She's at is Again!

[kriadydragon]

If you've read my last post, you'll know that I've been considering making a new community. If you haven't read my last post since it's friends locked and focuses more on some issues I've been having, I'm considering a new community.

Specifically a flashfic community, only for original fic instead of fanfic. It's kind of a tentative idea since I'm not sure if I want to deal with being a mod for another community, but I like the thought of having a place that would inspire short-story ideas and making use of the short stories that often pop into my head (but that I've never been motivated to write). And it wouldn't just be fiction that would be welcomed but graphic novels and even poetry as well.

But the real icing on the cake is that I also want to make this a community open to advertising any published or uploaded works people may have. And I will readily admit that this was inspired by my dread over finding ways to advertise my book so that it doesn't end up collecting dust like my last self-published work. But more than that, I like the idea of a place where people can advertise their self-published projects and increase their chances of being noticed. And I also like the idea of there being a place that makes it easier to discover what else is out there.

As for how people would go about advertising, they can't just up and post an ad. They need to actually post a piece of work, and the "ad" would come at the end of whatever they've posted - specifically a link to a website, blog or where their works can be purchased. They can't post snippets of the work they're selling since I feel that would be unfair to the readers, but they can publish something set in the work's universe so long as it can stand alone (that is, a reader shouldn't have had to read the book in order to understand the short story).

As for the community itself, it would be set up kind of like SGA flashfic, in which every month there will be a prompt. People write their story, post it to the site, and at the end of their story place a small add with a link to their published work. It wouldn't be a big ad since there wouldn't be room. Just something along the lines of: "If you enjoyed this piece please come see my other works" (or something along those lines) then the link.

And of course there will be the usual rules about warnings and content and how to tag, etc.

As usual, I would really appreciate some feedback on this idea, and whether you feel it to be a good idea, bad idea, want to point out that it's already been done, or if people would avoid it like the plague because people prefer their flashfic to be fanfiction. The more input the merrier.

Comments

[sholio]

Hmm. I think there's a lot of overlap between this and origfic_bingo -- which you might not've seen, it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of participants, but I've seen the cards around. The difference is that origfic_bingo doesn't have the extra promotional element, except that as with other "bingo" challenges, people can post bingos and then someone could follow it back to their journal and see what else they've done.

A lot of the other flashfic challenges are starting to allow original fiction now as well, which also dilutes the overall appeal, since you can do original fiction for h/c bingo or most of the other challenges that are out there.

I like the general idea and I don't want to be a killjoy, but I'm just not sure if it would be distinct enough to get much participation, especially since LJ comm participation in general seems to be in decline right now. You might need more of a hook than just flashfic. I think that's why the bingo cards are doing so well, because they're new and different with a "game" sort of element to them.

I'm also not sure if original fiction lends itself very well to the flashfic style. For a little while, some time back, I tried doing original fiction flashfic prompts at my other journal, but quickly realized that even *I* didn't want to participate because if I wrote something good for a prompt, then I'd have to post it and couldn't try to sell it somewhere.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Good point. One of my other reservations is that - speaking mostly for myself - I tend to shy away from reading people's original fic online since A) I don't know what I'm getting myself into, B) it isn't my cup of tea and C) fanfic I do know what I'm getting myself into. But even while I'm lenient with fanfic it seems like I tend to skim stories rather than read them straight through - in part because I want to get to the payoff, but also in part because trying to read the story only leads to a headache (because of bad spelling, novice writing skills, the author's inability to keep from going on and on about nothing, etc).

So I can see other people being that way, in which they'd be more than happy to contribute a story but incredibly reluctant to read stories. Especially should there be an influx of novice writers who think they only need to put their story through Spell Check to clean it up :/

[sholio]

Yeah; I actually think the last paragraph is my biggest issue, which is that the "rules" of original fiction are a bit different, and knowing that you have to post the story publicly (well, obviously you don't HAVE to, there's no flashfic police, but it's basically why you're doing it) was making me withhold all my best ideas because I wanted to save them for things I might be able to sell! I really liked having the prompts as creativity kick-starters, but then I was reluctant to write the prompts because I'd get ideas and then think, oh, that's really good, I should save it for a story I can try to sell!

I know that's kind of silly -- writing shouldn't be about that -- but it's a consideration, anyway.

I don't want to be a complete killjoy of the idea, though!