Individual posts or putting them all together

[Deadman]

Just wondering if I should break up my one shot compilation stories into individual stories rather than grouping them all together. Especially the ones in group situations.

I don’t know if I’m shooting myself in the foot in terms of potential reviews by putting them together. Although I worry that posting them one at a time would flood the site with mine and take attention away from other stories on the site.

Thoughts?
 

[GeorgeGlass]

I'd say they should be grouped together if they are related in some way (eg, characters, theme, genre), such that it would make sense to readers why you are posting them as a series of "chapters" and not separately.

[Desiderius Price]

For Halloween/Holidays, we do the “one-shot” anthologies.  And for some of my back story… they’re so tightly coupled that I consider them “episodic” and thus, keep it as a single title.

[Deadman]

5 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

I'd say they should be grouped together if they are related in some way (eg, characters, theme, genre), such that it would make sense to readers why you are posting them as a series of "chapters" and not separately.

Which I get and that’s sorta what I’ve been doing. But I think about it in terms of readers who like a couple of characters. Some of which is in the story. I’m also thinking about stories that are MF versus stories that are FF in terms of what’s happening. I’ve got stories that are both. The first one might be MF and the second one might be FF. People might prefer the FF to the MF and wouldn’t check it out if they see the first one as being MF.

[Desiderius Price]

It’s a collection of oneshots, right?  You’re allowed a table of contents, so use that, flag the relevant stories as M/F vs F/F vs M/M vs M/Squid.

[Deadman]

4 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

It’s a collection of oneshots, right?  You’re allowed a table of contents, so use that, flag the relevant stories as M/F vs F/F vs M/M vs M/Squid.

Yes, it’s a series of one shots. I never considered putting the specific tags in the chapter title. I usually put that in the main summary in some way. However, I may want to add that.

Are you reading the Riverdale story? Because I do technically have a story involving a “squid”, though focused on a woman.

[Deadman]

On 9/30/2024 at 12:33 PM, GeorgeGlass said:

I'd say they should be grouped together if they are related in some way (eg, characters, theme, genre), such that it would make sense to readers why you are posting them as a series of "chapters" and not separately.

I do try to make that clear through the summary. But I have thought about grouping the FF stories and the MF stories in their own stories. That way people who like one and not the other don’t have to worry about getting what they don’t like. Some characters would appear in both.

[GeorgeGlass]

On 10/1/2024 at 3:54 PM, Deadman said:

I do try to make that clear through the summary. But I have thought about grouping the FF stories and the MF stories in their own stories. That way people who like one and not the other don’t have to worry about getting what they don’t like. Some characters would appear in both.

Your readership may differ from mine, but as one who writes a lot of stories that include both MF and FF, I’ve never had a reader say that they wished a given story was FF only, or that they didn’t like the MF parts. 

[Deadman]

4 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

Your readership may differ from mine, but as one who writes a lot of stories that include both MF and FF, I’ve never had a reader say that they wished a given story was FF only, or that they didn’t like the MF parts. 

Well I have a bunch of different fandoms and I would say that some of them will keep it separate. MF stories have only MF scenes and FF stories don’t include a lot of men. But in at least one of the fandoms, there’s been FF and MF chapters, though not in one shots compilations.
 

[WarrenTheConey]

I personally avoid looking at ‘collections of stories’ if I'm in a lazy mood, which is my usual state of being; I really don't want to sift through a half dozen stories, just to find only one that I like. I also avoid certain tags unless I'm feeling adventurous, which seldom happens.

Because of this I like to keep my stories as separate as possible, because it's something that I would appreciate as a reader. I go so far as to avoid multi-chapter fanfics if I can, saving chapters for fanfics that simply can't be told in one sitting. I do have fanfics that are sequels, but I make sure they work entirely independent of the other. That way if my reader decides they don't want to see something described or tagged in a previous fanfic, they can just skip it.

I hope I don't aggravate people by saying this, but 'story collections' in my opinion, defeat the purpose of tags and descriptions entirely. A single tag for one fanfic, could be seen as a tag for every fanfic in the collection, and you would have to read each story just to find out if that's true. Likewise if I was to read a description to get an idea of the content of the fanfics, it would be a broad description that tells me little about any of the stories in that collection. I could look in the chapters, hoping to find more information about the stories within, but it's easier just to avoid the one collection among all the other new posts.

I'm sure I sound picky about it, but that's how I do things, and I thought you might like hearing from someone who as both a reader and a writer, usually avoids 'story collections'.

[BronxWench]

1 hour ago, WarrenTheConey said:

I personally avoid looking at ‘collections of stories’ if I'm in a lazy mood, which is my usual state of being; I really don't want to sift through a half dozen stories, just to find only one that I like. I also avoid certain tags unless I'm feeling adventurous, which seldom happens.

Because of this I like to keep my stories as separate as possible, because it's something that I would appreciate as a reader. I go so far as to avoid multi-chapter fanfics if I can, saving chapters for fanfics that simply can't be told in one sitting. I do have fanfics that are sequels, but I make sure they work entirely independent of the other. That way if my reader decides they don't want to see something described or tagged in a previous fanfic, they can just skip it.

I hope I don't aggravate people by saying this, but 'story collections' in my opinion, defeat the purpose of tags and descriptions entirely. A single tag for one fanfic, could be seen as a tag for every fanfic in the collection, and you would have to read each story just to find out if that's true. Likewise if I was to read a description to get an idea of the content of the fanfics, it would be a broad description that tells me little about any of the stories in that collection. I could look in the chapters, hoping to find more information about the stories within, but it's easier just to avoid the one collection among all the other new posts.

I'm sure I sound picky about it, but that's how I do things, and I thought you might like hearing from someone who as both a reader and a writer, usually avoids 'story collections'.

When we do a themed collection among multiple writers, like our Hallowe’en or Yule/Christmas compilations, there’s a thread in the Writer’s Corner for everyone to post a bit about their contribution, including a summary and tags, and a direct link to that chapter. It makes it easier to navigate our holiday anthologies.  

[Deadman]

20 hours ago, WarrenTheConey said:

I personally avoid looking at ‘collections of stories’ if I'm in a lazy mood, which is my usual state of being; I really don't want to sift through a half dozen stories, just to find only one that I like. I also avoid certain tags unless I'm feeling adventurous, which seldom happens.

Because of this I like to keep my stories as separate as possible, because it's something that I would appreciate as a reader. I go so far as to avoid multi-chapter fanfics if I can, saving chapters for fanfics that simply can't be told in one sitting. I do have fanfics that are sequels, but I make sure they work entirely independent of the other. That way if my reader decides they don't want to see something described or tagged in a previous fanfic, they can just skip it.

I hope I don't aggravate people by saying this, but 'story collections' in my opinion, defeat the purpose of tags and descriptions entirely. A single tag for one fanfic, could be seen as a tag for every fanfic in the collection, and you would have to read each story just to find out if that's true. Likewise if I was to read a description to get an idea of the content of the fanfics, it would be a broad description that tells me little about any of the stories in that collection. I could look in the chapters, hoping to find more information about the stories within, but it's easier just to avoid the one collection among all the other new posts.

I'm sure I sound picky about it, but that's how I do things, and I thought you might like hearing from someone who as both a reader and a writer, usually avoids 'story collections'.

This is one of the things I’ve been thinking about for sure. But for instance, one of my collections of stories in the Buffy category has 18 one shots. I worry about if I posted 18 separate stories on a semi regular basis, the first whole page of Buffy would be just my stories. There probably would be a couple pages.

On the Television category I might have other people posting and wouldn’t overwhelm things. But I do worry about exactly what you’re talking about. That some people don’t want to look at a list of chapters to try and find the specific chapters in the stories they’d want to read.

[Deadman]

18 hours ago, BronxWench said:

When we do a themed collection among multiple writers, like our Hallowe’en or Yule/Christmas compilations, there’s a thread in the Writer’s Corner for everyone to post a bit about their contribution, including a summary and tags, and a direct link to that chapter. It makes it easier to navigate our holiday anthologies.  

Sounds fun. I’m not necessarily one for themes like holidays but I do have a story that technically begins at Christmas which I may be writing in the near future. Santa makes an appearance. But it’s a multi-chapter story.