QuickFic Session #1: Afterword

[shurhaian]

My first go at this sort of thing was, I think, quite successful. I got a good bit of interest, and a great deal of writing done. It was also quite instructive; I've learned a few things for how I might run future sessions.

Here I'll recap the completed work from this session of prompts, summarize some overall figures and statistics, and go into my thoughts for the future.

Work Written This Session

• For quoting_mungo:
  
  • "Firsts", a follow-up to this comic page (this particular comic page is SFW but some of the comic is graphically NSFW; story is textually NSFW; m/m, teens) (546 words)
  • "Preview", "A cattle ranch with unicorns, flightless dragons, or wingclipped gryphons rather than cows" (591 words)
  • "Riding", "Godiva" (NSFW; M snow leopard/M polar bear; 1092 words)
  • "Clang", "Blake and Charlie's Amazing Pots-And-Pans Orchestra" (473 words)
  • "Aftermath", "Did Angie ever talk to Aaron about that incident in the locker room? If so, that. (Felidae)" (567 words)
  • "ImPerfection", "A continuation on [Lazuli Mercer's story]" (NSFW; m feline/m fox, teens; 597 words)
• For kensan_oni:
  
  • "Storming Olympus", "Pegasus's feelings for having bucked off Bellerophon" (542 words)
  • "Fool's Gold", "Person at the bottom of a well waits for someone to find them" (583 words)
• For ariestess:
  
  • "Moonlight", "the quiet places between dusk and dawn" (542 words)
  • "What Will Never Be", "Wishing only wounds the heart"> (596 words; some coarse language)
• For skjam:
  
  • "Blinding the Queen's Eyes", "crash landing", with extension requested by quoting_mungo
    
  • "Powered Down", "After the superhero retires, the kid sidekicks notice that all the bad guys they meet now are ones they can handle themselves." (561 words)
• For lonewolf2123:
  
  • "Off the Grid", "a couple of friends go to a cabin for the weekend" (531 words)
  • "Homecoming", "A soldier comes home." (593 words)
• For metalsky:
  
  • Hunting the Hunter", "Captain Trellig's exploits" from the "Courtesan's War" setting (reference link NSFW for a variety of explicit content; this entry contains some violence, 1596 words)
  • "Small Frame, Great Heart", "Varyn topping one of the other characters from [my] D&D slash" (NSFW all around; this entry contains M/M sex; 2099 words)
• For stilghar:
  
  • "Dead In Space", "SLA marines exploring a derelict ship" (some gore; 1577 words)
  • "The Captain's Fancy", "Anything involving Red Sebastien and/or any current or former members of his crew" (NSFW; M jaguar/M ferret, 2067 words)
  • "Miscalculation", "A magical or scientific experiment goes wildly awry with humorous consequences." (599 words)
  • "Bequest", "Varyn's backstory" (589 words)
  • "No True Substitute", "A medical breakthrough could threaten the livelihood of certain Service Providers in the world of Courtesan's War." (NSFW; M/F ferrets; 553 words)
  • "For Old Time's Sake", "A 'where are they now' look at the characters from 'Four and Twenty' a few years later." (NSFW; M skunk/M otter; 562 words)

Statistics

Prompts opened on the 27th of January. I started writing for them on the 28th, and continued until February 3rd.

Total days worked: 7
Total prompters: 7
Total donors: 3
Donation total: $60 Cdn
Words written per donor:

• quoting_mungo: 4413*
• kensan_oni: 1125
• ariestess: 1138
• skjam: 1102 *
• lonewolf2123: 1124
• metalsky: 3695
• stilghar: 5947
Total words written: 18 544
Words per day: ~ 2649
Words per unit donation, total: 3.090666... words per $0.01
Words per unit donation, donors only: 2.3425 words per $0.01
Total prompt blocks answered: 34
Expected wordcount: 17 000
Total delta: +1 544
Average delta per block: +45.412

*: Approx 547 words under a prompt from skjam were a donation-request from quoting_mungo; the figures recorded here have that portion shifted to her bucket, not left with the original.

For reference: NaNoWriMo, in order to complete a 50k word novel in 30 days, has a daily word count target of 1666 2/3. This session had me writing almost a thousand words/day more than that. Not bad!

Reflections

First off, for future prompts, I'm not going to give as many free prompts for donors. It causes a massive jump in my workload and places disproportionate value on small donations - and while PayPal fees are not exorbitant, they're not nil, either. I'd rather encourage people to save up for a few sessions and give a bigger amount, if given a choice.

However, I do want to have some donors regularly rather than a bunch of unsupported sessions and then one BIG one. Donors in future will still get an incentive no matter how large or small their donation, but I think it will just be two bonus prompts (rather than four), for a total of three.

I'm open to feedback on the pricing structure beyond that, though I think it's not unreasonable so far. Additional words beyond the first ~1500 are essentially a penny per word or slightly better value; that initial 1500 has more of an impact at lower levels, but at $50 it jumps to double value. I think I'll rework things to still include the initial 1500 words, though, even if someone does opt for the 10k.

I'll think of rewording the bonus structure, to make it more explicit that those three prompts for 500 each are not part of the $5/500w bonus.

I'm also going to change my word cap structure somewhat. What I was writing for in this session was some multiple of 500, +/- 100 words from the total, whatever that total was. Coupled with my tendency to write over rather than under, this means that shorter pieces got slightly better value. Going forward, I may set my targets at +20%/-5% of the "expected" total - explicitly weighting toward extra words, and ensuring that longer stories can potentially get their full value from it. This also makes it easier for me to write in some extra detail to tie the whole thing together, so it's not solely for the donor's benefit.

I'll state more explicitly that donors needn't think themselves constrained to their own prompts for the paid buckets of 500. However, I will ask that they limit themselves to pieces already written, mostly to ensure that they don't wind up putting a block toward something I wind up asking for a reprompt on.

When recording work done so far, I'll split it up by prompter from the get go, on the assumption that at least one person will donate at least something, and doing it that way is more organized. Having it be thus from the start means less maintenance afterward.

Most significant, concerning the timing:

I'm so far planning to make this a regular event, running for the last calendar week of each month, with prompts open for the first three days of that time, and the remaining four closed for doing the work. I will attempt to keep up even over those first few days; but if I find myself with a 7-day backlog at 3 blocks of words per day (around or somewhat less than NaNo standards), I will close prompts early.

Still, for a first attempt, I'm quite pleased.