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

[writcraft]

Oh, this is really interesting!

I had planned to do the second format before reading this, and I think I'm minded to stick with that, so I'm pleased you think that's not a terrible idea :D

<3

[this-bloody-cat.livejournal.com]

I had never actually thought of posting them as a series! I usually post them all together, separate them by chapters -- I'll admit this is mostly because having too many works on Ao3 makes me rather nervous :)

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

From a reader's POV, I prefer the second method, very much so. Because I'd like to read all of the drabbles of the authors in one page <3

[thesilverwitch.livejournal.com]

I usually find the second bit the most helpful because it keeps everything in the same place, makes your author page way tidier and if you post the drabbles over a long period of time you're bound to get a large amount of kudos on just one work, which I always find fun. The third method works as well, but it makes it harder to go through an author's page imo.

[eidheann_writes]

I tend to post everything of mine below a certain (arbitrary, likely inconsistent) length in a single catch-all work as separate chapters. This is mainly because I had a group of them before I had an ao3 account. Since then, I've kinda wished I broke it up differently, by theme or use or. Or or.

Which isn't exactly what you are talking about, but having done that, my strong preference would be for 2. A themed group with multiple chapters under a single work.

[huldrejenta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've definitely thought about this, I'm glad I'm not the only one, haha :)

I think I would've chosen alternative 2. It feels tidies, and I prefer not to have too many very short drabbles posted seperately.
Love how you've done this :)

[kedavranox.livejournal.com]

I definitely prefer drabbles posted separately. Having them together breaks the moment and atmosphere for me. I usually won't read a drabbles that are all together in one post unless the stories connect somehow. :)

[capitu]

I still like the second format the best. :)

[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.

[blithelybonny.livejournal.com]

This is interesting because I have some, what might as well be considered drabbles because of their length, as separate works, but for my music drabble meme, I'm keeping them all in one story, but separate chapters (more like the LDWS drabbles would be/second format).

I think it depends on the situation too. Like if there's a through-line, it might make more sense to keep them all in one story on one page or with different chapters. (I'm not doing that, lol, but I totally get how that would make more sense.) But I think I really like the idea of a series too, since they aren't necessarily connected at all, except for their origin as the LDWS drabbles or whatever.

[lq-traintracks.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind, I come at this conversation as a writer and not so much a reader. I mean, I read. But I've never had an issue finding what I need in an author's catalog on AO3 and come to the conclusion that it was the drabbles that might be the issue. There are a lot of writers who've written a LOT, and no matter the length of the story, there are just going to be a heck of a lot of pages of stories. I think it's a bit of a slippery slope to come around to compressing drabbles together as a way to decrease the number of works. I know you didn't mean to diminish drabbles, but I'm very much of the opinion that they take a great deal of finesse, work, and talent to do well. (I do not consider myself a great drabbler, btw!) I think it's a bit sticky to try to compress an author's works by focusing on the drabbles as possibly "less important" and therefore groupable.

I know I don't speak for everyone. This is just how I feel about it. :-)

Edit: Because you've asked me to upload more of my shorter fiction that I wrote as traintracks to AO3, so I totally know that you're not anti-drabble or anything! I want to be clear on that. And I'd like to do that sometime, too. I shouldn't have tried to upload something like 60 stories all at once. I mean, total hand crampage! ;-P

[kitty_fic]

I think the second option would work well for a series of drabbles that were in some way connected or (maybe?) even in this case where they were all written for the round at a ldws...

But generally I think I'd prefer they were posted separately if they are completely separate.

Though I do admit that I have however in the past thought that it does clutter up the author's page to have so many drabbles or tiny ficlets posted,- but I just saw some good points made from others here in the comments that it's pretty easy to filter those out and I'll remember that the next time I find that to be a problem

So, overall I think I prefer the third option for otherwise unrelated drabbles.

I know that a lot of people (specifically in other fandoms) treat tumblr fics like this also and group them as chapters in one story even though they are completely unrelated. And that's especially frustrating for me when I'm sorting/filtering/searching for a specific kink or theme on AO3. There will be a story with tonnnnns of tags, but no way to tell which chapter has the one I'm specifically looking for.