R/S Small Gifts statistics

[swissmarg]

Finally found the time to do these. The master list from the rs_small_gifts exchange can be found here. They had both a regular exchange round and a flash bonus round. I've divided the statistics up for each round separately, as the bonus round produced necessarily shorter fics, and I didn't want to skew the results for the main round.

For the main round:

Fest community: rs_small_gifts 
Fest type: Open prompt exchange
Premise: Remus/Sirius
Ratings restrictions: None
Length restrictions: 1,000-3,000 words suggested
Creation period: Up to 1 month

There were 8 art gifts and 47 fic gifts created for the main round. One author, brighty18, wrote 2 fics.

Art to fic ratio: 17%

By rating:

ART
G - 2
PG - 2
PG-13 - 3
R - 1
NC-17 - 0

FIC
G - 3
PG - 13
PG-13 - 17
PG-13/R - 1
R - 5
NC-17 - 8

By word count:
The shortest fic was 1,072 words long. The longest fic was 21,000 words long.

1-2K - iiiii iiiii iii
2-3K - iiiii iiiii iii
3-4K - iiiii iiiii iii
4-5K - i
5-6K - i
6-7K - ii
7-8K - i
8-9K - 0
9-10K - 0
10-11K - ii
21K - i

Total words written: 166,312
Mean (average fic length): 3,538 words
Median (half the fics longer, half the fics shorter): 2,500 words
Mode (most frequent fic length): 1-2K, 2-3K, 3-4K

For the bonus round:

Fest community: rs_small_gifts 
Fest type: Open prompts
Premise: Remus/Sirius
Ratings restrictions: None
Length restrictions: Minimum 100 words, no maximum
Creation period: Up to 12 days

There were 17 bonus gifts created: 2 artworks and 15 fics.

Number of authors/artists who created gifts for both rounds: 8
Number of authors/artists who created multiple gifts in the bonus round: 3
Most prolific participant: eprime with 1 regular round gift and 3 bonus round gifts; seren_canis was second with 1 regular gift and 2 bonus gifts.

Art to fic ratio: 13%

By rating: 

ART
PG-13 - 1
NC-17 - 1

FIC
G - 2
PG - 5
PG-13 - 2
R - 4
NC-17 - 2

By word count:
The shortest fic was 100 words long. The longest fic was 4,211 words long.

<1000 - iiiii
1-2K - iiiii i
2-3K - iii
3-4K - 0
4-5K - i

Total words written: 19,770 words
Mean: 1,318 words
Median: 1,500 words
Mode: 1-2K

Some thoughts: Remus/Sirius, always a popular pairing in fandom, is still going strong with 54 participants in the main round and 13 in the bonus round (8 of whom participated in both rounds).

The ratings for both rounds were spread across the board, from G to NC-17. In the main round, the art work was generally lower rated than the fics, with only 1 piece of art rated over PG-13. I don't think a generalization can be fairly made for the art in the bonus round, as there were only 2 pieces. Still, the art to fic ratio in both rounds was fairly equal, which is interesting.

Although there were fics of all ratings in both rounds, the emphases were a bit different. In the main round, the largest proportion of fics, 30%, were rated PG-13. In the bonus round, only 13% of the fics were rated PG-13; PG was the most common rating, with 30%, and nearly as many, 27%, were rated R, whereas in the main round, only 11% of the fics were rated R. I'm not sure why this shift occurred.

The word counts obviously were also very different in both rounds, given the difference in creation periods, which is why I split the stats in the first place.

For the main round, although the suggested maximum fic length was 3,000 words, nearly half (45%) of the fics went over that length, some by an exceedingly wide margin. The longest fic, in fact, was seven times longer than the recommended maximum length, and would have fit into a Big Bang. For a creation period of one month, that is quite an achievement.

In the bonus round, only one author went over 3,000 words, and one-third of the authors took advantage of the generously low minimum word count to write drabbles of less than 1,000 words. Still, it's interesting that fics in the 1-2K range were the most frequent in both rounds.