Stats from the SSHG_Exchange

[swissmarg]

What, you mean you thought I forgot about this exchange? Or thought it was just too big and I couldn't handle doing stats for it? Ha ha ha! I laugh in the face of your skepticism! And I have stats for you. Big stats. Important stats.

Yes, this did actually take me a couple of weeks to do. Mostly it was doing all the word counts that was the time-consuming part. Would it have killed the mods to put word counts in the headers? Maybe. It was, after all, a huge fest.

All righty then. Here we go.

The sshg_exchange (master list here) produced 154 gifts, ranging from the standard fics and drawings to a soundtrack, essays, sculpture, dolls, a quilt, and food art. The master list contains 156 entries, but wherever multiple art gifts were listed separately despite being made by the same artist for the same recipient, I counted those as one gift. There were other multiple-piece art gifts that were counted as a single gift, so I didn't see why some should be counted as 2 or even 3 gifts. Conversely, there was one gift that contained art and fic by two different people, and I counted that as 2 separate gifts. That's how I ended up with a different total than the exchange mods.

Fics - 111

Art - 40

Essays - 2

Soundtrack - 1

By Rating:

Fics
G - 11
PG - 31
PG-13 - 30
R - 21
NC-17 - 18

Art
G - 23
G/PG - 1
PG - 9
PG-13 - 1
R - 4
NC-17 - 2

Fics by Word Count:

The fics ranged from 1,499 words to 55,730 words.

1K-2K - iiiii
2K-3K - iiiii ii
3K-4K - iiiii ii
4K-5K - iiiii i
5K-6K - iiiii iii
6K-7K - iiiii i
7K-8K - iiiii iii
8K-9K - iiiii
9K-10K - iiiii ii
10K-15K - iiiii iiiii iiiii iiii
15K-20K - iiiii ii
20K-25K - iiiii iiiii
25K-30K - iiiii i
30K-40K - iiiii i
40K-50K - iiiii
50K+ - i

Art by Medium:

Drawing/Painting/Illustration* - iiiii iiiii iiiii iii
Photomanip - iii
Plasticine (sculpture) - i
Cake/frosting - i
Quilt - i
Soft dolls - i

*I would have liked to break this down further into watercolors, pencil, ink, etc. but not all of the authors declared their medium, and I couldn't be 100% sure on some of them what medium was used.

Some Thoughts: This exchange was very different than any of the previous ones I've done stats for in several ways. The first and most obvious one is its sheer size. There's a reason why many of the more popular exchanges have participant caps. The amount of work involved in gathering prompts, matching them, sending out assignments, collecting and keeping track of incoming gifts, organizing pinch hitters, sending out reminders, and finally posting, posting, and more posting of this many fics and art, and actually keeping to the schedule planned out months in advance, is mind-boggling.

The two big differences in the gifts produced are the amount of art, and the length of the fics. Compared to other recent exchanges, where art made up a miniscule percentage of the overall gifts, in this exchange fully a quarter of the quite sizable number of gifts were art. This makes me wonder if perhaps the reason why there is so little art produced for other fests and exchanges is that everyone was working on this one!

The fic lengths were also far beyond nearly everything produced for other recent fests, even those with similar time lines. This exchange gave writers and artists 2-1/2 months between assignments being sent out and gifts being due -- in comparison, the hp_ssc_fest had a writing period of 2 months; the smrw_ficafest had nearly 3 months.

Look at the mean, median, and mode of the word counts of these three fests:

sshg_exchange - mean 14,130; median 9,500; mode 10-15K. Longest fic 55K+
smrw_ficafest - mean 5,535; median 4,500; mode 2-3K. Longest fic ~14K
hp_ssc_fest - mean 3,820; median 2,500; mode 1-2K. Longest fic 12K+

It is understandable why the average fic length was shorter for the hp_ssc_fest , as that fest was based on a type of relationship that was easily shown in a single scene, or one-shot. A fic based on the relationship of a couple needs more words, generally, to develop the relationship or give a frame to their interactions. Still, that would only explain why the hp_ssc_fest fics were generally shorter than those created for either of the two ship exchanges (Scorpius/Rose, Severus/Hermione). It does nothing to explain why the Severus/Hermione fics were so much longer than the those written for the Scorpius/Rose exchange (or the hg_seasonsfest, the metamorfic_moon Summer Jumble, the hp_canon_fest , etc.).

I think that, on the one hand, the sshg_exchange is a more established exchange. It has been around since 2006, and so it has been able to attract more of the established writers in the fandom. I would venture to say that it is the more experienced writers who are able to create multi-chapter fics within the given time frame, and who are able to even come up with coherent, plotted fics of 30,000 words and more, rather than single scenes or more simple plots that can be handled in under 10,000 words.

I think that another factor leading to lengthier fics is the type of person this pairing attracts. This may be way out there, but it seems to me that Snape/Hermione shippers tend to be more intellectual and to expect more from their fics than a quickie in the broom closet. By no means did I read all of the fics in this exchange, but I at least skimmed most of them and got a pretty good feel for the types of plots involved during the process of cutting and pasting all of them into my word processor to get the word counts (don't tell me there's a faster way or I'll kill myself). The point being that there was very little PWP and a lot of very cunning and intricate writing, both in terms of plot but also in terms of getting into the psychology of the characters. That all takes time to lay out in a fic, and might also contribute to the greater lengths we see here.

Speaking from my own experience, I signed up for several exchanges this year, and my entry for the sshg_exchange was by far the longest. My reason was, I had a hard time really getting into the pairings I was assigned for the other exchanges, and so the plots I came up with were relatively short. For the sshg_exchange , though, Snape/Hermione is my favorite ship, so I had no problem writing a lot about them. Also, the plot that I came up with for the prompt I was given ended up needing quite a bit of back story to even make it plausible, so that expanded the fic as well.

Right. Back to looking at the statistics. If we look at the ratings now, the fics were fairly evenly spread across all the ratings, although over half of them were mildly rated in the PG to PG-13 range. Still, over 1/3 of the fics were rated R or higher.

The art was another matter. There, only 15% were rated R or higher. Easily over half, or 56%, were rated G. I'm not sure why there should be such a discrepancy in the ratings distribution between the fics and the art. Maybe it is harder to draw nudes than clothed figures.

The lion's share of the art produced was two-dimensional, from-scratch creations (i.e. not simply manipulating someone else's images). One of my favorite parts of these exchanges is when people get super creative with three-dimensional fan works, and the 4 three-dimensional pieces (quilt, cake, dolls, and sculpture) were wonderful additions to the exchange.

There was also, unusually, a soundtrack suggestion presented for one of the fics. Disappointingly, it did not include the actual music files (as that would violate copyright). This was therefore more like one of those 'DVD extras' for that specific fic, as it doesn't really work as a stand-alone gift.

My summation: This was really a mega-fest, with some very high quality works produced, and a ton of work put into it by both mods, writers, and artists.

Comments

[ozratbag2.livejournal.com]

Sorry, late to read this, but this is facinating and it's interesting to see that the Exchange generally has longer fic lengths. I think the thing that struck me this time around, was just how many stories seemed to be rated up to PG-13 only (and mine was as well, so I can't throw stones). Maybe, it's simply the case that I recognised it this time - I've no idea.

~hides sharp implements from you~

..the process of cutting and pasting all of them into my word processor to get the word counts (don't tell me there's a faster way or I'll kill myself). ...

Well, a faster way certainly would be to ask participants if they'd mind going into their word processors and giving a word count after the Reveal?

Not everyone would do it, but I would think if you said only MS word on either PC/Mac was acceptable, it'd make it less of a headache for you. Or, it could be a simple matter to ask the mods if participants would mind supplying the word count on submission. It doesn't need to be shown on posting, but it would give you the heads up for number crunching. :)

[swissmarg]

It would certainly be easier if authors included word counts, but as I'm not a mod on the exchange, it's not really my place to suggest it, simply so that I can save time doing the stats. As I mentioned above, this is a huge exchange, and the mods are probably happy not to have one more thing to check up on and enforce.

I do like it when there is a word count anyway, as a reader, since I often want to know whether I'm getting into a 50,000+ word fic or if it's a 15,000 word one-shot I can read in one sitting. So I'm all for making word count part of the mandatory basic template when posting a fic anywhere.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

We can hardly get the tinkers to submit their fics with headers let alone get them to do word counts!

[ozratbag2.livejournal.com]

I know and I'm usually one of the worst offenders. I was just thinking aloud-without thinking it through.

[christev.livejournal.com]

Day after Thanksgiving is a good day to go back to start catching up on unread Exchange fics, right? And what a nice surprise to see this lurvely stat summary here! Thanks for all that work!

I also totally agree that having a word count, or word range indicator, on fics would be a welcome addition, but recognize the enormous amount of work the exchange mods already do. They did indicate if fics were longer or shorter by the day of the week they posted, for which I was thankful.

Finally, I appreciated your thoughts on both quality and length of sshg fics. It's true that there are many intellectuals writing sshg. I also think that this ship tends to attract an older demographic, which means people who've simply had more time for education and life experience to influence and hone their writing skills.

Thanks again for a lovely break-down! :)

[swissmarg]

Thanks, appreciate the comments. :)

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Some interesting stats!

I don't think we'll be requiring details of word count though. Most people can work out the length from the number of chapters, and that works well enough for practicaly reading purposes.