Because I don't have enough to do...

[sholio]

A little while back, I had floated the idea of creating a community to rec online original fiction (styled similarly to the fanfic rec comms). As a confirmed bibliophile, I like reading fiction online, but it's hard to find good stuff; I've been stumbling across more and more websites and online magazines that have short stories and even novels, but it's still difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. One of the things that makes fanfic so user-friendly is the high level of grassroots organization -- recs sites, thematic lists and world-of-mouth all help keep us from wasting our time on a 55-chapter self-insert with atrocious grammar when there's a stylish epic on the web page next door.

So, f'list, your thoughts are appreciated!

What I'm thinking right now is that the community would be for reccing free online fiction -- i.e. nothing that you have to pay to access. Complete works or free serialized works-in-progress only -- as opposed to online previews of work that's published in other formats. No fanfic.

Self-recs: yea or nay? I'm thinking "yea", though they would need to be labeled as such; the whole idea is to give people an idea of where fiction can be found online, and there's no reason why people shouldn't be able to promote their own fiction as long as they don't get mixed up with reccing other people's.

Webcomics: yea or nay? I'm waffling on this one, because I tend to think of graphic novels as just another kind of book (albeit a specialized sort of book), but I don't want the community to drown in a sea of webcomics recs. Right now, I'm tentatively leaning towards allowing recs only for completed, narrative webcomics -- i.e. online graphic novels, not works in progress (as most webcomics tend to be) or gag-strip webcomics. Thoughts?

Name - I just checked "onlineficrec" and it's not taken. Too fanficcy? I want this to be accessible to non-fanfic people who aren't really up on our lingo (I'm not sure how widely "rec" and "fic" are used in the non-fanfic world, or what the equivalent terms would be in the mundane world *g*).

Edit: Oh, and I just thought of something else -- how many different kinds of tags should it have? I'll definitely want basic identifier tags (i.e. fiction, webcomic, self-rec, etc) and author tags, but I'm wondering what else is needed. The more specific the tags, the easier for people to find what they want -- I'm thinking genre tags and length tags might be good -- but it'll also be more likely to become a free-for-all as different people apply tags in different ways.

Any further thoughts/opinions are most appreciated!

Comments

[bookworm-2005.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a great idea. It's really hard to find well-written original fiction online, and a community to help with that would be great.
I swear, if I have to read one more detailed character description in the first paragraph of a story, I may scream! Seriously, I don't care if your character is 150 lbs or has black hair and hazel eyes!
Maybe an original fic community can help with this little problem - I've noticed that most adult original fiction is very poorly written when compared to fanfiction, and a place where the good stuff can be recognized and found by others would be really nice.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a good idea, an unexplored niche. I read almost no original fiction these day, fanfic just fills all my fictional needs and leaves no time for anything else. But I once stumbled over a fantastic epic original fantasy series (through the author's fanfic) which I'd definitely hop over to recommend.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I pretty much never read original online fiction, but the comm sounds interesting.

Random opinions:

Coming at it from the fanfic perspective, I think I'd avoid "fic" in the comm's name, or else make it "originalficrecs" or the like - "online fic" I associate with fanfic more than original stuff. (Is there another word for it besides "original fic"? It seems like there ought to be...)

And webcomics, yeah, that's tricky. You might want to just forbid them entirely. While prose fiction and comics are both story-telling mediums, they are distinctly different - I don't think a graphic novel is the same as a prose novel; I wouldn't expect a print book recs blog to rec graphic novels, any more than I'd expect a TV blog to rec movies. But as I said, I'm not familiar with original online fic; if there's a lot of crossover (e.g. if a lot of online fic writers also do webcomics) then it would make sense to include both. In that case, only allowing complete graphic novels sounds like a reasonable compromise.

Tags are the kind of thing you can probably worry about once the comm gets started - once you have a few recs, it'll give you a better idea what to tag for, and you can go back and add them as needed?

[bratfarrar]

*points up at xparrot* That's pretty exactly what I was going to say.

I'd love to do something like this--I can think of one novel and a bunch of short stories right off the bat that I'd like to rec. And I'm always happy to help with tagging/site design/modding/whatever.

[ladyoflisquill.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a brilliant idea. I've always wanted to read original stories online but I don't know where to find the good stuff and the few stories that I have found weren't really the best example of fiction to begin with.

I think recs for free online fiction is best (maybe site recs or pointers in the user info for non-free works; highly recommended authors who have paid online sites and sites that host out of copywright works like Project Guttenburg)

I say a definite yes to the online webcomics but I think these have to be finished works. Personally I am more inclined to read a story/comic once it is finished. Even if the premise interests me I will avoid it until that time because there are too many stories that are abandoned and just leave you feeling frustrated.

I do think "fic" and "rec" is to fandom specific. And if its going to be a multi medium rec site it needs to have an appropriate title. Definitely work original in there somewhere.

Tags I think medium, genre, author, length, rating, warnings/status and then maybe key plotwords or issues. Personally I'd like an LGBT tag as these are the stories I'd be interested in. Also to be able to combine tags like on delicious would be really handy if possible.

Also summaries need to be good. I get really frustrated when someone recs a fic with "You have to read this" and nothing more.

There's my thoughts anyway. Hope they help.

[novembersga.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good idea. Definitely have something that identifies, gen, het etc. I've started some really good stories that end up being slash and I can't finish it. Some of it is just too, um, graphic?