Fic Night Feedback and Formatting Poll

[magemadi]

Hello friends! It's your friendly Fic Night hostess here with some questions for you about the way we currently run Fic Night and its future as an event as part of the site's regular monthly activities.

As a reminder, we stream this event live over on our FanFicTalk YouTube channel+ once a month, where I read a story submitted by a member and then interview the author (usually) live!

I'd love to get your feedback on the structure for this activity and ways of possibly changing it up to keep things fresh and exciting for members. If there's anything you'd like to share that doesn't fit into the poll options above, please feel free to post about them below or send them to me (@magemadi) in a PM if you wish.

Edited June 7, 2022 by magemadi

[grumpy cat]

i was just thinking about putting forward a story for fic night and whenever i get to the 'will you be available for the stream' question, i get a lil discouraged - i mean i have put forward stories before so it's not something that's like super discouraging but anyhow i'm either unavailable due to time zones or just not wanting my awful accent&voice be public lololo but like text would be fineish i guess.

the point i'm taking a ridiculously long time to make is that maybe an idea is that if an author is unavailable there's still multiple people (2+) talking about the story? idk how doable that is because of availability and such, i know it was done for a lil while when rose and bianca were doing fic night, but it's mostly for the benefit of whoever's watching, if that makes sense? like, i always think maybe it's not really fun for a story to get there and then there's just the person running fic night reading it without the author - i get that this may be weird and probably nobody but me feels like this and it could become a moot point whenever it's decided how to format fic night going forward. or something totally different that also makes it a lil less awkward for people who might not want to put themselves as a person out there or they can't bc timezones and such (i'm not suggesting the timezones be switched up because fic night is an activity that totally depends on the availability of the staffer running it (currently madi) and that would be unfair towards them). maybe it's a case of having double features so there's someone else there possibly? idk idk just putting my thoughts out there (btw it wouldn't necessarily need to be a monthly thing if it's easier to organise something with more than one person every other month or a couple of months or something)

Edited June 19, 2022 by grumpy cat

[magemadi]

On 6/19/2022 at 1:00 PM, grumpy cat said:

i was just thinking about putting forward a story for fic night and whenever i get to the 'will you be available for the stream' question, i get a lil discouraged - i mean i have put forward stories before so it's not something that's like super discouraging but anyhow i'm either unavailable due to time zones or just not wanting my awful accent&voice be public lololo but like text would be fineish i guess.

the point i'm taking a ridiculously long time to make is that maybe an idea is that if an author is unavailable there's still multiple people (2+) talking about the story? idk how doable that is because of availability and such, i know it was done for a lil while when rose and bianca were doing fic night, but it's mostly for the benefit of whoever's watching, if that makes sense? like, i always think maybe it's not really fun for a story to get there and then there's just the person running fic night reading it without the author - i get that this may be weird and probably nobody but me feels like this and it could become a moot point whenever it's decided how to format fic night going forward. or something totally different that also makes it a lil less awkward for people who might not want to put themselves as a person out there or they can't bc timezones and such (i'm not suggesting the timezones be switched up because fic night is an activity that totally depends on the availability of the staffer running it (currently madi) and that would be unfair towards them). maybe it's a case of having double features so there's someone else there possibly? idk idk just putting my thoughts out there (btw it wouldn't necessarily need to be a monthly thing if it's easier to organise something with more than one person every other month or a couple of months or something)

That is an excellent point make, Kris, and I'm actually very glad you brought it up! I agree that sometimes it's not super fun to just have me (or another staffer) alone reading the story and then reading pre-prepared questions & answers on the stream, so I'd love to be able to do something that allows for more conversations to happen outside of reading the story and the usual back & forth with the author.

Time zones are difficult and I will definitely be working towards more weekend-based streams so our European and later time-zone folks have a greater chance to not only watch the stream but to also participate!

I will have a full write-up explaining changes we're going to be making to this activity and why for future iterations by the end of this month!

Thanks to everyone who has submitted feedback!!