jukebox_fest | Author Reveals & Next Time

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Author Reveals & Next Time

Authors are now visible for all stories. Here's the collection again: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Jukebox2013

Thank you again for participating. I had a great time. I'm still reading through the collection.

I plan to run this challenge again, so I'd appreciate feedback, on what worked for you and didn't. (Anonymous comments are still enabled.)

Here are a couple of things I think I might change:

The dates. This has run up closer to Yuletide than I was anticipating. I was also participating in hhertzof's Exchange at Fic Corner challenge, which hhertzof says she will run again next year in July-August-September. Because of this, I'm thinking of shifting Jukebox 2014 to February-March-April (ensuring the writing time doesn't overlap too much with Purimgifts) or April-May-June (though that overlaps a bit with Not Prime Time).

The beta reading mailing list. I'm not sure that quite worked (thoughts, anyone?). Especially, it seems a bit silly for me to be playing relay like that when I'm in such a different time zone to most other people - I suspect it decreased, rather than increasing, efficiency. (I don't think this was a problem for pinch hitting, though, since I could decide when to send emails out.)

What fanworks are included. Currently, I don't have a strong idea about how to include podcasts or fanvids - or whether these make sense to include. But I am interested in fanart. So, question: would other people be interested in either offering or requesting art fills for song prompts?

The definition of a song. There are many discrete pieces of music without lyrics where the creators, performers, and audience can agree on the shape of the story being told. (Programmatic music being one branch of this.) Would you be interested in offering or requesting music of this type? And if you are, could you help me come up with an appropriate definition?

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Timing is rarely an issue for me. I am accustomed to doing NaNo, having my Yuletide written first week it's open, and any other holiday events that suit me. But it would be nice to have something early in the year to look forward to.

Fanvids would really only work if the songs were being paired with fandoms. wouldn't they?

While I agree some works without lyrics are powerfully evocative, I have found they speak to people in far more different ways than those that have lyrics to guide the listener. I, personally, would fear NOT hitting the right meaning for a requester who chose music with no lyrics, as you cannot ask them to spell EVERYTHING out in their dear author letter.

(No opinion on beta; my GF touches all my exchange fics before they go up)

A list of unfilled prompts is often offered from exchanges to let people play in them for the remainder of the year, but I can't say for myself if anything is particularly making me hunger for it.

NOW! Most important part of feedback:

1. Thank you to YOU for organizing and holding it.

2. Thank you to everyone who did request and offer!

You're welcome! :)

Thank you for these thoughts. Indeed, I feel as though I am considering fanvids only to immediately reject them. Other works are more up in the air.

That's true about unfilled prompts. I guess I hadn't really felt the need, since the full prompt list has been visible for several weeks, but if other people think it's a good idea, I'll collate them.

Thank you so much for this; I had an incredibly great time. I think this is a wonderful fest! (And I'm glad to hear you're running it next year, as there's at least one song I discovered after nominations that I would looooove to have fic for...)

-I agree that the dates got a little close to Yuletide (and Fic Corner). I wouldn't mind just shifting it back a month or so -- it seems like it was mostly stressful on you, trying to find pinch hits with two days notice -- or changing the time to run in the spring would be okay too. (I may or may not be able to do either time, but that's due to personal circumstances rather than anything in your control.)

-I am also not sure about the beta mailing list. I tend to be a little picky about my betas, so I like to pick them myself. It's nice to have a list to choose from, though!

-I might not think to request fanart? But I think it would be a lovely option to have.

-I agree with

senmut on songs without words; it seems like it would be much harder to write for, and I would probably not offer any songs like that. (Sorry,

seekingferret!)

-I'm not sure there are prompts I wish someone else had filled (there probably would be, if I went back and looked), but there are certainly several prompts I wish I had had (or have now, which I don't) time to write treats for, yes, because they are really neat prompts. And obviously I wish for all of mine to be filled! :)

-I've been trying lately to write more original characters, etc., so the writing wasn't really outside my comfort zone.

-The song I wrote for was one I had never even heard of before nominations/signups, but it is GORGEOUS and I love it (and my beta did too - she'd never heard (of) it either).

-In fact, I'm totally song-illiterate, and I'd say that 90% of the nominated songs I didn't know. And it was really really cool to listen to them, and I now have several new favorites (including the one I wrote for) -- this is one of the things I thought was so cool about the challenge :)

Thank you very much! I'm glad that you'd like to do it again, circumstances allowing.

Shifting Jukebox back a month wouldn't help much, actually, as hh is also shifting her exchange back a month. But that would be plan C - to avoid Yuletide at least - if the other two don't work.

there are certainly several prompts I wish I had had (or have now, which I don't) time to write treats for - Me too.

I think we'll have to get seekingferret to put together a list for us of the kinds of songs he's thinking of. Because "interpret a song without lyrics" is a concept I keep bouncing off of, and then he keeps patiently explaining to me that it's not quite so abstract as all that.

I'm musically illiterate too. (Ironic, because my father's greatest passion is collecting music.) I also wrote for a song I had never heard of before signups! Two, actually. :) And I'm really sad I didn't have the time or the background knowledge to write another fic, which would also have been for a song that was new to me.

True about the beta mailing list and how who you get is just whoever puts your their hand up. It worked for me - broadcastdelay did a great job on the fic I sent out - but I can see how a post where different people offer their strengths and their contact details might be better in this circumstance. (I was prioritizing the goal of "everyone gets A beta", which I will scale back.)

Edited 2013-10-06 00:49 (UTC)

Fanart would be a great option to have, it's always interesting to see how people interpret stuff we don't already have visual references for (I mean like I'm always more interested in book art than film art).

Thank you for organising this thing, it's been brilliant :D

Another vote for fan art! Yay.

You're very welcome, and thank you for participating. (And for my gift!)

Thank you for running the fest! It was a lot of fun.

-I don't have a particularly strong opinion about the dates. I didn't mind the overlap with Fic Corner very much, and was easily able to write both stories, but I will say that if they were competing and I had to prioritize my time, I would likely choose Jukebox. I guess I feel like Yuletide typically grabs a larger amount of my time and energy than either Fic Corner or Jukebox did, and I rather value the breather in my schedule between Yuletide and Purimgifts, but if you did move it to January I would likely still participate.

-I didn't make use of the beta mailing list myself, and had no trouble finding betas. I guess at some point I was put on the beta mailing list, but I didn't really have the time to beta anything for anyone so I wasn't very helpful there. I think that given the size of these canons, it's not very hard to grab a friend who doesn't know the fandom and catch them up to speed enough to get a beta from them. My beta didn't know the song, but was still able to give me very specific and useful critique.

-I don't have any objection to including other types of fanwork, but I would continue to participate as a fiction writer.

-I think I'll split out my answer to the question about word-less songs for another post, because it'll be rather longish.

-I really wish someone had written that No Gringo/ Wings crossover prompt. That was an amazing prompt.

You're welcome! I appreciate people letting me know they had a good time.

Yeah, I suspect the overlap with fic_corner affects me more than anyone else, since I want to go full throttle on both. Option A for the new dates overlaps with Purimgifts; I also mentioned Option B, which would probably come straight after Purimgifts (so, that would put nominations approximately into the last week of March). Which might work better - writing Purimgifts and Jukebox at once then having a longer break, or one following the other? (I'm leaning towards the overlap.)

Mm. Yes, the beta list was quite inapplicable to people who already have regular betas; it was meant to be useful for people who either don't have regular betas, or who have betas who might not be willing to tackle original fic. But the purpose could probably be served as well or better by a post in which people comment with their contact details, and authors contact those volunteers directly.

Dates: February-March-April does run up against rarewomen and shipswap, but I'd still sign up for all of them. With more and more exchanges being created it is getting harder not to run up against something. I wish there was a central exchange community so everyone could discuss dates.

Beta-Reader: I have no real opinion on this. I think it just works best for someone to post what they can beta and their AO3 name so they don't accidentally end up betaing their own gift, true if people are using socks that still might happen, but that is on them.

Fanworks: I am all for fanart being included, but I am less interested in podfic or fanvids. I mean, I love Pretty Cure and while I might love getting a fanvideo of it set to music I might get a vidder who only does Supernatural vids. I think allowing fanvideos would only work if there was a caveat that they must also be willing to write song fic if they can't do a fandom the recipient likes.

Comfort Zone: I enjoyed it actually. My biggest problem was that I didn't know many of them, I think if there was more information on genre that it would have made finding new songs easier.

Other Feedback

I was trying to think of a new way to do nominations that would be easier to read. What if instead of nominating songs for the fandom, instead people nominated the artist or genre for the fandom and nominated the songs as characters. That would make it easier for people to find songs that are related to each other and you could easily have the same song under multiple artists or genres. Just instruct people that when they post their fic they post it with the song as fandom istead of as a character.

Also, I really loved this exchange and can't wait for the next one.

Thank you!

I'm abashed I forgot shipswap, since after all I did participate. And Rarewomen seems pretty popular too.

And then ineedmyfics, and smallfandomsfest, and... I am pretty excited there are so many options. Two years ago the only thing I knew about was Yuletide.

Yeah, I think fanvids were a bit of a red herring. Podcasts were on my mind because someone contacted me to encourage me to include them, but honestly, I think that works better in communities and exchanges that are about specific fandoms, rather than ones like this one in which the fic has no shared characters or themes.

I think it just works best for someone to post what they can beta and their AO3 name so they don't accidentally end up betaing their own gift - Yes, I think I'll do it that way next time. I was just so impressed with the Rarewoman system... But they had more participants and they also had two mods manning the email, if I recall correctly. Oh well.

Hm. Those are some interesting ideas about nominations. My instinct would be to stick with the system of having people nominate, request, and submit for individual song fandoms, rather than bringing characters into the mix. That's partly because I'm not very confident in using AO3's matching interface - I know you have more experience there - and having people match on fandom alone made things very easy. I also think there's less work on the wranglers' side if the metadata is consistent throughout the process.

On the other hand, I see what you mean that it would be nice to be able to see what else was nominated out of a particular artist's work, or by genre. I might try to improve that on the journal side of things.

I can easily arrange spreadsheets next time to show "by artist".

How do you think I could incorporate more information about genre? I don't trust either my googling or, say, iTunes to tell me whether a song is folk or rock, for example. (Though I could always make a best guess, and take in people's corrections.) I can - and probably will - ask people to submit that information in brainstorming posts, but there won't be a 100% response. Hm. To think about.

1) This was a really fun fest and I'm glad you ran it and I participated in it; I would definitely participate again.

2) I did feel the conflict with fic corner; I was initially reluctant to sign up for both, and found myself scrambling towards the end. (I am not generally the world's fastest writer.) I'm satisfied with what I wrote for both fests, but there were a couple of times when I was seriously considering defaulting on jukebox. That being said rarewomen is probably my favorite fest of the year, so I wouldn't want a conflict with that either, and I wouldn't mind having deadlines like a week or two apart--it was the matter-of-hours difference that was stressing me out.

3) I feel that tagging song as characters would make the archive harder and less intuitive to navigate, not easier.

4) I'd love to get fanart! Or, indeed, fanvids for canons I'm familiar with, or ones using clips and stills to tell a story or establish a mood without requiring familiarity with or affection for the source(s) of those clips and images--sort of original-fiction fanvids. (I'm not a vidder so I don't know how plausible this is.) I have little interest in podfic in general and find it hard to see how it would work for jukebox, where this time around at least most of the canons had no fic written for them before the fest started.

5) That being said--since it would seem to be impractical especially for a relatively small fest to try to match both on fandom and type of fanwork--I see one of two ways including fanworks other than fic could work: either everyone who signs up would have to be okay with writing fic, but has the option of doing a different type of gift if their recipient indicates it would be welcome, or everyone who signs up would have to be okay with receiving any type of fanwork that's allowed. If you do it the latter way, restricting the types of allowed fanwork to fic and maybe art makes sense. If you do it the former way, I see no reason not to be as inclusive as possible. (If there is some third and better way to do it that I've overlooked, feel free to ignore me.)

6) I didn't use the beta-reader list, so I don't really have an opinion.

7) I would probably not request or offer fic for a song without lyrics.

Thank you! It's very heartening to see so many comments in which people indicate future interest.

If I do schedule it too close to Rarewomen, I'll check with prozacpark and aphrodite_mine about their likely dates and whether they intend to vary them much from their 2013 run of Feb-Mar-April-May. And I've checked with BridgetM about Not Prime Time dates. I agree that having two fests with deadlines a day apart was really unfortunate - hhertzof and I facepalmed a bit over that in Yuletide chat.

Thanks also for brainstorming a bit about fanart and fanvids. The type of fanvid you describe sounds gorgeous to me. But I suspect it could be a great deal of effort - maybe not equal to a 1,000-word fic (difficult as those are).

since it would seem to be impractical especially for a relatively small fest to try to match both on fandom and type of fanwork - Yes. I think it could work if there were lots of people who were willing to write and create graphics, or many people gave prompts that could be filled by art or fic. Response so far suggests there is not enough interest, but I will keep thinking about the strategies you've suggested as well as possible others.

I didn't do jukebox this time but I would be interested in doing it in the future.

Re fanvids, I think that festivids to some extent provides the ability to request a specific song be vidded (but of course, it's an exchange for vidders.) I like minutia_r's suggestion of allowing original (or mixed media) fanvids a lot though - I don't know of any fest currently running where that's an option and would find it really intriguing. (I do recall that someone made a multi-source vid for festivids that remixed the singer's music videos as well as fanvids, which I really enjoyed.)

First, I'm sorry I didn't reply to this comment earlier. I think I thought I had replied, then I put it out of my mind.

Not being a vidder, I shall check with same (are you one?) but the idea of putting footage together for a theme or narrative without having a specific canon to drawn from seems like a lot of work to me. It might also be the kind of thing where I'd have to ask for a co-mod to help run it (since I don't know anything about vids).

Erk, I sound like I'm shutting you down; my instinct is to say, "yes, I also think that sounds cool; it would have to be done by someone who is not me."

a multi-source vid for festivids that remixed the singer's music videos as well as fanvids - okay, that sounds as though it has potential as a future fest idea, and also, do you have a link? Because that sounds gorgeous.

As to songs without words, my main argument really boils down to this:

There is a lot more 'world' to play with in things like Strauss's "Till Eulenspiegel" than there is in things like They Might Be Giants' "Minimum Wage".

But let me say more about this. I am definitely not advocating for the absolute inclusion of all music in

jukebox_fest. There is a lot of instrumental music that is abstract, and doesn't carry anything that we could easily term narrative or story. One could easily, I believe, find inspiration for fiction in this music, but I don't think that fiction would be reasonably said to constitute fanfiction. There is a lot, for example, in my story "The Music Speaks for Itself that is structurally drawn from the music of Debussy and Ravel, but I wouldn't really expect a reader to see those effects without doing an extremely close reading.

This music does not belong in Jukebox. It would not be fair to an author to have to try to reconcile their interpretation of a piece of abstract music to that of their recipient. To explore the reason why, consider me attempting to write fic inspired by the first movement of Haydn's "Surprise Symphony", one of my favorite works of music. My approach would be to pattern the story on the repeated rhythms of the piece and particularly the dynamic range of the piece: Moderately loud, then progressively quieter, than suddenly FORTISSIMO, then the details unfold as themes are unpackaged and reassembled toward an ever looming conclusion. I would probably mimic that with sentence lengths, amount of action, amount of emotional intensity, and a disjunctive time leap at the FORTISSIMO. I would make reference to the variance in orchestral color by assigning different characters or groups of characters to different instruments and move through those sets of characters in rough adherence to the score. And I would of course try to have a major surprise. So it's not that it's really that hard to write fanfiction for abstract music, it's just that there is no particular setting, no particular set of characters, no deep stylistic prescription. I could write a huge variety of stories based on these elements, but they wouldn't be remotely what the requester had in mind.

But there is a long tradition in music of what I keep calling 'programmatic music'. This is instrumental music that has a scenario, either explicit, or implicit, associated with it. And I think that it is as reasonable to ask that this musical narrative be fleshed out as it is to ask for a musical narrative with lyrics to be fleshed out. Mostly, what I am speaking of is a classical music tradition, but not exclusively. And I don't think that the process of turning this kind of song into a story is qualitatively different from the process of turning a pop song with lyrics into a story: Certainly there were no demon hunters in "Blue Caravan" until I reoriented the song that way, and I spent at least as much attention on trying to match the quiet moodiness and rhythms of the song as I did to matching the canonical narrative throughline. I'm not sure that we could very easily say that "He Was a Beautiful Fiction" was what my author was expecting out of a "Blue Caravan" story request, but I think the result was unquestionably driven both by the music and the scenario of the original song.

To give a few examples of what I have in mind that I think should be eligible for Jukebox...

March of the Lions or Aquarium from Camille Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals". Between the titles and the clear image-painting use of orchestral color, I think there's a very clear sense of place and narrative in these pieces. You can hear the lions marching. You can hear the fish swimming. And I would love to hear someone put words to what they see when they listen to that.

Grand Canyon Suite - "On the Trail". There isn't just setting here (and whoa is there setting here, the wide open skies, the flat plains, the dusty trails, they're all musically portrayed quite richly), there are people- we hear the clop of their horses, the roll of their wheels. I want the story of their adventure. I don't have a particularly clear sense in my head of who they are, but that much I'm willing to cede to my author's imagination. ;)

The Grid from Koyaanisqatsi. And this is where the argument started, and where the process of divining a separating line between too abstract instrumental music and sufficiently concrete instrumental music becomes tricky. Glass's piece on its own perhaps does not tell a story- I say perhaps, because I think this is debatable. I can listen to it without the words and hear the whir of cars, the honk of horns. I vidded a section of the piece, and it came out structurally very similar to the original imagery of the film, because there is a structure there that holds up. But no matter, what I think is important is that when you consider the film as imparting a narrative on the music, in the complicated relationship that soundtrack music always has to a film. If we encourage consideration of the music video as imparting additional narrative elements on a pop song, I think The Grid qualifies in the same way as a song given narrative components by the film.

I will come back for a more detailed reply when I have had time to listen to these pieces of music. (Currently typing in a break at work.)

At present, what I'm thinking I'll do next year is let you and others nominate this kind of music, once we get a safe criteria sorted out (something like "programmatic music/ music with no lyrics but a strong narrative design/ check with Morbane/seekingferret") but insist that everyone's requests must include at least *one* song that does have lyrics, just in case writers get cold feet.

My remaining concern, which I'll refine (and possibly solve to my own contentment) when I've listened to the pieces, is what background information you already had when you first encountered them. I imagine the Koyaanisqatsi piece can be treated as a music video analogue, in that the accompanying imagery informs the narrative strongly and sufficiently, and that might be all the background a writer needs; but I wonder whether it would be significantly better as a writer to be familiar with Camille Saint-Saens' other works, or know the background of the Grand Canyon Suite.

It's a fair question, one I'm not sure I can answer clearly. I'm not particularly familiar with Saint-Saens's other work- I know his Danse Macabre reasonably well, and have a casual acquaintance with some of his chamber work. More pertinently, I've seen several different visual adaptations of the Carnival over the years, including some with added narration, and am presently uncertain if I saw one of the visual adaptations first or if I first heard the music on its own. Probably I heard the music first on its own, but unquestionably those visual adaptations play a role in how I imagine the Carnival when I hear it.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how important that is. When I hear REM's "Nightswimming" (cited as an example for no other reason than that I heard it last week and was struck with memories), I access a whole web of associations and memories from when I first heard the song- people, places, events. If I requested "Nighswimming", I obviously wouldn't be asking my writer to consider that web of associations.

I think ultimately it doesn't matter what other context I bring to the Carnival, just the context that comes directly from the 'scenario', which probably in the end means whatever context wikipedia can provide. In contemplating it, "Is there sufficient information on the song's narrative on Wikipedia?" is probably a reasonable heuristic to apply for in/out of Jukebox.

I like your heuristic. It's simple. We'll use it.

In listening to "March of the Lions" and "Aquarium", I found it difficult to follow the former piece in the context I would like to imagine it - pomp and ceremony, animals being brought to some sort of starting line, lions sauntering majestically along with wary handlers darting around them - but "Aquarium" gave me a few more images I could work with. I am not sure I could be as precise as you in following the music - what you described above with my approach would be to pattern the story on the repeated rhythms of the piece and particularly the dynamic range of the piece, for Haydn - but the music + minor background + a prompt would probably be sufficient.

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Author Reveals & Next Time

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