I see your concerns and, based on fic exchanges and ficathons I've seen past, here are my suggestions:
That's not to say I wouldn't know how to set it up, but would there be enough prompters/requesters?
You could make it a requirement that in order to be a writer, you must also submit a prompt. Ala "yuletide", in a way. That way you are always guaranteed to have exactly as many prompts as writers. (And, BTW, I'd recommend setting some guidelines for the prompts, like "a pairing and some words", because otherwise you'll get some people who just give you a pairing and nothing to work with, and other people who'll give you an entire outline of a scenario, which might just be me, but always smacked to me of the unfair.)
And would there be enough writers willing to write each request?
Well, there are two ways to work around that: one is to tell people they're going to have to suck it up. The very popular mctabby Cat's Birthday drabblethon is worked this way. She collects all the prompts and pairs them with users via the highly scientific method of writing them on notecards and letting her cat paw at them, and whoever gets paired with what just has to deal with it. Of course, it's a bit easier in that case, as these only have to drabbles so it's easier to fake it, and it's also for the Harry Potter fandom which, you may be aware, is jackass crazy. Of course, I understand why you might be a little leery of putting such a restriction down the first time out. But I offer the caveat that you'd be surprised how willing some people can be, and also that if you keep the prompts at only a pairing and some words, at least people are free of having to write hardcore sex for a pairing they're not quite comfortable with (for the aforementioned Drabblethon, my prompt asked for Hagrid/Snape, a pairing I never would have thought of and sure as hell was not going to write a full-on sex scenario for; I had them get drunk and turned it into a humorous innuendo-filled thing which still fulfilled the prompt without breaching my comfort zone).
The second option is to allow people to give a brief list of things they don't want to have to write when they sign up: pairings, characters and/or (depending on how specific the prompts are going to get) certain scenarios/ratings. Of course, this makes prompt matching a little more complex, and also opens the possibility that there will be prompts that can be matched with nobody. I've seen other fic exchanges combat this by asking ahead of time for people to volunteer as back-up writers in case of this eventuality. (really, what I'm noticing looking back over all the advice I've just given is that this really a less-is-more scenario: the less info you allow people to give in prompts, the less things you have to worry about.)
but our pool is so small, it might just backfire on us.
I dunno; again, maybe it's just the corners of fandom I hang out it, but I think you'd be surprised how many people might be eager to do some BSG manslash. I think it might be quite sucessful...if properly pimped, of course :)
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Date: 2007-11-30 06:42 pm (UTC)That's not to say I wouldn't know how to set it up, but would there be enough prompters/requesters?
You could make it a requirement that in order to be a writer, you must also submit a prompt. Ala "yuletide", in a way. That way you are always guaranteed to have exactly as many prompts as writers.
(And, BTW, I'd recommend setting some guidelines for the prompts, like "a pairing and some words", because otherwise you'll get some people who just give you a pairing and nothing to work with, and other people who'll give you an entire outline of a scenario, which might just be me, but always smacked to me of the unfair.)
And would there be enough writers willing to write each request?
Well, there are two ways to work around that: one is to tell people they're going to have to suck it up. The very popular
Of course, I understand why you might be a little leery of putting such a restriction down the first time out. But I offer the caveat that you'd be surprised how willing some people can be, and also that if you keep the prompts at only a pairing and some words, at least people are free of having to write hardcore sex for a pairing they're not quite comfortable with (for the aforementioned Drabblethon, my prompt asked for Hagrid/Snape, a pairing I never would have thought of and sure as hell was not going to write a full-on sex scenario for; I had them get drunk and turned it into a humorous innuendo-filled thing which still fulfilled the prompt without breaching my comfort zone).
The second option is to allow people to give a brief list of things they don't want to have to write when they sign up: pairings, characters and/or (depending on how specific the prompts are going to get) certain scenarios/ratings. Of course, this makes prompt matching a little more complex, and also opens the possibility that there will be prompts that can be matched with nobody. I've seen other fic exchanges combat this by asking ahead of time for people to volunteer as back-up writers in case of this eventuality. (really, what I'm noticing looking back over all the advice I've just given is that this really a less-is-more scenario: the less info you allow people to give in prompts, the less things you have to worry about.)
but our pool is so small, it might just backfire on us.
I dunno; again, maybe it's just the corners of fandom I hang out it, but I think you'd be surprised how many people might be eager to do some BSG manslash. I think it might be quite sucessful...if properly pimped, of course :)