First off, yay! \o/ April was like, the funnest month this year for me, in large part due to genficathon. I'm still catching up on stories, but having too many good fics to read is never a problem.
I really enjoyed the genre/prompt combo both as a reader and as a writer. I kind of had an idea of what sort of stories to expect from the genre and the prompt (although there were a few good surprises and twists.) As a writer it made it a bit more challenging to come up with an idea that was genre appropriate (my second attempt which turned into Wit's End, definitely not a comedy) -- but once I did finally come across an idea I liked it really clicked and worked, because there was nothing else I had to really worry about. The bonus round at the end was an added bonus, because we could sort of cherry pick from prompts and genres that had been sparking ideas during the ficathon.
This is just me personally, but I find fic exchanges a lot harder to write for. I can never shake the feeling that I'm writing the story for someone else, and it does wind up influencing the story a lot more than if I'm just writing "for me" (if that makes any sense.)
I liked how Big Bang had a style guide for formatting stories, making it much simpler for people to submit their already-formatted stories even if they're not familiar with HTML
Oh, that was so very helpful -- and it wound up introducing me to my beloved Word macros by Astolat. I know the coding got to be quite a handful last year, so a style guide would probably help cut things down on your end. (And I know it'll probably be a separate post, but I'd always be happy to help out on coding. It's insanely easy for me to do now, and I've got the dreaded Word 2007 that can work through any of those issues as well.)
no subject
I really enjoyed the genre/prompt combo both as a reader and as a writer. I kind of had an idea of what sort of stories to expect from the genre and the prompt (although there were a few good surprises and twists.) As a writer it made it a bit more challenging to come up with an idea that was genre appropriate (my second attempt which turned into Wit's End, definitely not a comedy) -- but once I did finally come across an idea I liked it really clicked and worked, because there was nothing else I had to really worry about. The bonus round at the end was an added bonus, because we could sort of cherry pick from prompts and genres that had been sparking ideas during the ficathon.
This is just me personally, but I find fic exchanges a lot harder to write for. I can never shake the feeling that I'm writing the story for someone else, and it does wind up influencing the story a lot more than if I'm just writing "for me" (if that makes any sense.)
I liked how Big Bang had a style guide for formatting stories, making it much simpler for people to submit their already-formatted stories even if they're not familiar with HTML
Oh, that was so very helpful -- and it wound up introducing me to my beloved Word macros by Astolat. I know the coding got to be quite a handful last year, so a style guide would probably help cut things down on your end. (And I know it'll probably be a separate post, but I'd always be happy to help out on coding. It's insanely easy for me to do now, and I've got the dreaded Word 2007 that can work through any of those issues as well.)