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

[snowgall]

Well, I *do* consider you to be a great drabbler, and I definitely would love to see more of your works (of any length) on AO3! But I also get the hand-cramping thing, I hear you :)

And I do see that I probably didn't express myself very well, as when I talked of drabbles as being "less important" I was not trying to present my views on the matter, but to consider reasons why some authors might choose (or have chosen) different ways of posting, without passing judgment myself. *Epic fail*

I know that different authors may have different views on the matter though. In fact, there's an author who I've been trying to talk into posting her drabbles to AO3 and she's a tad reluctant to do so (for her own reasons, which may have nothing to do with any reasons I might have proposed).

Part of the impetus of this post was because I've been thinking about how to convince her to post her drabbles, and thinking of different ways she could do it, in case one way was more comfortable for her than another. (Goodness - I wonder now whether she'll see this post and all the passionate discussion and just back slowly away! :) Hopefully she'll read your and Shelley's defense of the importance of drabbles and feel reassured about posting after all. We shall see ♥

And if you'd like any help with uploading more of your fics, I really would be glad to help. I've now done this for another author, so I've gotten my feet wet and have some idea what I'm doing :)

[lq-traintracks.livejournal.com]

That's such a sweet offer! :-) If I weren't the rampant control freak that I am.... ;-)

<3