No.6 Discussion Board

What's that? o.o I've never heard about a big bang collaboration? Deadlines? :3 Can somebody please explain?

Ahh, sorry! (I never know how familiar these things are to other people) Here is a link that explains it: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Big_Bang

Basically, a big bang means that both authors and artists sign up at the start to either write a long fic (I think the usual minimum is 20k-50k words, but some put it at 10k or lower) or make art. The authors post summaries and/or partial drafts for the first deadline, at which point they either get assigned artists or the artists get to pick a story based on the summary/draft (usually this is a blind pick, so you don't know who wrote it until the mod brings you in contact with your author). The artists then create artwork in whatever medium they use to go with the fic. You can also reverse it, so artists create art first and the authors pick these and write a story.

It's quite fun to do, especially with blind picks, since you might get to talk to someone you've never really spoken to before, and work together to make something nice. The only problem is that you really need enough people to sign up, especially for fic (as it's usually easier to create multiple artworks than it is to create multiple long fics in the same amount of time). Plus, it needs to be moderated. And of course, there are deadlines involved, though these usually stretch over quite some weeks and the big bangs I participated in had some checkpoints halfway through, to keep you motivated.

I hope that explained it, otherwise let me know!