How do you prefer to read super-short fic?

[sarasa_cat]

Here’s a question for anyone who likes reading very short fiction such as drabbles, double drabbles, and flash fiction:

I have many, many, many 200-word double drabbles that were originally written for final fantasy fortnightly and I’m about to start archiving them on AO3. Most of these double drabbles belong to one of many different series of stories. For instance, one series is a collection of snapshots looking into the evolving relationship of two characters. 

Given AO3’s flexibility, I can think of three ways to organize my massive collection of drabbles. Here are pros and cons of each:

1.  Upload each double drabble as a separate story but use AO3’s “series” feature to group and order related drabbles different series.

Pro: very easy for me to do.

Con: my AO3 author page will suddenly have a hundred super short stories listed on it and that list might be VERY HARD for readers to navigate. How do you pick what to read when overwhelmed with so much fiction?!  (Well, that’s how I feel. Maybe that’s not how you feel?)

2.  Group related double drabbles into a single story, with one drabble per chapter or all as one chapter but with white space and titles separating each drabble.

Pro: easy for me to do; keeps my AO3 author page tidy; makes stories easy for readers to find.

Con: readers might not this story format because each story will read as a collection of snapshots rather than (for instance) a “normal” 2200 word short story.

3.  Write extra glue words that stitch related drabbles together and post as new short stories.

Pro:  happy readers, tidy AO3 author page.

Con: this is a lot of extra work for me and I might not feel terribly compelled to get this done in a timely manner (or ever get it done).

Comments

[stealth_noodle]

Option 2 would be my preference as a reader, with one drabble per chapter. I've run into that format fairly often and like it as a neat way to group related drabbles.

[sarasa_cat]

Good to know that you like one drabble per chapter.

Across DW, LJ, and Tumblr I've received FOUR votes for #2 and zero for the other two options. One person suggested that I name each chapter title after the prompt and pairing just to make it clear. So, it looks like I have a plan!! \o/

[stealth_noodle]

Hurrah, consensus! :D

[owlmoose]

I can see you've already decided ;) but since the drabbles "chain" into a whole story, even if not in the traditional manner, I agree, Option #2 makes the most sense. If the stories were mostly unrelated, as with my "Pieces of Thedas" ficbits, I'd probably have suggesting going the first route. But then, that's only a dozen stories at this point, not a hundred! If I anticipated having that many, I probably would have made them chapters of a larger "story".

[sarasa_cat]

Now that's five-for-five saying #2. :)

For some of my drabbles (plus flash-fics and short stories), it will be "easy" to order them into a big readable chain. My collection of Vossler/Basch stories is large. Not sure how many stories in total but easily two to three dozen drabbles/double drabbles plus a few flash fics and a fat handful of short stories in the 1000-2500 range. It might take a little playing to get them into the right format because it might be jarring to go from a 750 word chapter to a sequence of 100 and 200 word chapters with the occasional 2000 word chapter butting in. I might instead format it as a series of "segments" with each segment being an AO3 story chapter but the segment could either contain a bunch of drabbles chained together *or* a traditional chapter. TBD.

My Drace/Gabranth + Gabranth/LifeSucks series is similar in size and shape to Vos/Basch.

But then I will still have a grab bag of random drabbles left over and I'm not sure yet if they will group into something sensible or if they just need to be stand-alone 200 word stories. Hopefully I can group them up somehow.

...

Meanwhile, I am in the process of generating a series of Mari Hawke fic bits (none posted yet) and Neria Surana ficbits (a few posted, more coming) and those will need a similar solution once I'm done with them because, again, I don't want 30-50 super-short Neria stories and 15-20 super-short Hawke stories cluttering up my author's page. I'll probably wait until these are all written before I order them and archive them.

The only time I've liked seeing a hundred super-short stories on an author's home page is when the author has the ability to create a clean looking timeline for the series. Threewalls did this really well in her DW/LJ by creating a single journal entry that acts as an index for all of her FFXII stories. I find her index page inviting and very easy to navigate through the snapshots of her FFXII-verse.

The real problem is that I just do not like AO3's page design (read: I hate their page design, too much clutter, and they need to get a real graphic designer/info designer onto their team who can do proper info hiding in their display because pages that list stories are too overwhelming with too much unneeded info). I don't think AO3 has the right structures for handling a giant timeline of stories, thus my question above ... but hopefully I can shove most of my drabbles and flashfics into #2.

*fingers crossed* :)