It all started with the Big Bang

[owlmoose]

So as often happens, I got to talking with people about fandom projects, and what all we'd like to see, and one idea that came up was the possibility of doing a Big Bang in Final Fantasy fandom.

What's a Big Bang? The short answer is: a fanwork challenge where authors write longer stories over a time period of a few months (most Big Bangs run 5-6 months, and goals are usually either 20,000 or 40,000 words), and artists collaborate with the authors to illustrate the stories, and everyone gets lots of shiny longfic to read and arts to admire. (The long answer is here.)

The discussion went on for awhile, and naturally the first logical step was a poll. To that end:

Here's a poll.

It's based in Google Docs, so you don't need to have an account on any particular service to fill it out. Curious who's responding and what they said? Check out the responses here. Leave your answers in the poll, then come back here to share your thoughts! (Anon and OpenID commenting are on.) And please feel free to send it on to your long-fic writing friends! The more, the merrier.

Comments

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

Thanks for raising this issue! I agree that it's an important one to consider. Artists should feel like full partners in the challenge, not afterthoughts. I'm not exactly sure yet how to best balance it, either, but we will definitely keep it in mind as we plan. If anything comes to you, definitely let us know.

[chaosraven.livejournal.com]

It's been on my mind since I joined Star Trek Reverse Bang, where the art comes first and fics are written based on pics instead of the other way around and all my artist friends have been like: we're important? AMAZING.

I wonder if there is any reasonable way to have both at the same time? Like have the fics start and have artists draw some stuff. And then at the mid point, have people who are more interested in drawing/writing for a "prompt" so to speak, pick a piece of art of fic that they would like to write/draw to. It seems a little bit unnecessarily complicated but that's the only idea that's come to me so far.

[justira.livejournal.com]

So, question!

Is there any particular reason artists and writers can't be treated in perfectly symmetrical ways? Because I know a lot of artists have stories to tell, or ideas they put into pictures that they would love someone to make whole fics out of, or artists who just outright tell stories with single arts. There are so many arts out there that would themselves make fabulous fic prompts... and a lot of writers who want to write but aren't sure they have the ideas, or just need a spark of inspiration.

so... is there any reason we couldn't just do it in two steps?

Step one: if you have ideas, author or artist, start making stuff for them!

Step two: if you want to make stuff but aren't sure how to get started, or want ideas, or whatever, join in once the step 1 folks have something started (at the point where artists join in most bigbangs).

I mean, I imagine there are logistical nightmares, but are they insurmountable? Are there hurdles? Am I missing something obvious? I've never done a bigbang, so I might be saying something very silly! =|

On the surface at least, this feels more evenhanded and like it would be more of a collaboration instead of a "Hey artists here is your yoke, get to haulin'."


Well, whatever comes of this suggestion, chaosraven, thanks for bringing this up!

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

These are the two thoughts that come to mind, and that I would like to throw out to the floor.

1) What is the artistic equivalent of 20,000 words?

2) I have the sense that many writers -- not all, of course -- would have difficulty writing a very long story to a prompt. Am I right about this? How does compare to creating art to prompts, which I freely admit to knowing nothing about? ;)

edited for stupid wording error

[darthneko.livejournal.com]

1) Not sure, but most 20k word bangs ask for 1 (or sometimes 2) really good drawn pieces from the artists, or one vid/fanmix.

2) trekreversebang is the first bang I know of that's flipping it - the artists create first, the writers pick art to write from as a visual prompt. They acknowledged that it's harder to write a story based on a picture than it is to illustrate a written fic, so the word count for the writers was dropped to only 6k, instead of the 15-50k normal for big bangs.