melannen (![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} melannen) wrote in thefourthvine, |
I am someone who always offers a giant bucket list (often in the three digits) because being assigned a semi-random fandom to immerse myself in for December is the best part of the season for me, but if you're going to do it that way, you need different guidelines for pairing it down. Your step one is good, but after that, I do:
2. Do you have access to, or will you be able to easily get access to, the entire relevant canon in time to review it before writing? Will having to review (or view for the first time - I often offer things on my to-read list) canon feel like a chore, or like an extra yuletide treat? (This means for me, for example, most TV series longer than one or two seasons are cut, and also any book series more than 1200 combined pages, and nearly all RPF.) Or are you already familiar enough that this doesn't matter?
3. Could you *really* write *any* character on the list for this fandom? (Sometimes this means checking to make sure the characters you can't write aren't on the nominated list.) You can't offer limited characters in too many fandoms, so save those for special ones (these usually end up being huge RPF umbrellas, for me,) and delete most fandoms where you can't honestly offer "any".
3. Do you believe in your heart that optional details are optional? If you get a request that consists of just "A/B, het porn", and you can't write an A/B het porn story, will you be capable of saying "they knew that optional details are optional, so they're getting gen about A and B having coffee together, and if that ruins their Christmas it's on them for misreading the guidelines, not on me"? Not everybody can do this - if you're the sort of person who obsesses at length over writing the perfect exact story, you should probably not do a huge bucket offer!
On the other hand, there are some requests that really aren't optional - if the recipient says "not this," you have to be able to write "not that". In particular, most people request things for yuletide because they like them, and most people will be happy with your story if you write the things they like sympathetically, even if you have to ignore most of their optionals. If there's one thing about the fandom that you just hate and could never write sympathetically, your recipient will, nine times out of ten, request that because they love it. So only offer a fandom if you're pretty sure you could convince yourself to love anything about it if you had to (or, at minimum, write a story that avoids it entirely).
4. Go down the list and click all the boxes.
2. Do you have access to, or will you be able to easily get access to, the entire relevant canon in time to review it before writing? Will having to review (or view for the first time - I often offer things on my to-read list) canon feel like a chore, or like an extra yuletide treat? (This means for me, for example, most TV series longer than one or two seasons are cut, and also any book series more than 1200 combined pages, and nearly all RPF.) Or are you already familiar enough that this doesn't matter?
3. Could you *really* write *any* character on the list for this fandom? (Sometimes this means checking to make sure the characters you can't write aren't on the nominated list.) You can't offer limited characters in too many fandoms, so save those for special ones (these usually end up being huge RPF umbrellas, for me,) and delete most fandoms where you can't honestly offer "any".
3. Do you believe in your heart that optional details are optional? If you get a request that consists of just "A/B, het porn", and you can't write an A/B het porn story, will you be capable of saying "they knew that optional details are optional, so they're getting gen about A and B having coffee together, and if that ruins their Christmas it's on them for misreading the guidelines, not on me"? Not everybody can do this - if you're the sort of person who obsesses at length over writing the perfect exact story, you should probably not do a huge bucket offer!
On the other hand, there are some requests that really aren't optional - if the recipient says "not this," you have to be able to write "not that". In particular, most people request things for yuletide because they like them, and most people will be happy with your story if you write the things they like sympathetically, even if you have to ignore most of their optionals. If there's one thing about the fandom that you just hate and could never write sympathetically, your recipient will, nine times out of ten, request that because they love it. So only offer a fandom if you're pretty sure you could convince yourself to love anything about it if you had to (or, at minimum, write a story that avoids it entirely).
4. Go down the list and click all the boxes.
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