Talk:Standalone

I have a doubt regarding naming conventions - specifically whether one-shot and standalone can be considered exactly synonyms?

From what I gather, a very long story (let's say 50k+) not divided in chapters could qualify as a standalone? But calling this same fic a "one shot" (which is the term that I've "grown up with", fannishly speaking) doesn't feel right. I wouldn't know exactly where to draw the line, but let's say that a one-shot in my fandom circle has always been the fannish equivalent of a short story. The opposite of a one shot would be a long fic, division in chapters of not (but I don't know if other people think only chaptered works are long fics) Edit: apparently this is not a term used in English-speaking fandom, sorry.

Also, I think that what I call one-shot (a not-too-long standalone) is often called ficlet on tumblr, especially if it's an ask fic, which could be considered the tumblr equivalent of a commentfic (this if it gets called anything at all other than "fic", tumblr is pure anarchy with terms). However I've seen a lot of people call that one-shot as well.

Does anyone know something more about how the usage of the term varies across fandoms/platforms, etc? --MyDesperateRomance (talk) 21:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried to do a bit of research, and yes, the two seem interchangable, but I'm still unsure about that "Standalone stories may be of any length" bit. However, I'll probably never have the knowledge/skills necessary to do a proper research for this, so I'm just leaving it here, in case anyone can clarify. --MyDesperateRomance (talk) 15:06, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree with "is not part of an ongoing series or shared universe": most of my experience of "standalone" on AO3 has been as a way to differentiate between sequels/continuations that need knowledge of the other stories in the series/verse & those that exist in the same series/verse, but don't need special knowledge of the other fics. E.g. "Can be read as a standalone" & "Sequel to Occam's Razor, but can be read as a standalone.". (This may be where standalone is different than one-shot) -Shannon (talk) 20:34, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is the usage of "standalone" that I'm familiar with, too. --Greer Watson (talk) 09:04, 15 September 2015 (UTC)