Fanfic organization problem.

[sarasa_cat]

I've posted this on tumblr but I'm also putting it here.

Here's my problem:

I have a multi-chapter longfic WIP although I'm writing the text of the story out of order. 

In an ideal world, I would assemble the entire story as a novel and post it chapter-by-chapter on AO3 and mirrored on ff.net. That would be best for readers. They would see the whole thing as a WIP and, when it is done, they would have it as a finished work. All would be in one place so readers can use AO3's features to send them updates when new chapters are posted and they can download the finished work as an ebook. 

But, I'm not writing this fanfic novel in an ideal world. A bunch of scenes and chapters have been inspired by prompts and fic challenges, and, as I said above, I've been writing the entire thing out of order. Thus, the pieces and parts are scattered in a variety of locations: hard to find posts on my tumblr blog, story fills on livejournal/dreamwidth, and initial "official" archived chapters on AO3. Whatamess! ;)

Back when all of my fandom activities lived on LJ, something like this wouldn't have mattered because readers knew how to find my fiction on my LJ blog -- I used to have a fic index back then linked to my LJ home page and I knew that people used it. Also, FinalFantasyPress was alive back then and they provided a central place for all updates in Final Fantasy fandom to new readers inevitably managed to find me on LJ. 

But, this is a Dragon Age fanfic and Dragon Age fandom is much more dispersed. The only easy way to find DA fic is on AO3 and ff.net.  ....BUT.... both of those sites are designed for stories that are written/posted in a linear, chapter-by-chapter order. And that's why all of the out of order bits and pieces for my fanfic novel in question are scattered to the four winds.

I don't really want to publish each out-of-order scene or chapter as a separate story in an AO3 collection because that would be confusing** to readers and there is no way that I can mirror it on FF.net until it is done. (**confusing because I write other stories that feature these characters but in completely different universes, which I update on AO3+FF.net.)

I could just accept that the not-yet-officially-archived story bits for this novel will exist in ephemeral places on tumblr and LJ/DW until my official chapter-by-chapter story on AO3 is ready to accept those bits into the next chapter .... BUT .... I semi-regularly hear from fans who say that there isn't enough fic featuring some of the characters I write so it feels really shitty to make that fic almost IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND. :/

I'm very against posting the bits on AO3 and then deleting them when moving them into The Official Novel on AO3.

Unfortunately, tumblr (one of the hubs for DA fandom) is a terrible place for keeping archives that are easy to navigate and easy for other people to find. My own tumblr is an archival nightmare.

I have considered starting a side-blog on tumblr that is only for ficbits and out-of-order scenes/chapters that will eventually end up in the in-order AO3 version of the novel. That might be easier for people to find???? IDK.

Any ideas? 

 

Comments

[threewalls]

I don't know about FFNet, but on AO3, you could post each part as a separate story but link them as a series. Then you could flexibly insert each new piece between whichever of the old pieces you felt it fit. You could also rearrange the stories at later points if you need to.

New readers could read through in as complete a format as existed when they begin to read; old readers can subscribe to the series and be notified when a new story is added. Or, alternatively, people could subscribe to you rather than the series and still be aware that this new story was from Series X rather than simply that fandom by the metadata.

I'm not sure how well it would work for old readers who don't have AO3 accounts, but as the invite queue is about 2 days long, that might not be a huge concern.

This is basically what I did once I'd moved my Schirra FFXII timeline to AO3. Previously, on LJ, I gave a handful of the most relevant previously existing stories (before and after the newly completed story) as links at the bottom when posting something new.

[sarasa_cat]

While I like the AO3 series feature and I've used it for other works, a series feels like an uncomfortable fit for this one specific project. I prefer the AO3 series for stories that belong together in the same universe but still feel okay as stand-alones. In this particular case, I'm writing a novel that is meant to be read from beginning to end once it is done. When I write scenes/chapters out of order, I want to reserve the right to edit them (sometimes ruthlessly) which may even break them into bits to radically reorder. That won't work on AO3 because I would have to delete a story and then repost the remixed bits in new chapters.

In the end, I've decided to create a tumblr side blog that will hold draft scenes plus character notes, character development meme responses, etc. As pieces ready themselves into fully-formed sequential chapters, I'll post to AO3. And, if for any reason I feel like deleting the original out-of-order drafts and notes, I can delete the tumblr blog (or make it private) without disrupting anything on AO3.

Related tangent -- I wish AO3 would implement a timeline feature or a scaled down way of showing a large number of series stories in an easy to scan manner. Your handcoded FFXII timeline on LJ/DW was very easy to navigate and provided an excellent overview and table of contents whereas an AO3 series that contain many works feel very cumbersome to navigate. Their webpages display too much metadata per story. I wrote to the AO3 folks a long time ago about this (back in early 2010?) and it took them the better part of a year to get back to me ... I got the impression that although the idea interested them it was out of scope for their programming time/budget.

So, I like AO3 for many of the things that it does well but I look at it as a final destination archive rather than a place for posting works in progress.