Coal All The Way

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It's coal-bo time.

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Comments

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

That's one the one hand comforting but also a little sad ... considering that people often complain on meme (FFA and coal) about short-ish gifts to the point where it seems like a faux-pas to gift 1500 words or less, it's a little ironic that apparently those short gifts do better in terms of kudos and comments.

I get it, it's easier to read 1-2k and dash off a quick comment - there's already a 20k fic that I have set aside because I know it would take me too long to read it properly. But it's frustrating to feel the pressure to write longer fic and then see relatively little payoff, compared to shorter fics.

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

DC IME, as someone who writes both 10K+ fics and 1-2K fics, the 1-2K stuff does better in the short term. The 10K+ stuff starts gaining steam towards the end of the week and will continue getting enthusiastic comments and kudos as new readers stumble across it for the next year (or longer).

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

This is my experience too. I've had some longer YT fics not get a lot of attention, but the long tail kicks in and people also go through the archives looking for their fandoms later on.

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

But it's frustrating to feel the pressure to write longer fic and then see relatively little payoff, compared to shorter fics.

As above nonny said, I tend to find things even out over time, and long fics often have more legs.

But also -- this right here is part of why how good a commentor the recip is influences how long I'm willing to write. Writing 15k+ can feel worth it even with just a recip comment if that recip comment is a full comment box or more of squee, analysis, etc. Not so much of the recip comment is only a few lines.

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like some of the comments above don’t really get why people comment on short fics first, and your comment really doesn’t get it at all. It’s not that people are looking for ~easy stimulation or something rather than the engagement of the longfic.

1) Most people like to get their commenting done before the anon period is up. Prioritizing longfic can slow you down.

2) On coal especially, lots of people are interested in making people happy and/or developing a reputation for being a good egg. That means reading widely and commenting on as many fics as possible. Reading 15 1k fics in a day will mean you left 15 comments, making the authors happy and generating good will for your reputation. If you devoted all of today to reading 1 or 2 longfics, only those authors would be happy.

3) Not everyone is a thoughtful/long commenter. Knowing you’re going to leave a one paragraph comment on a 2k fic is fine, but it is daunting to some people to know they’ll do it on a 19k one, and so they put it off.

4) Authors are fretting. If you care, reading a lot of shortfic is a good way to help bring up the general Yuletide mood.

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

lots of people are interested in making people happy and/or developing a reputation for being a good egg

I'm not saying there's no one out there who comments early specifically because they want to "develop a reputation," but I would be honestly shocked if it was more than like, one or two people.

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Uhm, I'm not sure where I said that readers are looking for "easy stimulation"?

I simply said that it doesn't take as much time to read 1-2k as it takes to read 15k, which seems a pretty obvious statement to make, and yes, all the reasons you list are based on the same assumption - that it takes less time to read short fic. I assume we are not going to have to argue about the linear passing of time or standard time measurements here, so I'm not entirely sure why you think we got it all wrong.

Re: Reading Time

[(Anonymous)]

I assume we are not going to have to argue about the linear passing of time or standard time measurements here
Awwwww. I would be totally into wank of that level of abstraction and quality, whether based in the Coalies diverging interpretations of physics or metaphysics.