Writing minifics

[sholio]

One thing I've been doing quite a lot of, over the last few years, is writing vignettes for prompts, usually on Tumblr (which is well suited to it) but occasionally here on DW as well. It's interesting because these usually aren't complete stories (if they do end up feeling like a complete story, I'll generally post them on AO3), and yet, there is technique to making them feel complete even when they are clearly just a small scene from something longer. Because it's not just a random scene that starts in some random place and stops equally randomly. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end; there's a little bit of scene-setting at the beginning, there's some sort of point to it (even if it's just a joke), and then it ends on a note that feels like, if not an actual ending, then ... punctuation, I guess. It doesn't just stop; there's a little bit of a "pop" at the end there.

Not that I always succeed at this. But this Agent Carter one I posted last night is a good example, I think, of a minific that I'm really happy with; it's clearly a scene from something longer -- it's not complete enough to post on AO3 as a story -- but it's enjoyable to read on its own and doesn't feel unfinished. At least I don't think so.

It's fun. I think this is part of why I keep doing it -- well, that and I love the prompt inspiration and really enjoy writing things for people. But it is an art form of its own, a little bit apart from the skill and technique of writing a fully developed story.

(I need to do a roundup post for last year's ficlets. I kinda meant to do that and then January got away from me and now it's February, help.)

Comments

[xparrot]

Ahhh, it's so satisfying when those mini-fics work out! I think of a drabble as the most reduced form of them, but longer ones have a similar effect to them. I think of them almost like jokes, even if the stores are dramatic; they've got a setup and a "punchline", whether the point is to make you laugh or think or feel.

(I also think they're totally appropriate for AO3 and tend to put them in collections by fandom with limited tagging so they don't annoy people, but are still there to satisfy my completionist archiving. And also when I'm stalking an author I really like, I totally want to read their little ficlets about the characters I love! So I figure some might want to read mine, too. If you don't want to spend too much time making new works you could just use a really general fandom tag -- like, MCU might cover most of them for you? And then put the chars/pairing/whatever as the character title.)

[sholio]

Mmm, well, I went into this in more detail above, but I do have fandom-specific collections for my incomplete stuff (like, I have an Agent Carter one that gets updated a lot ... should probably start one for Iron Fist now that I'm writing more for it). But I can't bring myself to post them as standalone stories on AO3. I think it's because I would be disappointed if I clicked on a story and found that it was actually 500 words from the middle of a longer story I'm not writing. I think the venue matters a lot, for that - I'll happily read something like that on Tumblr, or a headcanon or whatever, but clicking on something I think is a story and then getting a headcanon with 2 paragraphs of dialogue in the middle is not the AO3 reading experience I want. XD So yeah, I don't care what other people do, but I don't think they're stories and I don't generally treat them as such. They're something a little bit different.

I think of them almost like jokes, even if the stores are dramatic; they've got a setup and a "punchline", whether the point is to make you laugh or think or feel.

Oh, I like that! Punchline is a great word for it, because it's not really a conclusion, as such - but a well written ficlet doesn't just stop, it has a little kick at the end that gives you a note of closure, like putting a piece of punctuation on it.

[xparrot]

Oh, I totally get that! Actually I see it from both sides. Because as an author, yeah, there's something weird about making a little half-headcanon ficlet into its own work. It feels much more suited to being one thing on a page you scroll through, rather than something you open in a separate tab or whatever -- it's just not supposed to have that much effort associated with it?

Yet on the other hand, as a reader, if I click on a <500 word story on AO3, headcanon with some dialog is pretty much exactly what I'm expecting? And also I'm biased now because a writer I really enjoy in my current fandom writes a whole bunch of ficlets like this on tumblr and only posts to AO3 if she turns them into full stories, but tracking down the ficlets on tumblr is hard and I wanna read them all, they're all adorable! So I'm in a 'post all the things please!' mindset.

(If you did want to post random ficlets to AO3 (not saying you have to!) you could always just make a single work with the fandom "Miscellaneous" or the like.)