Finally got around to reading your response to the fanfic ask questions (I'm sorry that was like two days ago now) and was just thinking something, why do people prefer multi-chapter fics to one-shots? Because I have read some pretty good one-shots in my time. (its a stupid question but its just made me think is all)
I think it’s because they are longer. …I think. I don’t really get it myself. But if you look at the difference between the response one-shots get compared to the response multi-chapters get it’s pretty clear that something is turning people away from the idea of one-shots. I also saw on a facebook post that people actually turned away from one-shots because they were “just one-shots”.
There are people who get around this by making a story a “collection of one-shots”. I’ve seen it happen with a lot of fanfiction writers. They publish something and in the summary they will state “Just a collection of one-shots, drabbles, etc” and each chapter will be a completely different story. That seems to attract more people (I’ve found) than just the average one-shot.
For an example, my one shot that I called “To Save a Friend” (I was inspired by a tumblr post about Of Rats and Men - someone had a headcanon as to why they believed Leo was late in that episode) it got…2 reviews and 1 favorite. I’ll admit it’s not my best work, but it was fun to write. But if you compare it to my very first fanfiction ever “Ten Seconds to Disaster” (which to this day fills me with a mixture of glee and dread because I’m a better writer now than I was when I wrote that - even if just by a little lol) it has 54 reviews and 20 favorites. Now to be fair it has 14 chapters. But it’s a huge difference.
I’m not saying my writing is worthy of having as big a following as a lot of really great writers here have. I know I’m new. I know I’m not incredible. I make mistakes a lot. My brain spins up crazy things halfway through my story and I am left wondering how the heck I’m supposed to tie it all in together 3 chapters later. But I’m learning how to make things better.
As far as I can tell one-shots do seem to be looked down upon somewhat. Maybe people think that they don’t take as much work and thus aren’t as exciting? Maybe people want longer stories to read? Maybe people don’t want to be invested in something that they know isn’t going to have a continuation? I have no clue.
I know I could do the same thing as other writers do (publish a collection of one-shots) if I really wanted to but it doesn’t sit well with me. I feel like a story should end when it’s complete, not flow right into a completely different plot. But that’s just me. I have nothing against the people who do that. It’s just not something I want to do.
Thanks for the question! :)