listed, by grouping drabbles etc. into chapters. If AO3 had more flexibility in how it listed works, then opinions would likely be different.

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure, but I think you can limit what you see when you browse works? I'd have to check again, but I think there are some viewing options, but probably not as flexible as they could be. But when you are browsing an author's works, you can find things by sorting and filtering. For instance, I sorted by works by word count, then Harry/Draco, so I get a list of 56 works, listed from longest to shortest: http://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=✓&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=word_count&work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=99&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=0&user_id=sdk

The drabbles fall at the end, so if you're looking for shorter stuff, you'd start at the end, and the longer pieces are at the top of the list. And you can do that with any of the tags I use/characters/pairings/rating/warnings, etc. So I think it is pretty flexible in that regard.

[snowgall]

There are lots of things that tags can help you do at AO3, but only when the authors remember to *use* the tags, and even then some of the limitations that AO3 has can cause problems.

I'm thinking in particular of the issue of side pairings. Some authors tag, say, "Ron/Hermione" as a pairing in a Drarry story because they're paired up in the background of the story. And if AO3 handled this correctly, I'd be all for it, because I'm usually in the camp that says "more tags are better; tag as much as possible". However, AO3 (at this time) makes no sorting distinction between main and side pairings. So if I am searching for Romione fics, I'd get a whole bunch of non-Romione stories popping up as well, because of being tagged as a side pairing. So even though the filters are there, they are not always as usable as they should be!

Of course, this isn't really relevant to the question of drabbles anymore, but it's the sort of thing I think about :)

And I wanted to add again that I wasn't trying to be insulting. I'm really sorry about that. Maybe this will explain my motivation better: eidheann_writes said in a comment above that she might have done things differently for one of her sets of stories if she had thought about some of these issues earlier. So that was sort of the point of this - to help people think about what *they* want to do by laying out the pros and cons as I understood them. I am not trying to tell authors what to do, just give them some things to consider so they can make informed decisions for themselves. Especially if they're new to AO3.

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

Oh well yes, I think one of AO3's greatest strengths--that it's set up for maximum flexibility for the author in regards to how they tag their works, etc.--is also one of its biggest weaknesses on the reader side of things. But my main point in pointing to the filtering/sorting system was to explain my point of view. How it's still fairly easy to find what you want word count-wise and that drabbles as individual works don't make it harder to search through ones masterlist for longer works.

ETA: OH and I meant to say, I don't think you're trying to tell authors what to do; I did not get that impression. And I do understand you weren't trying to be insulting and I appreciate that. I'm just adding my voice to the conversation. :)

[snowgall]

I like having your voice in the conversation - you make good points.

And I edited the post a bit to tone down the "clutter up" language. I didn't remove it entirely because that would have been dishonest of me and make your comments seem irrelevant, but I did strikethrough and change the wording a bit to be more neutral. See if that's any better.

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate that! Thank you!

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

Just because I was curious, I took a look at the viewing preferences, and you can hide warnings and additional tags and hit counts, but that's about it, and I tested this out, and it didn't really reduce the amount of space each work took, etc. as there were still links there to show warnings and additional tags--I think the only time it would really help if there were a ton of additional tags it was hiding, but otherwise, not that useful for faster browsing, imo!

[pauraque]

I agree with this comment 100%!