rthstewart: (3sf banner icon)
rthstewart ([personal profile] rthstewart) wrote2021-01-30 02:31 pm

Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

We have now opened a new post, for new prompts! Please leave all new prompts there. You may continue to fill existing prompts here. If you didn't get a prompt filled here, feel free to post it on the new post!





Welcome to the Three Sentence Ficathon!
2 Feb. 2021 See important edit below regarding where to find unfilled prompts.


What is the 3 Sentence Ficathon?
This is an open exchange where you answer a prompt with a fic consisting of only three sentences. It's open to all fandoms and you can post and fill as many prompts as you like, as many times as you want.

What do I do first?
You can start 3SF by posting prompts! When posting a prompt please format it this way:

fandom, character(s), prompt word/sentence.

Only one prompt per comment please. So, for example,

Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I don't like sand."

Open ended and anthropomorphic fills are popular too, such as:

Any, Any, "I don't like sand."

or

Earth geography, sand, "I don't like humans very much, either."

What happens after that?
You answer other posters' prompts in three sentences (or more if you can't stop yourself) and fill as many prompts as you want, as many times as you wish. If you see that a prompt you loved has already been filled, go ahead and fill it again! Multiple fills of the same prompt are allowed and even encouraged! (We get really fun stories going this way).

Can I still post if I need more than 3 sentences? Or should I just abuse grammar in ways the English language never contemplated?
Yes. Yes.

But I'm not a member of Dreamwidth
No problem. You can comment anonymously or through open ID

I'm really overwhelmed by all the prompts and how much there is and how fast it goes. I can't read 1,000 prompts and fills. It's too much. 
I hear this a lot and it keeps a lot of people from participating.  The 3SF is big and it moves fast, especially at first. 
I get overwhelmed, too, and I'm hosting the thing. With 2020 and 2021 sucking so badly you don't want something that's supposed to be fun cause you anxiety.  I have a couple of suggestions for managing the 3SF volume. 
  • First, really, you don't have to read every prompt and fill on every page.  You can start at the last page of this and just go forward, or back a page or two.  It's fine.
  • You can come and go as time and energy allow, you don't have to participate the whole time, and it drops off quite a bit by mid-February.
  • Even after the 3SF and new prompting end, people fill prompts all year long.
  • You can fill an already filled prompt and you can can leave a prompt that's already been prompted before.  People do it all the time. 
Always make sure you're looking at top-level comments only, not threaded. That helps a lot. Your screen should look like this.




But shouldn't I read everything to see if someone already prompted the same prompt I want to leave if someone already filled it? 

No.  Prompt as many times as you want, as much as you want.  It doesn't matter if someone prompted the exact same prompt.  Go ahead and prompt again!

I left a prompt and no one filled it.  Can I prompt it again?
Absolutely!

Can I spread the word?
Yes, please. I generally fail at creating banners and embed codes but if you create one and make it really idiot-proof, I might be able to post and share it.  Feel free to cross-post this entry. If you create your own banners or icons, let me know and I'll share!
Please share the 3SF with your followers, friends, and any channels and comms you are active on.  I'll post on fandom calendar, Tumblr, and Twitter, but I don't have many connections in other spaces such as Discord.


How long will it go?

The 3SF closes to new prompts on February 28, 2021. The entry stays open permanently and people post fills all year long.

Are there any rules about cross-posting?
Nope, you can post wherever you want, whenever you want. A lot of folks collected their responses together and posted them on AO3 under the 3 sentence fiction tag. 3SFs are a terrific prompt for remixes and could be helpful for Yuletide bears, too.

What about spoilers, content and archive warnings, triggers, pairings, ratings, tags, and squick?
I thought a lot about this. It boils down to reader beware.  In my experience, this typically gets too big, moves too fast, and the stories are too short for content warnings and ratings to even apply. It is too big for me to moderate in this way. You should assume spoilers are fair game and that the initial poster and the responder have opted to use no content warnings or tags. This means AO3 content warnings for dubcon, violence, canon character death, underage, etc. COULD be present. I've found personally that I can skim and scroll by stuff that, from the prompt, I can tell isn't my favorite flavor of delicious cake. Use your best judgment and be prepared to skip over things that aren't your thing. In this format, the obligation is on you, the reader, to protect yourself from triggering content.
Some posters do include warnings and spoiler tags in subject lines or include spoiler space, but they don't have to do so.

Why is 3SF split among several posts?  That seems confusing.
It is confusing and we always lose momentum once we have to move to a second post. The reason is because at 5,000 comments to a single post, DW installs a human test CAPTCHA, which is a pain for users.  So, once this entry gets to the upper 4,000 comments, I open a new post.  If you've been waiting until things slow down to participate, when we open a second post is often a good place to join.

If I have questions, what do I do?

I'm rthstewart everywhere, here, Twitter, Tumblr, gmail and AO3.

A special thank you to [personal profile] conuly  .
Last year, Conuly started logging all unfilled prompts.
This year's (2021) unfilled prompts are here.
Last year's (2020) unfilled prompts are here.
Conuly asks that you not reply, as they want to be able to edit and add more prompts to the list.
Conuly does this just because they are an awesome person but should you want to write them fic in thanks, you can find a birthday wish list here.

Here is the 3SF 2021 Friending Meme to show of your new DW account.

Here, have some icons and banners and let me know if you've created your own!

 






text box you can try to cut and paste

















violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (Default)

[personal profile] violsva 2021-02-01 03:25 am (UTC)(link)
Narnia, any, epic poetry

The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] francienyc 2021-02-01 02:52 pm (UTC)(link)
After a dinner of more leftover party food, we lounged about under the stars. Peridan looked over the dark sea under a velvet sky and murmured,

‘Gale sailed east, chasing the horizon to lands unknown
After a week of sailing, he saw, silhouetted against the sunset
The purple cliffs of Doorn. Beyond, sleeping like a giant in the sea
Lay Felimath, all its gentle slopes in bloom.’

‘Oh good,’ said Corin, ‘Go on.’

He turned round and saw that Corin and Susan and Tumnus and Edmund were all sitting attentively, and carried on. He told of the arrival of King Gale in Narrowhaven, and the people in disarray because their king had just been slain by the dragon. They pleaded to the Narnian King for help.

‘And he drew his sword and said unto them,
“By the Great Lion Aslan, and his father Emperor-Over-Sea
I swear to deliver you from this blight, or die in the attempt.
But he who fights alone fights death as much as his foe.
Who among you will call yourselves my comrades
And stand beside me in this hour of liberation?”
All the men shrank into the silence of fear;
They did not dare step forward into the maw of grievous fate.
All except one, a young squire, bright eyed and bold.
Still a boy with a downy cheek, who had yet to take his knighthood
He struck his sword on his wooden shield and proclaimed
“I, Peridan, will aid you in this fight.
Whatever comes of this endeavour, I can say at the end
I stood beside the King and the Lion.”’

‘So this is what you meant by the story of your house,’ Susan said with a smile.

‘My father named me after this Peridan,’ he explained, blushing a bit. ‘He’s my ancestor.’

--This may be cheating a bit as I'd already written this as part of a story I'm currently publishing on AO3, but I couldn't resist posting because it fit so perfectly with the prompt. If it is cheating, please forgive me!
wingedflight: (Default)

Re: The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] wingedflight 2021-02-01 04:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Aaaaaaaaaah i love this

Re: The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] francienyc 2021-02-02 05:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you kindly!
violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (Default)

Re: The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] violsva 2021-02-02 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted, I love it!

Re: The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] francienyc 2021-02-02 05:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! I was rereading The Last Battle (a very rare occurrence for me; I'm traumatised) and Jewel has this throwaway line about King Gale liberating the Lone Islands, and then I'm sort of low key obsessed with the Lone Islands and Peridan so I started to pull it all together, with some heavy inspiration from Beowulf and Wiglaf going to fight their own dragon.

Re: The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] francienyc 2021-02-02 05:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks--very glad to be here. This is very good fun!
snacky: (3 sentence ficathon)

Re: The Song of King Gale (told on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline after the flight from Tashbaan)

[personal profile] snacky 2021-02-07 10:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Omg, this is soooo good!
snacky: (narnia edmund & susan)

rummaging for answers in the pages

[personal profile] snacky 2021-02-07 10:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Susan thinks of all the times she found Edmund in the library of Cair Paravel, absorbed in the tales of Narnia heroes of old as he rummaged through the seemingly endless shelves of books. "I say, Su, this is a far sight better than the poetry we used to learn at school!" he had told one of those afternoons, a lifetime ago.

So when she leads him to a small chamber in Aslan's How, filled with books piled in precarious stacks, she's delighted by the look on his face, especially when she tells him, "wait until you read the ones about us."

(sorry, I can't write my own epic poetry lol)
violsva: Finn and Rey hugging from Star Wars: The Force Awakens (finnrey hugs)

Re: rummaging for answers in the pages

[personal profile] violsva 2021-02-09 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
:D! I love Edmund finding out he likes poetry in Narnia and then it coming full circle later!
snacky: (narnia edmund)

Re: rummaging for answers in the pages

[personal profile] snacky 2021-02-09 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
It seems like something that would really please him!