coaltide | C.R.E.A.M

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2021

C.R.E.A.M

Coal ruins exchanges around me - spitey spitey fic y'all.

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Do you like getting long fic or is it too overwhelming?

Yeah, nah. I like 'em on the shorter side. Anything over 3 or 4k starts to feel like a slog to me.

Both.

Explain? Please?

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-28 21:00 (UTC) - Expand

DA

Long gifts are amazing and I love them! Please give me a long fic.

However a good long fic can be super intimidating to comment on and set off my commenting anxiety real bad.

And a bad long fic is purgatory - I'll read anything for a couple thousand words but once we cross the point where I would otherwise have back buttoned, I am gritting my teeth real hard.

Please write lots of longfic for the other recips in my fandoms, basically, so I can read it but also back button if needed.

The longer the better, I say. I've never been overwhelmed and can comment quickly.

ODAO longfic would suck there's more of a chance I can just skim and pick a line and have it seem like I read it. ODAO shortfic is worse only because it doesn't seem they even put in effort/were passionate. If you were gonna do ODAO that was short you may as well have just written what I asked for. (I don't believe in the idea of "I'd rather a passionate ODAO than a soulless exactly what I asked for". Give me exactly what I asked for every time, even if you don't have the skills or passion.)

re: and if you don’t like longfic as a gift, what would you say is “too long”?/whats your ideal gift fic length (assuming everything else is covered: it addresses one of your prompts, good writing, no DNWs, etc.)

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-28 21:17 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-28 21:30 (UTC) - Expand

Long fic is the dream for me. I will be happy to get any length story but the longer it is, the more I get to sink into and really feel like a story is being told. For shorter stories, I often (although not always) feel like the story is rushed.

The longer the better. I'm sure there's a cut-off point where it would feel overwhelming to me, but it's vanishingly unlikely that my Yuletide author will get there.

IME, up to like 60k, the longer the better. After that, a lot of fics have too much purple prose and/or filler to try to pad out the length. But if my writer wanted to write an adventure epic or something where the plot needs all that room, the longer the better!

I would be overwhelmed by anything over 20k, probably, even if I loved it.

Long fic is great but honestly 3k is the perfect length for this sort of thing.

In my normal fic-reading life, there's no such thing as too short or too long-- I read short oneshots and 60k+ fic equally. But in Yuletide, I would say anything over 10k or so is going to give me anxiety because Christmas day doesn't afford me a lot of reading time, and I feel guilty when I can't read and comment pretty quickly. It's a me problem for sure, but my most ideal preference for Yuletide fic length is probably 4k-8k.

I dislike longfic (>10K) to the point where I probably ought to start DNWing it. I find it overwhelming to comment on, and I lack both the time and the attention span to give it a real reading.

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 01:34 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 02:03 (UTC) - Expand

I like it! I love short fic, too, but I really enjoy getting a gift I can sink my teeth into and get absorbed in for upwards of half an hour. Commenting on longfic is definitely a lot more work for me, just because there's so much more I end up having to say about it - I always leave a placeholder as quickly as I can, with squee and thanks and some very general compliments about the story, and then I'm usually able to come back within a day or two to leave a Real Comment™.

love long fic

welp, now i'm rethinking my (planned) longfic gift

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 02:45 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 05:12 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 13:20 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 13:26 (UTC) - Expand

IMO anything below 10k isn't long.

If it's long fic I really appreciate it being chaptered.

That way I can comment as I go, take breaks, come back. Rather than feeling pressured to read the whole thing before commenting.

I definitely think for yuletide there is such a thing as too long. Yes, sure, if the writing is fantastic and exactly my taste it's a "the more is better" feeling for quite a while. If you're a good writer and you are really tailoring yourself to your recipient's likes, not ODAOing, then 20-30k is still okay for gifting a stranger. If your writing is mediocre that's just... that's a lot of mediocre writing to get through.

And after that... there are definitely authors I'd happily read 50k from but... it's a lot.

Long fics need a more intensive beta and edit phase and you really need to tighten it up and make sure it doesn't have serious pacing problems, in particular. If your fic is going to be long at the cost of being well edited, don't. (For example imo Yuletide isn't a good place for nanowrimo fic.)

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 03:32 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 04:42 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 14:09 (UTC) - Expand

Unpopular opinion: regardless of quality, I almost always find a longfic better. Bad longfic is still better than bad short fic for me. (And obviously excellent longfic > excellent short fic.) So this isn't a "only really good writers should attempt it" case IMO. Give me all the longfic!

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 07:49 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 07:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 23:20 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 23:29 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-30 05:40 (UTC) - Expand

I prefer shorter fic, but I try to judge based on reveals dates how burned out I'll be feeling when I come to read my gift, and if I think reading a longer fic will be overwhelming to me, I DNW it. That seems fairest to me and my author.

If the fic is good and hits my likes, basically nothing is too long for me. I doubt I'll ever get anything really long in an exchange because my prompt ideas just don't lend themselves that well to plotting out more than maybe 10k of story, but I'd love to get a longer fic if someone wanted to write it.

As some other people said, though, I would be irritated if I got long fic that was ODAO. It might depend on what fandom, because I'm in some fandoms where there's so little fic (read: literally none) that even ODAO longfic would be exciting. But mostly I don't want to have to read and comment on tens of thousands of words of something I wasn't asking for.

Paranoid question related to this topic.

It's okay to assume that writing 20k+ fic for Triple Crown exchanges is fine, right? Even if you don't know the recipient?

And it's probably okay to write a long YT fic for someone who has asked for the same canon in a Triple Crown exchange, even if you don't know them?

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 10:40 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 14:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 18:00 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-30 09:22 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-30 15:50 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 14:21 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Opposite question: fic length

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-29 15:52 (UTC) - Expand

I do! I feel bad that I can't usually comment properly on it as quickly as I would a shorter fic, and I might be overwhelmed if the fic was, IDK, 100k words, but most years long for Yuletide is about 10-30k and that's right in my sweet spot for fic length. Written specifically for me is a major bonus!

Up to about 10k I'd be delighted. Over that, it could be a bit like an obligation rather than an opportunity. I mean, I might start reading a 230k epic I found on the archive, enjoy the first 15k, and then give up on the rest because the pacing isn't working for me, or I'm not enjoying where the character arc is going, or just because I want to read something different. That's fine, and I'd probably leave a comment on an early chapter.

But if it's a gift fic written for me, that's not really an option.

Boring argument

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