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

[khalulu]

Well, it's not just "put them together because they're only drabbles", though - the discussion was originally about drabbles written for H/D LDWS, so they are somewhat linked if only by the theme of the contest - H/D & Dumbledore quotations, or magical creatures, or magical artefacts, or whatever. It's a timely discussion for me because I have written 4 for this round of LDWS and I wrote 8 for round 3 which I haven't put on AO3 yet and have been thinking I should. Maybe because I haven't written drabbles outside of LDWS, in my mind they are linked sets, even though they are not linked in content or tone.

ETA: I just went back and saw that method 3 can make them part of a series though, so maybe my point doesn't really make sense - I don't know!

[snowgall]

I'm glad this discussion is timely for you! And I'm glad you'll be posting your drabbles to AO3. That's what I hoped people would do after all :)

I see that people have gotten very passionate over this, but I really think you should do it however feels right to you. I myself am rather torn between options 2 and 3. I can see the arguments on both sides and I really don't know what I would do in your place! I value drabbles and I think that to do them well takes skill, so when I consider grouping them together in chapters it's not because I don't value them, but because, as you say, they are linked from being in the fest together. And I do happen to like tidy looking work lists, but there are many potential definitions of 'tidy' :) I also like the idea of being able to tag them separately and to give separate kudos, so I dunno ♥

Good luck!

[lq-traintracks.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, every writer can handle it however it works out best for them. :-) It was never my intention to suggest otherwise. Really, what I wanted to bring up was more like a meta on *how* we as a fandom talk about drabbles and drabbling. Whatever an author decides to do with their drabbles, whether they're put together into a series, in chapters, what have you, is a-okay, and I'm all for a discussion of the different options. It's when value judgments come into play -- drabbles vs. novel-length and drabbles being seen as not having enough weight to warrant an AO3 post of their own if that's what the author wants -- that it gets muddied to me. And I'm not saying that SG has problematic beliefs or feelings about drabbles, just that the language used in the post was a bit problematic for me. But I think it's a good discussion to have nonetheless, both the nuts and bolts of specifically what to do with the LDWS drabbles and the broader topic of not diminishing drabbles as less-than for their length. :-)

[khalulu]

I definitely agree that it takes a lot of effort and skill to make them work in that compressed form, and that they deserve their own posts if the writer wants to do it that way.