The Author Reveal: yea or nay?
Hi, and welcome to thinky_pop. Let's see what happens now.
I thought I'd kick off with something that I've been considering in a vague way for a while, though it has come into focus for me more recently: namely, the idea of anonymous authorship.
I like fic challenges in which the authors are not immediately named when the stories go live. I like to have feedback for a story I've written, and *know* for certain that the feedbacker is commenting on my story purely and simply for the story itself. It was one of the gratifying aspects of my first SeSa, that I got comments from people I didn't regularly interact with.
It can be part of the fun, too, to try to figure out who wrote what (I'm no better than anyone else at identifying authorship, but an occasional correct guess wipes out the memories of a lot of errors).
However, there may be disadvantages to the anonymous challenge. Maybe feedbackers are a little more brutal when there is no name attached to a story. Maybe readers are less likely to bother to leave feedback at all, without the personal connection of recognising that the author is so-and-so. The work of producing the story is the same, but the reward can be less!
So, how do you feel about anonymous challenges, as a writer and/or as a reader?
I thought I'd kick off with something that I've been considering in a vague way for a while, though it has come into focus for me more recently: namely, the idea of anonymous authorship.
I like fic challenges in which the authors are not immediately named when the stories go live. I like to have feedback for a story I've written, and *know* for certain that the feedbacker is commenting on my story purely and simply for the story itself. It was one of the gratifying aspects of my first SeSa, that I got comments from people I didn't regularly interact with.
It can be part of the fun, too, to try to figure out who wrote what (I'm no better than anyone else at identifying authorship, but an occasional correct guess wipes out the memories of a lot of errors).
However, there may be disadvantages to the anonymous challenge. Maybe feedbackers are a little more brutal when there is no name attached to a story. Maybe readers are less likely to bother to leave feedback at all, without the personal connection of recognising that the author is so-and-so. The work of producing the story is the same, but the reward can be less!
So, how do you feel about anonymous challenges, as a writer and/or as a reader?