Check-in Sunday 27th May

[lacygrey]

Hi, I'm lacygrey, I’ll be doing the check-ins all this week as we end May and go into June.

Poll #10639

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

View Respondents

What is your word count/fic goal this week? (I’ll include the same poll for results next Saturday - unless you beg me not to!)

View Answers

Bof!
1 (9.1%)

100
0 (0.0%)

100-500
0 (0.0%)

500-1000
1 (9.1%)

1000-5000
5 (45.5%)

>5000
2 (18.2%)

one fic / chapter posted
5 (45.5%)

more than one fic / chapter posted
1 (9.1%)

For discussion:
Can you tell when you start a story whether its going to be a one-shot or a multi-chapter epic? Do you know when you first have the idea? Or do you ever find that a fic will grow from one into the other - when a short story begs a sequel and then they become the first chapters of a novel-length story? Or do you plan for a story to be chaptered from the start? Has the opposite ever happened?
(I failed at a big bang once because found that I had the story down in three-quarters of the goal and didn’t have the time or willingness to ‘pad’ just to boost wordcount.)

Comments

[crowdog66]

Re: the discussion topic... usually it's pretty clear to me, but sometimes a one-shot story will surprise me and demand another chapter. That's what happened with "Ovum", which started out as a quick response to a prompt and is now sitting at nine chapters and around 15,000 words as a WIP.

I can't recall ever having the opposite problem (long story turns short) crop up, but maybe that's because I'm naturally more wordy than otherwise. :)

[i_paint_the_sky]

Most of the time, I have a pretty good idea how long things will be, at least as far as one-shot or multi-chapter goes. Of course, until recently I hadn't written anything multi-chapter so everything was a one-shot.

Currently, I have one story which ended up having more ideas attached to it than it did initially and so it has ended up having multi-chapters, but that's the exception. Never had anything I thought would be long end up short.

Of course, with multi-chapters I often don't know how long it will end up being but that's pretty common as far as I can tell.

[ladygriddlebone]

This happens to me constantly. I had one that was supposed to be a short multi-chapter fic that is now over 110K words posted and just finishing up its first major story arc (with two more to go, if I don't cut it short out of sheer frustration). Lately though I'm finding that the stories I start writing end up having a lot less substance than I thought when I started, and turn out much shorter than I anticipated.

[roane]

I set my wordcount goal higher than I normally would for a week because tomorrow's a holiday in the US and I'll be spending a good chunk of the weekend writing, I think. :) If my arms will let me.

I can usually tell. I knew my current WIP was going to be a beast just because of the scale of the story I had in mind. However, I also have two series in progress, and when I wrote the first story of each I didn't exactly plan for there to be more. Just when I finished the first stories in each I went, "Oh. Right. There's more here." I don't think they'll turn to chapters though, just because they're distinct stories themselves.

[linaewen]

If Real Life doesn't get in my way, I'm aiming for a good 5,000 words this week. I actually have a challenge deadline coming up that requires 7,000 written words -- I've done 2,000 since yesterday, so if I can keep the momentum going, I'm good.

I can usually tell if it's going to be multi-chaptered when the idea comes to me, but sometimes I've been surprised by something I thought was going to be a one-shot, and it turned out to need more room to finish it properly.

Once or twice I've had a story I thought would be longer turn out to work better as a short thing, or even a fixed-length thing. That doesn't happen very often, though.

[rhi]

::laughing:: I've had three or five short stories that developed sequel stories and then went on to need a novel to finish them up. Dangerous, that!

[ty_writes]

For me, I can never tell. I can start out writing a drabble and 5k later, I'm scrabbling for an ending. I've never had a case where a long fic turns short (usually all my chaptered ideas peter out into WIP's that sit on my computer until my hardware dies).