Kinds of fan creation events and how they work!
Challenges, including calendars and bingo
This is the broadest event type. Many challenge types have distinct own names and format designs, but all involve a time limit and a theme. The best way to organize one is to pick a subject or format with a medium degree of specificity, like supporting characters or drabbles, but big fandoms can get more granular and still have a great turnout. I recently ran a 6-week challenge encouraging a fandom with a lot of new growth to “weird the tag,” and that was a blast!
One popular subtype is calendar challenges, mostly aimed at artists. These are classically daily prompts for a month, like Inktober and its many riffs, but some more narrow prompts like mermaids for Mermay have widely been reinterpreted to make a single, substantial piece during the right time. Bingo cards are also fun for all mediums, though they can be tricky to balance—whether you’re issuing everyone the same card or letting them be generated from a pool (like in Bad Things Happen Bingo), a funky distribution of difficulty can make a line hard to complete.
There are very few stumbling blocks in a challenge. If you don’t finish, you just try again another time! They’re also easy to run, as most of the work is preparation. They tend to be less social than many events, but that can be a blessing, and they’re very new creator-friendly.
Prompts, including timed events and kinkmemes
Timed events with prompts work a lot like challenges, but with works being submitted under a given prompt instead of simply responding to the general theme. Usually multiple people can fulfill the same prompt, and nobody is assigned to any particular one.
Sites with nested commenting, especially LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, work best for hosting prompt lists with no deadline or end date. People list prompts they’d like to see in the fandom, and when someone has posted a work fulfilling it, they reply directly to let OP know. These can be called promptmemes, but they’re more often called kinkmemes, even when not specifically sexual.
Bangs, including big bangs, mini bangs, and reverse bangs.
In a big bang, a group of writers submit summaries of a wip to the event mods, and the mods anonymize them for a group of artists to name their favorites. The mods match them into pairs so the writer-artist team can collaborate to complete an illustrated fic. Everything gets posted on a set day or period of days, so it’s like an explosion of new work (“bang!”)
Big bangs usually have word count minimums in 5 digits and sometimes ask artists to complete multiple pieces, while mini bangs do the same process with a lower minimum, usually a 4 digit number, and consistently ask artists for a single piece. Reverse bangs have artists create an artwork first, and then writers are paired with them to write an accompanying fic inspired by the piece.
All types of bang really shine for pulling together different corners of a fandom. In addition to introducing people who work in different mediums, because submissions for matching are anonymized and wips are kept secret until posting, there’s a leveling effect: big name fans and newcomers share the shine, and it’s hard to game the system to get paired with your friends. Most bangs make a chat group for co-working (Discord or elsewhere), so it’s easy to bond with other participants!
They’re a bit complex to run (matching is real work!), and deadlines matter a lot, since there’s at least one other person relying on you to finish. I’ve seen the bang format criticized for reminding participants of business transactions by emphasizing these timetables as a commitment. Good mods always frame it as fun, but if you don’t have a handle on how fast you work, or how to gauge the size of a new project idea, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew.
These are often fic-for-fic or art-for-art, but many are mixed. In all exchanges, participants choose some tags (subjects they’re willing to offer), and some they’d like to receive. They then create a work for their assigned recipient, respecting wants and do not wants (DNW), and receive a work from the person assigned to them. These are almost always different people, but it’s common for people with shared interests to get assigned into “loops” (A wrote for B, B wrote for C, C drew for A) even when matching is done by Ao3 code.
Exchanges are really exciting since there are waves of anticipation—what have I been assigned? What did I get? Who wrote my fic, if authors were kept anonymous for a week? They work great for any size of group, and for multi-fandom or single-fandom events. The tags to choose from can be assembled by event mods, or submitted by interested folks and then approved, so it’s easy to see what directions people are interested in before you sign up, and solicit people to join you. Exchanges also have a strong culture of “treating,” writing additional fics for requests that caught your eye, or your friends, even if you didn’t formally sign up.
Like bangs, there’s a greater degree of commitment to finish on time because someone else is counting on you. Well-run bangs have rules about when you can default without penalty and let a “pinch-hitter” take over the assignment, how to get off the blacklist if you didn’t follow through, and what they’ll do if anyone doesn’t have a gift when the collection is meant to open. Sometimes exchanges that are having trouble finding a pinch-hitter for someone whose assigned gifter had to drop will delay reveals (“hold the collection hostage”). If you struggle with things not happening on time, stick to larger exchanges, since they’re less vulnerable to this.
In a party, everyone is grouped into teams to make the greatest number of fanworks during the event. They usually run for a week, with broad daily prompts (like a character name, season number, or motif), and every work submitted is a point. These works must be put together, from beginning to submission, within the 24-hour period of the prompt.
The first time I did a party, it rewired my brain chemistry for the better, because it pushed me to let go of some perfectionist and self-critiquing habits. I’ve put out more fics I’m proud of ever since. Better still, the party culture emphasizes inclusion of fan creations beyond the big two: Gifs! Edits! AMVs/fanvids! Cosplay! Crochet! Filk songs!
The competition and short turn-around can be hard on those with a tendency to overwork or blame yourself if your team falls behind, so they require some self-awareness to stay fun. Parties often allow submissions to count for points without being publicly posted, which can help! (For example, you might submit an unpolished fic and post the revision later, or submit a cosplay despite not wanting your face on that blog.) My experience with team rivalries has only been low-stakes and appropriate, but it’s another unusual element to not be caught off guard by.
These are most popular with any kind of project or fan labor that involves the word “edit.” Video, gif, and screenshot editing; podfic recording; fandom wiki and resource brush-ups; sharing your wips around and leaving each other feedback.
They usually run between a few hours to a week, and often don’t carry any expectation of being done at the end. They’re more about making progress, camaraderie, and sharing techniques.
This is the trendiest event format right now! They spun off the broader culture of zines: self-published arty magazines and short books, popular for sharing ideas in the diy, punk, and queer scenes as well as fandom spaces. Outside of fandom, they’re usually printed by the creator physically operating the machinery in limited runs. In fandom, they’re usually digital (e-zines), and when they’re physical, the organizers have usually paid a printer to do the run for them.
Unlike any other format on this list, fandom zines usually work on an application and approval process. Instead of signing up and being for sure in, the mods choose a selection of interested people to proceed with their pieces and be included in the zine. Unfortunately, this means the barrier to participate is higher, with big name fans and personal favorites or friends prioritized. I do like that they’re more art-forward than many formats, even often art-only, and it’s fun to be in a group exploring an interest or making a point together.
E-zines are often free, and physical zines almost never are. Either way, profits might be given to charity, donated to the creators of the canon (such as in the case of indie podcasts), or split among the contributors. Whether you’re applying or buying, read carefully about paid zines to make sure you’re comfortable with where it’s going, and know that there’s always risk involved. Scams and mismanagement do happen.
Fandom auctions are charity events, raising money for organizations or sometimes the fandom’s own community members in need. Like parties, auctions put more than usual emphasis on fan edits, and also labor such as bookbinding, sensitivity reading, and proofreading.
Usually, participants donate their time by offering a small number of tasks and fandoms, and their resulting work is a gift in acknowledgement of bidders’ donations, with their preferences in mind. It’s a lot like exchanges, but instead of getting a gift back, the creator gets satisfaction from raising money for a good cause.
Like with paid zines, when there’s money involved, you need to read the details with care. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of thinking of bids as what your work is “worth” to people, and you really need to have a backlog of completed projects for bidders to see your style, so this is better attempted after you’ve been around the block a few times and feel confident in yourself.
Other games (masquerade, round robin, art rotations, exquisite corpses...)
A lot of other fun games are worth knowing about if you’re thinking about an event for a small or existing group! One I love the sound of is masquerades like this one, in which people disguise their styles and even imitate each other, and then have a round of guessing. Round robins involve sending a fic wip to a succession of people, who each write a suggested amount of words (usually in the hundreds) to further the story that’s there. Have people volunteer to be the beginning and end before you start! Art rotations aren’t actually a coined name, I’m inventing it on the spot. This is when a pair or trio of artists each do a different layer of a drawing (like one does lines, the other does colors, or a trio does pencils, inks, colors) so that they have the same number of finished collaborations as people in the team. Exquisite corpses are drawings, stories, or image sets where you only see what the previous person did (or a sliver of it) when adding your part.
I’m sure there are others I’ve overlooked, but hopefully this helps inspire you to look out for or organize some new events in your fandoms!
