Tips on prompting/Dear Author letters/Doing Yuletide

[lilka]

OMG, sign-ups are almost upon us! I'm so excited. It's about this time that I go digging through meta from previous years, to remind myself of the pearls of wisdom people have compiled about how to get the most out of your Yultide experience. These are my favourites:

liviapenn: How to Not Ruin Yuletide

penknife: Eight ways to break your ficathon writer's brain

Comments

[andelendir]

Just from one year - and writing some stocking-stuffing and pinches - I like a clearcut warning about triggers if you have any, but else the largest possible freedom. I'm kinky, love and write slash and erotica, and there are people (in other challenges mostly) who received stories they probably would never have sought out on their own, wouldn't show to their neighbour, but still immensely enjoyed while the door to their study was well locked.

By which I mean, don't stifle your writer. If it is no serious trigger (insofar that you will re-live some abuse or trauma if you read this), nor a barfing-grade squick (which is almost the same level as a trigger), give your writer some room to breathe. Don't say "no slash" if it's just bad slash you hate (I had that once, still wrote a slash story after I saw a rec for some very racy threesome) and the recipient keeled over in joy (!) over a well-written story featuring some serious man-action. Say instead something like "I usually dislike slash, because a lot is written like bad porn, or uses icky words, or I hate X/Y slash, but X with Z or with an OC...". Same goes for everything else really.

Hence the best prompt I ever got was:

"I'll be happy with anything which has character X in it (please no deathfic at all), right up to mature content. Enjoy!"

That's the sort of prompts I fulfill in addition to the match, as well. Real fun to do.

not directed at poster, per se, but just in general

[jedi_penguin]

The stifling can go the other way and should also be avoided. The first year I did yuletide, I didn't really understand about optional details being optional and I wrote a terrible story to meet someone's demand for pr0n. (This person wrote the same, undifferentiated prompt for all four requests: "graphic NC-17 sex.") The problem was I just didn't see the two characters I'd agreed to write going beyond UST because one of them always struck me as straight. If all you want is smut, you need to leave some leeway as to the characters you'll accept together, because your writer might not see the same OTP/3 that you do. If you don't want to see your OTP split up, leave your writer room to write a gen story... pretty much exactly like your best prompt did for you!

Re: not directed at poster, per se, but just in general

[andelendir]

Oh, but that's precisely what I wrote myself there: don't stifle, don't insist on one thing only, or absence of something which is no hard limit.

Personally I don't do OTP (because I rarely ever write two fandom characters into a relationship, it's usually always an OC, unless it's a PWP just for fun).

And that's something I also can't really do when asked to exclusively, most times my idea about who (or what) would fit a character in a fandom is quite a bit removed from popular choices. I would prefer the freedom to then write simply gen. And I actually never write smut/porn either, so that would be something outside my league. Emotions and eroticism is a must.

Conceded, in some fandoms, my main interest is something very specific (check my just published, yet incomplete Yuletide letter on my LJ), like as with Pets, where it's Stackman's behaviour which absolutely caught my interest (as opposed e.g. of Bonnie's).

But for both others I take nearly any and everything, except for my hard limits. And if the fourth I am hoping for is among the approved fandoms, that as well will be nearly everything.

I think it simply pays well to allow for the broadest possible spread, while making clar what one absolutely doesn't want, and what would be much liked if it came along.

Re: not directed at poster, per se, but just in general

[jedi_penguin]

Oh, but that's precisely what I wrote myself there: don't stifle, don't insist on one thing only, or absence of something which is no hard limit.

I wasn't disagreeing, just elaborating. *grin* That's cool that you don't do OTPs, but many people find it difficult to separate their chosen pairing from their enjoyment of the text. The writer and recipient may both desperately love all the requested characters, and perhaps even see them the same way, but that doesn't guarantee that they'll see the relationships between characters in quite the same way, and that's what I was trying to add in to your comment about squicks-vs-vague preferences.

Re: not directed at poster, per se, but just in general

[andelendir]

...squicks-vs-vague preferences...

I grasped that, that's why I said it's better to accept everything, including gen, which at least to me means no sexual/love relationships or none at all if preferred.

As to OTPs, they really pass me by, personally. I've never grasped why anyone would want to pair on-screen/in-fandom characters, except where it's canonically so already anyway ;-). I usually want to achieve very distinct results with relationships, and it's extremely rare that I can justify using a character already in residence against the basic rules of math and chance. I almost never have a pairing in a fandom jump at me and it's normally not pairings I write a fandom for. So that definitely would be one of the "too stifling" things for me.

Re: not directed at poster, per se, but just in general

[rosehiptea]

I had the opposite -- the first year I did it I requested a crack pairing with smut. (Not to challenge the writer, I just thought I wanted it, and I understood that they weren't required to actually write that. But in those days people didn't write Yuletide letters so I didn't have one.) They very understandably wrote me a gen fic instead, which turned out to be way better than my idea.

So after that I always remembered to write out that gen would be great too, just to reassure the writer.

[rosehiptea]

The thing is, I like slash in general and write it myself, but sometimes I really don't feel like having a slash story for one or more of my Yuletide prompts. (Not always, sometimes the prompts are slash prompts...)

I didn't think that was such a bad thing to tell a writer?

[andelendir]

It isn't.

What I meant was don't make it exclusive either way, if you want to make it easier on your writer.

If I came across a prompt for e.g. MacGuyver which said "please no slash, I'd rather have gen for this fandom" and I agreed on that on principle, I wouldn't want to foist M/M or M/F erotica on the recipient.

But if, e.g. the fandom was Kushiel's Dart or The Marketplace and the person requesting that said "gen only please," then I'd really have a problem. Because I would have offered to write such fandoms of course mainly because they already *are* erotica or heavily in that direction. I'd be at a complete loss to write anything gen for such a fandom.

It's not just that, it's a lot of things. E.g. demands for crossovers or AU, such things would be difficult for me to fulfill in general terms.

I'd say the less confining, the better.

[rosehiptea]

I think I see what you mean. It's just that if I said "Please don't write slash for this fic" and the person decided it was OK because I obviously do like slash, that would... trouble me. But I'd never do it in head-breaking way, like "write me a story about this canonically bisexual character which doesn't mention slash," because that would be wrong for any number of reasons.

[andelendir]

No and yes.

The point is that Yuletide isn't a specialised exchange. So you just may be faced with a writer who isn't able to write what you ask for, even though he offered the same fandom and character(s). If you insist on barring certain things from him or her, then what you most likely do is either

- have him choose one of your other fandoms he is not feeling strongly about (and get a mediocre or lacklustre fic)
- have him do what you want against his grain/abilities (and get anything between awful and lacklustre)
- have him default
- have him write that fandom and character the way he prefers (which is absolutely fulfilling the challenge - and have you moping and him knowing that).

None of the above results is in any way nice for either party and makes for a bad Yuletide experience, I'd say.

If you however simply state "I'd really like gen for this, but if you have to write het/slash because you love to, then do it" and mentally tune yourself to the fact that basically it's just fandom/character which fulfills the request, that makes for a better experience on all sides.

It's the hard squicks and triggers which I'd say ought to be put down and respected, but anything else is better off less stringently.

But as I said, that's my personal opinion. :-)

[rosehiptea]

I see your point.

Here's what I'm getting at: Say I requested a Fred/Ermentrude fic. I'd be more than fine if I got a gen fic where Fred and Ermentrude were just hanging out talking about life, or robbing a liquor store, or whatever (and they weren't a couple.) But if I got a fic about Fred and Ermentrude talking about Fred's great sex life with Mike (or Lucy for that matter) I'd kind of feel like it wasn't really in the spirit of the thing. But if Fred in canon had a great sex life with Mike or Lucy I wouldn't ask the writer to leave that out because it would be ridiculous.

I hope I'm making sense here. I totally want the writer to write something they're going to enjoy, and I'm totally behind "optional details are optional." And I hope I'm not coming off as someone who wants a Yuletide fic set to their specifications.

(And I also hope I'm not coming off as a "slash is icky" person.)

Also st this point this is a totally theoretical discussion, since I've never been disappointed by anything I got for Yuletide and I can't imagine I ever will be.

[andelendir]

Every writer surely tries to do his/her very best for the recipient. I think that's a given.

But sometimes it happens that two get paired who are far from each other in what they prefer/can do or not. I've had it happen in another challenge, I've had people ask me to write fluffy fairies into one of my very few fandoms (I write not a lot different ones really), which is so attractive to me because it's sexy, kinky and dark. I sat there, gobsmacked how anyone could ask for that, and as she was adamant about "nice and fluffy" and I am absolutely incapable of writing that, I defaulted, quite angry as well.

To her the fandom may well have been the epitome of "nice and fluffy", I wouldn't know, but her rigid terms barred me from writing her a fic.

And no, you don't come over as a slash is icky person ;-)

[rosehiptea]

Getting off-topic, but I can definitely relate, being a Silent Hill fan. I can manage to write relatively happy fic on occasion even in that fandom but some of the characters and pairings it's just not going to happen.

If I request (or in the case of Yuletide, suggest) that I want something happy and fluffy, it's in a canon that's happy and fluffy beyond reasonable debate. (Usually that's not what I request, but anyway, yeah.)

[calenlily]

I do think it's important to give your writer options. I do not think highly of prompts that specify they're only interested in one type of pairing, whether it be slash or het or femmeslash or gen; it's courteous to give your writer an out if they don't feel able to write your first choice. But I feel like if there's a pairing type they specifically aren't fond of, people should be able to request it not be included and expect that their writer will do their best to respect that (with the understanding that optional details are optional and it's possible that the writer won't be able to manage it).

Similarly, I think writers ought to be willing to be somewhat flexible; if you're signing up for an exchange where there's no guarantee that your recipient will come from the same parts of fandom, you should not have an attitude of "I'll only write slash." But I think it's reasonable for them to say, "I'm not comfortable writing slash." (And again, substitute bet or femmeslash or gen in either statement as the case applies.)

That said, my perspective is colored by me personally being a hardcore shipper for canon pairings (which tend to be het, but are not exclusively). I feel like it shouldn't be unreasonable to ask that someone who is writing a present for me not break up canon pairings for non-canon ones. But I have no problem with getting gen if my writer doesn't see the requested characters together, and I tend to give multiple alternative character options in my details.

[anialove]

I definitely feel strongly about having a gen option in addition to shipping options. My own experiences have taught me that the writer might not know what they're comfortable writing until they start.

My first year was a bit of a mess - I matched up with my person on a fandom in which they wanted X/Y with smut. X/Y were a couple with strong UST, although X/Z were the official couple. I didn't default because I had been blindsided when X and Z got together and thought X and Y would've been a great couple. I reviewed canon . . . and discovered that in the two books since X and Z got together I'd become a hardcore X/Z shipper without realizing it. But I felt I had to write sex and ended up writing a shitty story.

Now I still feel awful about giving someone such a terrible story, but I would've felt bad not following their details.

(It should be noted that there were gen options in the other two fandoms, but I wasn't familiar with them and didn't have time to become so.)

[agnes_bean]

I definitely feel strongly about having a gen option in addition to shipping options

I've never done Yuletide before, but from everything I've read and experienced in other fests, this seems like the best option, and in most cases doesn't seem to me to be too hard. Sure, my number one choice may be sexy porn featuring X/Y, but any canon I like enough to request will have friendships or backstory or world-building or etc. etc. I'd also be interested in seeing explored, and I feel like that's true for most people if they think about it.

(On the flip side, I plan on not offering any characters I wouldn't be comfortable doing a gen character piece about, even if I'd rather write something shippy).