What is a fic exchange?
A fic exchange is a typically multifandom event that usually takes place on AO3 at a particular time of year. Most are themed. You can think of a fic exchange as very similar to a Secret Santa gift exchange, only they can happen at any time of year with any theme the moderators want.
Why do they happen on AO3?
Fic exchanges typically run on AO3 because AO3 has specific forms and tools to make them run smoothly and to do some of the legwork for the moderators with automated matching processes. They used to happen manually sometimes, but AO3 makes it much easier on the people running them.
What if I don't have an AO3 account?
You will need one for any exchange that takes place on AO3. Because AO3 likes to pretend it is in beta for all eternity, these are usually by invite only except in very rare windows. You can request a sign-up token, but typically it is easier to get invited by an existing user like catching a cold. I have some invite codes, and if any of the rest of you have or get AO3 accounts, you will have and be able to get more invite codes, too. We can take over... or not. But it's not sketchy or anything, it's just some kind of weird fixation AO3 has. If you need an invite code, PM me and ask me or ask here and I'll PM you for an email address, which is all I'll need. Other people can tell me if they're interested in sharing invite codes.
How does a fic exchange work?
Like I said, think of Secret Santa, only it is not entirely random. When you sign up, you will choose from a Tag Set that is specific to the exchange within the rules that the particular exchange has. Each exchange is very likely to have slightly different numbers and rules for its sign-up, but they will have posts (usually on LiveJournal, DreamWidth, or both) for you to refer to about how many fandoms and characters/pairings you are
required to request/offer and how many you
may request/offer in addition to that.
You will typically need to
offer one more fandom than the minimum number of requests (e.g., you must request 3 fandoms and offer 4 fandoms). This is to try to ensure that the pool of offers is large enough to cover a participant base with a variety of tastes. You can sometimes abuse this and offer the minimum and request the maximum; it's up to you, just bear in mind that you must write a gift in order to receive a gift for the exchange to work.
You will
request a specific number of fandoms. You will refer to the approved Tag Set to see from that fandom which
characters or
pairings /
character sets you may request. It cannot be a free-for-all
because there has to be information with which to definitely match you with other people who signed up so someone can write something for you that they feel like writing.
You will
offer a specific number of fandoms. You will also decide, from the approved Tag Set, which
characters or
pairings /
character sets you would like to write about. Only offer those things which you are interested in writing about because if you match on the thing you are least enthused about, you still have to write it.
All this sign up will be done with a form, which I will post a picture of as an edit, but it is not very complicated as long as you read it carefully. You may edit your sign-up until sign-ups are closed. After sign-ups are closed, your sign-up is finalized, and it will be sent to the matching algorithm. A few days later, you will receive an Assignment. This is what
you will be writing. Sometimes you will match on more than one thing you offered, which is fun, but you are only guaranteed to match on one of your offers. Usually, your
recipient will have provided you with prompts in a prompt box that is part of the form or will, more traditionally, have provided you with a
Dear Author Letter link in the blank that is reserved for that. Sometimes, they just give you the fandoms and characters/pairings/character sets they want with no clarification. That sucks when it happens, but that means you can write whatever you want about the applicable thing as long as you abide by the exchange's general rules.
You will not know what you are receiving as your gift until time for
reveals, which is half the fun.
Here is an example Sign-Up Information post from Yuletide 2015.
How do these "Tag Sets" get made, and what are they?
Tag Sets are generated by interested participants
nominating fandoms and (within those fandoms)
characters or
pairings / sets of characters (depending on the exchange) during a nomination period which will happen and close
prior to sign-ups. If you are going to participate in an exchange, it is a good idea to participate in the nomination process, too, so that your favorite character/pairing in the eligible fandom will be available.
It is at the mod's discretion to accept or reject fandoms or to recategorize them as necessary to make matching and organization run most smoothly for their exchange. (Example, if Fate and its spin-offs are eligible, sometimes they will all be under the
Fate/Stay Night & Related Fandoms category, but sometimes
Fate/Zero might be nominated independently, as well as
Fate/Stay Night & Related Fandoms being used only for those characters who actually appear in FSN.)
It is worth knowing that not every fandom or every character/pairing will be eligible for every exchange that happens throughout the year. These things usually have a theme in mind, and you need to know if you're interested in the theme before you start. Often, the criteria of eligibility are based on
rarity, but there can be totally different factors at play, too.
Participating in the nomination process
does not sign you up nor obligate you to participate.
Here is an example Tag Set from Yuletide 2015.
The Tag Set must be finalized and firm for any exchange to work. It means that the things you can choose to
request and the things that you can choose to
offer as a participant are drawn from the same pool, meaning that someone's
offer will match your
request in some way and vice versa. That is why participating in nominations is a good idea, because sometimes your favorite-whatever might have been eligible but didn't get nominated and you just have to hope for better luck next exchange/year.
How much do I have to write?
Some fic exchanges vary, but typical fic exchanges have a
minimum word count of 1000 words (according to AO3's word counter, but your word processor is usually close) and no
maximum.
More rarely, you will have a
minimum word count of something like 300 words and be expected to write more than one tiny fic which may or may not have a maximum word count.
What if I can't finish in time or decide I really don't want to do this?
There is typically a "default deadline." This is the date by which you can drop out of participation with no future penalty should you decide to do it next year. You can still drop out after that date, but you may face repercussions such as not being able to sign up the following year because it is very inconvenient for the mods and your recipient you bailed on to have to scramble to make sure your recipient gets something. No exchange will open without everyone having a gift, and that is a scheduling nightmare when a bunch of people drop. However, everyone understands that fic is a hobby and your life and interests may change. That's why the default deadline is there to protect you, in case something comes up but you do want to be courteous and maybe try again next year.
If you fail to drop out before the default deadline but drop out afterward or you fail to turn in your completed assignment by the deadline, you will usually be barred from entering that same exchange the following year. The rules about being permanently barred are different from exchange to exchange, but usually there is some distinction made between "I was swamped and forgot, I'm so sorry," where you just have to sit out one cycle and "I only care about receiving gifts and make no effort to fulfill my obligation," which can lead to more serious bans or the like.
What if I get defaulted on?
It is a mod's responsibility to make sure that there is a failsafe for this, and I have never been in a fic exchange where the mod didn't do their job in this regard. Requests that got dropped on become
pinchhits, and the mod will seek out authors who want to take on the request voluntarily.
Sometimes if it happens late in the game, this means you get a bit of a rush-job, but that's the worst that can happen. Often, this turns out really well because your pinchhitter really
wanted your assignment when they read it.
Pinchhitting, or What do I do if I want to participate but am scared of all this sign-up stuff, or What if I write a lot and think prompts are like candy in a kids' store?
Pinchhitters are a breed of people who are invaluable and love to write. Pinchhitting, while it may sound like a chore if you are not up to it, is often very competitive in fic exchanges. What will happen if someone gets defaulted on is that the mod of the exchange will have some type of public list of available pinchhits. It is typicall first come, first serve in terms of "claiming" that pinchhit. The first person who asks in the designated way will have that Assignment added to their Assignments on AO3 official.
However, if you
really wanted to write that and aren't the first to ask, do not despair. You can still write that person an extra fic! It's what is called
treat.
But pinchhitting is also a really good happy-medium between signing up and feeling out participation. Again, bearing in mind that it is competitive and time-based and the first person who asks will typically get the pinchhit in question, you can usually be a pinchhitter even if you didn't sign up. The caveat is that you will not be guaranteed to
receive anything for your trouble, but most
established fic exchanges will have a post where you can post a shorter request list that people can
optionally choose to throw soemthing your way as a means of thanks. This is great for you people who prefer to write fic over reading it, too.
Can you do anything other than fic?
Occasionally, some fic exchanges will let you do fanart that matches prompts instead of fic. However, art exchange is usually secondary to fic exchange, so it's not a good idea to sign up if you are only an artist and will not even consider writing fic unless you know there's a large pool of art requesters. On the sign-up sheet, people will have the option of checking "Fanfic," "Fanart," or both in those cases, and not everyone will check "Fanart," while almost everyone will check "Fanfic." But if you're an artist as well as a writer, it is a good thing to consider when you are making offers.
Requests and Offers:
(I will try to provide pictures of what this looks like later.)
A
request is what you, the
recipient, would like to receive. Bear in mind that you may not get your first pick, so choose wisely. You will be
more likely to make your
author happy and want to please you and to receive something you would like to read if you provide
optional details which come in the form of "prompts" or "Dear Author Letters." In these details, you will provide specific things you
do like and things you
do not like. For example, you can mention tropes or kinks or whatever you do or do not like to see. If you have some squick or phobia, you'll want to mention that so someone can be mindful of that. It is also an opportunity to tell your author what you enjoy the most about a particular fandom, character, or character dynamic and what themes you might enjoy seeing explored. It is a good idea to be a little general and to give your author some options. You should not request a point for point fic that is the only one you want to read, but otherwise being fairly specific about what you like is a good thing. The only thing you should definitely
not do is request characters, pairings, or other things that were not on the Tag Set as a primary focus.
An
offer is the same thing in reverse. It is what you are saying you are willing to write, drawn from the Tag Set. For this, you
do not provide qualifiers or optional details along the lines of "I will write this
if..." It is a blanket offer, and you need to be prepared for requests to be very typical or to be slightly controversial. Offer things you are okay with writing. Remember that
optional details are optional and that if your prompt/letter is not something you can write, your recipient will generally be happy to receive the best story you can tell. Just do your best to give them
something they asked for if they asked for anything and all will be well. People pretty much always return that same level of courtesy.
Recipient and Author:
In a fic exchange, you are both and will have both. These are not necessarily going to be the same people, and it is very rare for two people to be matched to each other mutually unless you had identical sign-ups.
Your
recipient is the person on your
Assignment. Your recipient is the person you are writing a fic for.
Your
author is the person who is writing a fic for you, who has your username and prompts on their
Assignment. You will not know who this person is until (usually) about a week
after you have received their story. Sometimes, you will know right after reveals and there is never an anonymous period, but usually there is one.
You reverse these terms for how your recipient will perceive you.
Assignment:
You will receive your assignment after a match has been determined. You will have offered your (typically) 4 fandoms, but you will only be guaranteed to match on
one of them. In cases of similar interests, you will somewhat frequently get the benefit of matching on two, but regardless of what you get assigned to do, it is your responsibility for fulfilling that assignment, regardless of if you might have somewhat preferred to write for one of your other offers. Again, only offer things you're pretty enthusiastic about writing and sort of psych yourself up for the thing you're least-enthused about.
In almost all cases, you will at
least have specified
characters, but in some cases you will have specified
pairings or
character sets. The themes of a
lot of fic exchanges encourage shipfic, but there are plenty that are equally amiable to genfic or platonic relationships. Which leads to a little clarification about
matching:
Matching:
I have never run a fic exchange, so I'm running a little blind on what this actually looks like, but a fic exchange's matching can vary a little from exchange to exchange. It is sort of important to know whether your fic exchange is running on
AND matching or
OR matching for both your requests and offers. The mods will usually freely explain this somewhere.
The reason it is important is best explained with an example. I'll use Fate characters:
Emiya Shirou,
Tohsaka Rin,
Saber | Arturia Pendragon, and
Kotomine Kirei.
People often ship or platonically pair those first three characters. People's relationship to Kirei, on the other hand, might vary a little more from person to person both in terms of whom they want him opposite in a fic (ship, friendship, enmity, whatever).
If your fic exchange is using
AND matching, it is important to make a decision about which relationships and characters are
most important to you to see in a pairing/group, and it is important to bear in mind what you may have someone
offer to do with this in mind.
Let's say you want
Shirou/Saber,
Shirou/Rin,
Rin/Saber, or
Shirou/Rin/Saber interaction/pairings all equally but wouldn't mind if one or more of them was left out of the story. For
AND matching, you can
specify this in your optional details, but your author
must have offered
all three of those characters in order to match with you if you request all three. In cases where
AND matching is involved, if you are more focused on two of them, it might be best to only request those two and mention that
optionally they may include the third character in some capacity.
Then, if you are (for example) interested in fic about Kirei on his own doing things Kirei likes to do to mess with people, adding his name to your request list on
AND matching could complicate matters more. It is a matter of assumed intent. A person
offering on an
AND matching exchange might struggle a little with deciding to but Kirei on their list if they are also interested in offering Shirou, Saber, and Rin, because it is
possible that a person might request, say, only Kirei and Saber and be one person in a thousand who ships them, and unless that person shares that proclivity, they might not want to write that but end up heavily impressed upon to write it anyway.
In cases where
OR matching is involved, it is much simpler because you can request Shirou, Rin, Saber, and Kirei, and then just specify whether or not you want shipfic or genfic for each of those characters in your optional details. Bearing in mind that those details are optional, you can go wild with what you request within the rules.
This is a little complicated and you learn from experience, but if you need further clarification I'll try to find someone explaining it better than me.
Rarity:
This is a very common limiter criteria for fic exchanges. It is not the only one, but it is the main one you will have a headache about when trying to decide if you can nominate Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, Tsukihime, KnK, GO characters, or whatever else kids are into these days.
Two of the big nominate-anything that is eligible exchanges are
Yuletide and
Not_Primetime.
Yuletide is for
small or
rare fandoms. I'll let them clarify for you with:
2015 Eligibility Rules. And the
Nominations Open for 2015 Announcement post that has some specific information about what to do if you're not sure or believe that even though the numbers are technically too high that it should be eligible based on the principle of their exchange. For example, Fate was eligible last year, but if it continues to grow it probably won't be this year.
Not_Primetime is an exchange that exists for fandoms that have grown out of Yuletide but that still don't have megafandom status. Their criteria is listed as such:
Nominate fandoms that are between 200 fics on AO3/1000 fics on FFN to 20k, with fics over 1000 words and in English as filters. Cannot be on the
megafandoms list.
Different exchanges will have different nomination criteria. Some will have nothing to do with rarity at all. Some are for specific demographics: female characters, lgbt ships, gen fic-only, or whatever. Some are to celebrate specific holidays, such as Halloween or even Purim. You will have to see if each applies to stuff you like, but rarity is the one you've got to do math for, so I tried to clarify.
FUN STUFF
Optional Details / Prompts / Dear Author Letters:
The little history lesson in why some people just fill out the prompt box and some people do Dear Author Letters on sites like LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, or even tumblr is that AO3's prompt box used to have such a minimal character limit that you couldn't say much unless you are really good at concise communication of enthusiasm, which people like me are not. AO3 eventually extended the character limit where this isn't really much of an issue, but some people still do both or prefer the Dear Author Letters. Their function is exactly the same, though.
"Optional Details Are Optional" is the mantra you will hear repeated in every one of these exchanges. This means that if someone says
"I like stories where Shirou is the most powerful character in the piece; I think it shows his humanity!" and you care about power levels or just on some visceral level disagree with that statement, you can still write them a good Shirou story without including that. However, if you are a person requesting fic and say
"I prefer stories where human characters, like Shirou, are not OP for no reason," and you have a like-minded author, hopefully everything will be reinforced and go smoothly and you will both have a nice time. However, it is rude to totally ignore that someone wrote prompts or a letter for you, and it is part of the fun to respond to something to make someone happy with their gift and to have the same courtesy paid to you.
Sometimes, people don't do prompts or letters. Fic exchange people don't like when this happens, but it is technically allowed.
You can format your prompts/letters however you like, but their content is usually done with a little information on the following: specific narrative likes and dislikes, the highest rating you are comfortable with receiving (and whether or not sex or violence interest or disinterest you), kinks you like or dislike if you told your author they could write sex for you, and some information on what you most enjoy about the fandoms and characters/pairings you requested.
It is a good idea to put a little thought into this. In larger exchanges or fic exchanges where the minimum word count is lower than typical, it is very common for people to post their Dear Author Letters to a post on the related LJ/Dreamwidth community and volunteers will make a spreadsheet where very eager writers will look
after they have completed their primary assignment to write extra treats. Then, sometimes, you get lucky and get two or more gift fics that were written just for you.
It's sort of embarrassing to share with you my specific interests and letter, unprompted, since I'm a fluff-ball in my interests compared to many people here, I think. However, for those of you who learn better through seeing an example, here is
my Yuletide 2015 Dear Author Letter. That blog is
mostly an archive of Dear Author Letters, too, so you can click the appropriate tag at the bottom and find blackmail material and/or see how even I learned to pare down or be more specific about what I wanted over time. You can be much more concise than me and still get the job done, though.
One advantage to writing a Dear Author Letter and posting a link to a community post for such things is that treat writers who want to write more than one fic will have easier access to your prompts. It is up to the mod only when and if the prompts that were entered only on AO3 will be viewable to the users.
You can do these on any blog or webpage that has public viewing access. Most people use Dreamwith or LiveJournal, even if that's the only thing they use them for, but some use tumblr posts (even that are 'private' in that they are only accessible by link). It does not matter if they are only accessible by a link, but you could not use BL's blog posts beacuse only members can see them.
Treats:
Treats are extra fics that you write
in addition to the fic you were assigned to write. You can look through other participant's Dear Author Letters (or usually pretty late in the game their actual prompts on AO3 if they did that instead) if they shared them on a community post, and if there's a particular prompt that you really like that wasn't your main assignment, you can do that. On AO3, there will be an option to "gift this work to" on your posting form, and when you are officially assigned to a person, there will be a checkbox there to gift it to them. The difference with treats is that you will have to type in their AO3 username and gift it manually, but in every other respect it works the same.
If you receive a treat, that means you get
two fics. You're not guaranteed to, but if you write good prompts/letters in larger exchanges it's not uncommon to receive this act of goodwill.
It is really, really poor form to write treats but to default on your main assignment. Don't do that.
Commenting and Feedback:
One of the best things about fic exchanges is that you are pretty much guaranteed to get at least one heartfelt, substantive comment from your recipient. It's considered very poor form not to give this back to your author in at least a heartfelt "thank you," and because you wrote something just for them they're usually very excited. Then, sometimes, others comment, too, because there's an actual convergence of multiple people looking at one fic collection at a given time. Occasionally, you're unlucky and your recipient is rude and doesn't reply, but that
almost never happens, and when it does there is a culture where usually someone will throw you a bone.
If you participate, be prepared to give at least one good "thank you," comment, even if you
have read better before (which happens some years; everyone is where they are as a writer). Giving and receiving feedback is so much more fun than shouting into a void.
Originally Posted by Snow
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