Fictionaut is Flickr for writers. Which, really is to say that it’s a social network built around writing – sometimes drafts of novels, sometimes flash fiction – and so you go to Fictionaut to friend people, and leave comments, join groups, and submit stories, and so on so forth.
In the few months since Fictionaut’s release, a number of writers have described the service as a breath of fresh air. Some use it as a stage before publication – throw the drafts of your latest novel on Fictionaut, and you’re guaranteed a discerning audience. Most striking, however, is this love-letter by James Robinson, who says: “Fictionaut provides a round-the-clock, faithfully attentive audience. Bless its founders.” I saw that, thought for a bit, and emailed founder Jürgen Fauth for an invite.
Here are some thoughts, loosely connected, on Fictionaut.
Community
I’m must say that I’m most surprised at the level of community on the site. The majority of writing websites that I know have communities that aren’t particularly … nice. Fictionaut’s, however, not only seem to be consistently nice, but tend to also refrain from commenting on works they do not like. (If the writing is horrible, you keep quiet and go somewhere else). The net effect is that you feel – when you’re writing there – to be part of this welcoming, supportive group. And that’s a rather refreshing thing to have.
From experience, I’m not sure if such ‘supportive writer culture’ can or will last forever. The culture exists naturally, at the moment, bubbling up from the community, but if at any point Fictionaut opens its doors to the general public, the influx of new members may seriously undermine the tone and pitch of the site. And that’s something I pray won’t happen, though I’m not sure how they’re going to do it. Fictionaut will have to be very careful when they expand; my hope is that they’d get the formula just right.
(I suspect that the solutions for maintaining quality discussion would have to be technological at heart, the same way Paul Graham has programmed several clever things into Hacker News, in order to maintain intelligent discourse. But how exactly this applies to writing I’m not particularly sure.)
Readability baked right in
Fictionaut forces its writers to publish stories according to a standardized, highly readable format. I posted a short story on the site and came away impressed with the quality of the user experience. Reader comments are placed in the sidebar, there’s a section for author notes, and the element placement leads me to suspect that everything you see on-site is deliberately designed to be that way.
There are little flourishes, too, like the beautiful popups that appear when you add someone as a friend, or when you’ve had a failed login:
I realize I’m a being a bit of a design geek here, but it’s hard to miss: someone has spent a lot of time making sure everything works intuitively on Fictionaut. I applaud his (or her) attention to detail.
Superb writing
Writing is good on Fictionaut. I sometimes spend hours on the site, reading newer, cooler, better stories – and I can say with some confidence that there’s a high standard to which most Fictionaut writers adhere to. At the very least, there’s a base level of competence that you don’t usually find anywhere else.
A large chunk of the site’s stories are flash fiction, followed by poetry, short stories, and a sprinkling of books-in-progress, posted chapter-by-chapter.
I should note that this quality didn’t happen by accident. Fictionaut’s founder, Jürgen Fauth, has a PhD in English/Creative Writing from USM’s Centre for Writers. The core community of the site was handpicked, I think – and new memberships are still dependent on invitations. Accordingly, the site currently leans towards literary fiction, and it feels – at times – like a literary magazine.
At the moment you either get in on invitation, or you apply for an invite. The application page leads me to suspect that Fictionaut enforces a filter for writers – you’ll either have to be competent enough, or established enough to get in (or you’ll have to know someone who’s already in, I suppose). This sounds scary and slightly elitist, but it probably explains the quality of the community and writing on the site today.
There’s a paragraph in the Venuszine Fictionaut review that says:
Pia Erhardt, a seasoned writer from New Orleans who recently had the “most favorited” story, “Ambulance,” agrees that it’s sometimes “terrifying” to post her unedited work, mostly because she respects what her fellow members are writing.
Quality begets quality, and so – again – I’m not particularly sure how they’re going to maintain this without the current invitation system.
(My favourite story on Fictionaut so far is Gold, by Ethel Rohan. To be fair, though, all her stories are just as good.)
Closing Thoughts
Fictionaut’s a little like an oasis, at the moment: it’s quite rare to find a such a large community of good writers online – even at its current size – who’re so supportive of each other. Despite my doubts with Fictionaut’s scalability, I must add that writing and reading on the site has been one of the more enjoyable things I’ve done, lately.
And so – while I’m not sure if Fictionaut can keep it up, or even where they’re headed, I really am quite grateful for the site, for what they’re currently doing for writers. I merely hope that Fictionaut ages gracefully, without the worst of teething problems that so often follows a growing – and social – community. I wish Fictionaut well.
15 Comments
Is that a good thing? I can see why it can be nice, but if my writing’s shit, I’d rather someone tell me.
Interesting to see your insight though seeing as Fictionaut is pretty close off to the public at the moment. What did you say to get an invite? ;-)
The design of the site *is* beautiful — got to agree with you there!
Thanks for the write-up, Eli. Someone was just telling me about the site yesterday, and here you are to explain it in detail. :-)
@Anna: thing is, odds are if you’re on Fictionaut, you’re a capable writer. There’s this odd … spirit that makes you want to be polite on the site. Really quite rare.
@Mark: You’re welcomed. =)
As a Fictionaut writer myself, I can say I absolutely agree with this review. It took me about a month before I got my invite, and once I did was a little timid posting my stories on the site with the regularity I post new writing now. But it has taught me a number of things – namely posting unedited work doesn’t have to be a scary process – and my writing has gotten somewhat better.
@A.M.: I would reply to your comment with this: even if people don’t like your stories, eyeballs are still focusing on your work. I have had mixed results with my work on the site currently (favorable comments on some work while none on others) but I know that members of the community are reading. And commenting on unedited and unpublished works does happen, but mostly in online workshop groups set up on the site.
@Eli: I think the spirit you’re talking about comes from the fact that most of the writers/poets on the site are used to having intellectual dialogue that doesn’t require what techies would call “sniping” in comments.
@A.M. “Is that a good thing? I can see why it can be nice, but if my writing’s shit, I’d rather someone tell me.”
As much as there’s going to be a market for writing salons where critics are harsh and the bright light of scrutiny is always shining on new work there will also be niches like this where a softer touch is present.
They do have a favorite system coupled with polite commentary. It’s not going to be a place to publicly refine work (although I see small groups that @Kevin describes) but a social diagram of the works the audience likes by following favorites.
I think I’ll check it out.
It’ll be interesting to see if the site maintains this attitude after they go from invite-only to open house.
@Kevin: thanks for dropping by. I think the attitude’s a combination of factors, really. If you subscribe to the broken window theory of online communities (i.e.: people care more about sites that are well moderated + designed) then it may be one reason why people are so willing to be nice.
In fact, I strongly suspect the structure of the site has something to do with it. A couple of hours after my first login, two other writers whom I had not heard of or talked with before left comments on my profile page. My bet is that they saw me in the ‘new member’ section, and went out of their way to welcome me.
Oh, and possible factor number 3: the community’s small enough to be welcoming, but big enough to be self-policing.
@Kyt: I’m not sure that they’ll go open house anytime soon (or even at all) but – yes, I do agree with you that I’m half-looking forward to, err, seeing what happens if and when they do.
Thanks for the review! Still waiting on an invite *hint* (anyone?) As a fairly new but active flickr user I have to say that the similarities in the communities are striking. Likely a result of the audience being of a similar creative ilk. It seems that flickr has been able to maintain there generally positive and supportive community while letting anyone use the site.
As you mentioned with hacker news, I believe that to maintain the community as it is, some serious thought and programming will be required to foster it if the general public is to be let in. This is an attainable goal as has been proven in the past by other sites.
So great to see a “flickr” for writers, it’s a piece that I felt was missing from the Internet puzzle for too long.
Thank you for the very fine write-up. Sent in my invite request a few days ago. Hope to hear from them soon.
But I must disagree on the tone and the general level of writing. Most of what I’ve read is pretty disgusting. :-) An example:
http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/cherise-wolas/things-i-should-have-done-3-2
(Please check the comments.)
I mean, come on. Nails across a blackboard, and all the responses treat it as if this person is the next Chekhov. And I think it’s a pretty good example of the Fictionaut norm. Just the self-involvement and Yuppie pretentiousness of the story! Reading about upper-class weddings in the Sunday NYT? (Who would publicly admit that?) And the twit writer basically prefers the “silky tangle of feline true love” — excuse me while I vomit — “to the driving 100-miles every weekend to see her” man by her side. (Yes, I know he drops blueberry muffin crumbs on her pure white duvet.)
What’s so typical of the story is how everyone (including the cats) is defined by labels: “Dunkin Donuts”(I guess if he spilled muffins from Zagats on the duvet it would be okay), NYT, Howard Stern, Soho — and the actual prose! Singing phones, braving the cold, plastic muffins, platinum-hued black & white photos(in the Times? Did they go off and hire Robert Frank?), a portraitist of miniatures(wtf?). And this description of Soho:
“She had long lived in Soho, in a building of lofts, a pioneer when the area was still woolly, the drafty spaces unconverted, free of things like showers and tubs, even toilets.”
Written by someone who obviously had never been to Soho. Woolly?
Not to pick on this poor soul, but if you check around, this kind of sub-sub-sub New Yorker fiction (which has always been pretty sub-sub itself) is most of what you get. And those comments!
Social networks are nice, but not if they attempt to inflict on an already degraded and corrupt culture even more mediocrity.
I probably won’t last long there. :-)
Thanks again for the terrific essay.
@EJK: Not sure why that’s a bad thing. If you don’t like the writing, leave the author be. The true test of a good website is how good it is at letting the good stuff bubble up, not how terrible the bad stuff really is. The internet doesn’t need yet another critique group. It needs something .. well, different. And Fictinaut – while unproven – seems to be closest to that ideal.
“If you don’t like the writing, leave the author be. . .”
Bravo. That should be bannered across the top of Fictionaut. Along with this evident site description:
“Welcome to the world’s biggest circle-jerk of the talentless.”
Wow, Jaded much…I was going to stay out of this but now I can’t. There are varying degrees of talent levels across all art forms across the world. Just because you believe this person is talentless does not mean everyone agrees with you. You have two choices Don’t comment or comment with a constructive critique of the piece.
It’s people like you EJK that make a sites like Fictionaut (and the social networks in general) become less enjoyable, not people with the courage to post perhaps less than professional work.
Oh no, Derek is on the noon stage.
People like me. “Jaded much.” (1992 was a good year, wasn’t it?) Perhaps less than professional work. There are varying degrees of talent across art forms. Just because I believe blah blah. And the sun rises in the east.
Derek — let’s hope your Fictionaut invite arrives real soon!
And BTW, that dreck story I just happened to trip over — the one being pointed to here as the bad exception to the otherwise high norm? It’s now the 4th most popular at the site. Teehee.
Again, didn’t want to cause a dust-up. I’m sure we would all love a creative site where we can introduce things, and not be destroyed in the process. But please look at the comments from the Wolas story: 41 comments and every one reads as if it was written by the author’s mom. If something this bad can be universally embraced, doesn’t that say something about the site? Not even ONE constructively critical comment? Not one!
And since the “theme” of the story — as with so many at the site — is how superior the author is to everything she touches: Howard Stern, people with squat bodies, people who eat with their mouths open, people who visit Dunkin Doughnuts, people who drop crumbs on pure white duvets, people with limited vocabularies. . . (if only the author could limit her own vocabulary: the warmth of my wishbone/cohabitated, conjoined real estate, crooned vows/my brush now has a certainty hard to define). . . kinda hard to feel supportive of someone like that, no?
@Derek: It’s alright. Just ignore him – this is a troll, and it’s impossible to reason with trolls.
With all due respect…I was invited to join fictionaut so I checked it out. This is what I would advise someone who wants to be a writer…write for as long as you can stand it, put it in the drawer and read it again in a week, note how lousy it is, then rewrite…do this ten times or more…send it out and eat the rejections. Feel like you want to tear your eyes out of your head. Maybe go back to working in Rite-Aid…then go to the piece and rewrite it. It’s you and your work, not about seeking the approval of those who can’t write either.