[ SECRET POST #2146 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2146 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 120 secrets from Secret Submission Post #307.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[brightblueink]

I don't think there's anything wrong with having standards. There's no reason to read crap, or something you just don't enjoy, just because it's tagged with your favorite fandom on AO3. I personally will often click out of a story if the characters feel too OOC or if there's a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes. I mean, why would I want to read fanfic where the characters don't feel like the original characters? I might as well just read original fiction in that case. And why would I read something that the author hasn't put a lot of effort into writing well? They're free to do so but that doesn't mean I should force myself through it.

THAT BEING SAID, I think your length requirements are pretty ridiculous. I've read great stories (both fanfiction and original) that have short chapters, or are just plain short. I've also read horrible, worthless fiction (again both fanfiction and original) that drone on and on and take absolutely forever to read.

Word count is not a sign of quality, and the sooner people get over that line of thought the better.

[(Anonymous)]

Word count isn't a sign of quality, but it's a quick-and-dirty way to start evaluating things. In my personal experience, most fics over a couple hundred thousand words lose track of their own plot and go downhill. Likewise, most fics under, say, 3000 words tend not to be much more than a story told through scenes that has very little plot to speak of. For my personal preferences, length is something that rarely steers me wrong.

No, length isn't the end-all be-all of a fic. But it's a good starting point.

[dancing_serpent]

No, length isn't the end-all be-all of a fic. But it's a good starting point.

In my case it's only to determine when to read a fic. Sitting down in the evenings with two or three hours to spend on reading? Long fic it is. Lunch break at work? Something short. Having the whole weekend free? Give me the 100,000+ epic. Anger and stress at work and being able to sneak a few minutes of internet time? A drabble or tiny fic will help to clear my head again.

[armlessphelan]

I love the huge, epic stories. But, sadly, in the Final Fantasy fandom the only ones that length are Peptuck or Ashbear stories. And Frozen. All of the others are self inserts. While I like some, most end up abandoned and with the canon female love interest(s) ignored at best and treated horribly at worst.

[(Anonymous)]

Which Final Fantasy are you looking for? If it's any of the older ones, you might have missed some of the golden oldies that are epic length. FFVII is the easiest example of this, since you haven't named Twig Collins, Miko no Da, or Knowing Shadows, all of whom wrote massive epics that are generally well regarded and contain few OCs at all, to say nothing of OCs with substantive parts. (I'll grant you that Twig's Long Hard Road had a couple, but they didn't become important until later and didn't ever feel like a self-insert, to me anyway...)

[armlessphelan]

VII was never my big fandom. I prefer VIII and IX for settings and characters respectively. I'm also into non-ship focused Chrono game fic.

[femme_androgyne]

I'm with you. When I'm searching for fic, I always filter by both word count (usually nothing below 10,000 given my own preferences) and whether or not the story is complete. If it's a wip or shorter than that, I don't read. It's not like I think that drabbles can't be good (or that fic authors always abandon their stuff), I just know from years of experience that doing it that way works best for me.

Edited because I cannot grammar today.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I may be missing something of the point here, but I don't see what's inherently wrong with scenes without a particular plot? I'm thinking of things like drabbles, I guess. It IS possible to write a cute, short scene and have it be sweet, with good characterizarion and even insightful. I think of it as snapshot writing... like, instead of a picture worth a thousand words, a thousand words or less being worth a picture?

Do you mean something like... I dunno, drabbles are usually deliberate. I guess you mean if something IS meant to have the scope/narrative that would be better with more length, but that doesn't have it?

da

[(Anonymous)]

Meandering words on a page grouped together a story does not make. Drabbles, even snapshot quick and dirty drabbles, always have a plot even if it seems like a silly non-plot.

Re: da

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

This. It's always been my experience that the tremendously long ones especially get very convoluted and strange. I have nothing against people doing long epic fanfictions, but I rarely see them done well or to where they stay consistent in quality.

[citrinesunset]

I wonder how you're defining plot, here. Because a story can be very short, and take place in a single scene, and still have a beginning, middle, climax, ending, and a central conflict. But the plot is going to be much different (and subtler) than a lot of longer stories where you have the space to have multiple events and more action-oriented plots.

Yes, I'd say there are some short fics that don't really have a strong plot. Though I don't think there's anything wrong with vignettes. But if there's a conflict that gets resolved over the course of the scene, that's a plot.

[(Anonymous)]

No.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes.

[(Anonymous)]

ಠ_ಠ

[(Anonymous)]

:D