How do you prefer to read super-short fic?
Friday, 27 July 2012 03:29 pmHere’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).