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SGA genficathon 2009
A few people have asked if I'll be running a genficathon again in 2009.
The answer is yes. :) The response last year was thrilling and awesome, the quality of the stories fantastic, and I was very happy with it (once I got done being stressed out about it *g*).
I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to wait a month or two later than I held the signups last year, though. The last episode of SGA (*snivel*) will air on Jan. 9, and I suspect January will be a bit of a gloomy time in the fandom, not a good time to be inviting people to commit themselves to writing a story.
So right now I'm thinking about holding signups in March. I know this will end up overlapping with Big Bang more than I'd like, but I'm pretty sure the number of people last year who wrote for both Big Bang and the genficathon was relatively small.
I'm also considering various different ways of doing prompts/posting this year. The genre/prompt combo last year was fun (and pretty easy for me to administrate as far as giving people their assignments, not nearly as complicated as a fic exchange) but it was complicated, difficult to explain to people, and led to a few problems with pinch hitting.
This year I'm thinking about doing it as a more straightforward fic exchange, with each person being assigned someone to write for, or else giving each person a unique prompt rather than having a number of people writing for the same prompt. Posting would still be anonymous, and there will be a few minor rule changes to make it easier for me to post the stories that are sent to me (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).
What do you guys think? Possible pros and cons of doing a fic exchange rather than a prompt fest? Or what about letting people choose prompts, like some of the other fests do?
The answer is yes. :) The response last year was thrilling and awesome, the quality of the stories fantastic, and I was very happy with it (once I got done being stressed out about it *g*).
I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to wait a month or two later than I held the signups last year, though. The last episode of SGA (*snivel*) will air on Jan. 9, and I suspect January will be a bit of a gloomy time in the fandom, not a good time to be inviting people to commit themselves to writing a story.
So right now I'm thinking about holding signups in March. I know this will end up overlapping with Big Bang more than I'd like, but I'm pretty sure the number of people last year who wrote for both Big Bang and the genficathon was relatively small.
I'm also considering various different ways of doing prompts/posting this year. The genre/prompt combo last year was fun (and pretty easy for me to administrate as far as giving people their assignments, not nearly as complicated as a fic exchange) but it was complicated, difficult to explain to people, and led to a few problems with pinch hitting.
This year I'm thinking about doing it as a more straightforward fic exchange, with each person being assigned someone to write for, or else giving each person a unique prompt rather than having a number of people writing for the same prompt. Posting would still be anonymous, and there will be a few minor rule changes to make it easier for me to post the stories that are sent to me (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).
What do you guys think? Possible pros and cons of doing a fic exchange rather than a prompt fest? Or what about letting people choose prompts, like some of the other fests do?
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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.)
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I'm pretty laid-back about how people interpet the categories; "Wit's End" *was* funny -- actually, I thought what made the story so good was how it mixed humor with serious elements, giving the tragic parts more punch than they would have had in an all-humorous story. It's all fun and games 'til someone gets shot in the head ...
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I'm pretty laid-back about how people interpet the categories
That's definitely a good thing *g* I'm my own worst enemy sometimes. Even though both "Wit's End" and "Thicker than Water" are extremely humorous, they've got those big gut punches, and that just doesn't quite equate as comedy in my mind? Or I don't want people going in needing a good pick-me-up funny fic and getting something else instead.
It's all fun and games 'til someone gets shot in the head ...
So true, so true... sadly, Lupin can't come back for another round this year, otherwise everyone will know it's me XD I think the anonymous posting was half the fun last year!
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I have a major advantage on formatting because my word processor (AppleWorks) saves "clean" HTML -- i.e. no fancy tags except for bold and italic. So I just do a "save as" at the end and then do a quick pass over the HTML to insert anything special (like links or LJ tags), and I'm good to go. Sometimes I write the tags in at the beginning, but I don't usually like to do that; it's too hard to convert the "b" and "i" and so forth to the correct formatting in my head. (Naye and I did our Big Bang story that way, though, with the HTML tags hard-coded into the text. We were passing it back and forth as plain text, and it was just easier.)
p.s. what's that icon from? It's really cute, but I keep forgetting to ask!
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Heh, they look fine to me. I'm still wincing a little at the typos in that one (and Rodney referring to Parrish as a biologist, d'oh). I think how you had to note any special formatting for the Big Bang stories was rather nice, so there aren't any weird surprises like that at one in the morning.
That clean HTML sounds very handy. The processes I have to got through in Word is a little annoying, but I can actually use the macros to make formatting for different sites at the same time (plus my Kindle), so it works out. There's a lot of bloat in MS Office IMO -- but I just can't seem to go back to WordPad, which is where I used to write.
Sometimes I write the tags in at the beginning, but I don't usually like to do that; it's too hard to convert the "b" and "i" and so forth to the correct formatting in my head.
Yeah, for writing rough draft, I can definitely see that hampering the process some. I've been writing in Notepad a lot lately, and I wind up using asteriks usually to indicate the italics. It's helpful in a way, because it forces me to go back an reread and tweak things along the way.
p.s. what's that icon from? It's really cute, but I keep forgetting to ask!
It's from a movie called Four Brothers, sort of my guilty pleasure fandom. Have you seen it? I'm not sure if it's exactly your kind of movie, but there are some elements in it I'd think you'd enjoy.
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Ah! I knew they looked familiar, and I kept staring at it trying to figure out where from. :D (I do that with people's icons a lot; I'm always looking up the userpic info on intriguing icons trying to figure out what fandom they're for -- that's actually how I discovered Dresden Files, I think!) Yes, I have seen it -- I even own it! I never thought of looking to see if there was a fandom for it, though.
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