Seasons of Drabbles

Seasons of Drabbles is an exchange for the creation of drabbles and drabble variants. It will run once per season*. The current round is for summer 2025.

*4x per year, with each round taking place sometime within a three-month period (March-May, June-August, September-November, December-February). Each round will take about a month from nominations through author reveals.

Schedule:
Nominations open: Monday, July 28 (will remain open through signups)
Signups open: Monday, August 4
Signups close: Monday, August 11 @ 11:59pm Eastern Daylight time (Countdown)
Assignments out by: Wednesday, August 13
Assignments due: Saturday, August 23 @ 11:59pm Eastern Daylight time (Countdown)
Collection opens: Saturday, August 30 @ 1:00pm Eastern Daylight time (Countdown)
Authors revealed: Monday, September 1 @ 1:00pm Eastern Daylight time

This round's AO3 Collection | Tagset | Nomination guidelines | Requests App | Mod email: seasonsofdrabbles@gmail.com

Need to contact us or have a question? See the Mod Contact post!

New rule as of July 2025: We have a new rule this round that participants cannot opt out of single drabbles. In other words, you are still welcome to request/offer other drabble types, but you cannot exclude single drabbles from your offers or requests. We will let you know via the email associated with your AO3 account if we notice you've left out single drabbles in your signup. Matching and signups will otherwise work the same as before.

Have questions? Expand the "Key Info on the Rule Change" section below for more info. If your question is still not answered, please get in touch via email or the Mod Contact Post.

Key Info on the Rule Change

Q: Why make this rule change?
A: Since this is an event celebrating drabbles, we thought it made sense for a 100-word single drabble to be the minimum that participants can expect to write or receive. We received the suggestion from a participant and put it up to a community poll, where a strong majority were in favor of the rule change.

Q: How does this rule change affect how I sign up?
A: It affects the signup process itself very little. You can still select the fandoms, characters, and drabble types you are interested in writing or receiving. You are still free to request or offer longer drabble types. You can still check "Any". However, you can no longer exclude the "Drabble" tag from your signup.

Q: What happens if I don't include single drabbles in my signup?
A: We will reach out to you via the email associated with your AO3 account and offer two options: we can either edit the signup to add single drabbles, or remove your signup. Participants who don’t get back to us by the end of the grace period (12 hours after signups close) will have their signup removed.

Q: How will matching work?
A: Since everyone is requesting or offering single drabbles, you are effectively matchable with anyone requesting/offering the same fandom AND character. However, drabble types are still a matching criterion. In other words, people who want to write/request other drabble types would still be more likely to match with each other. For example, all things being equal, someone requesting Single Drabble and Triple Drabble is more likely (not guaranteed) to match with someone offering Single Drabble and Triple Drabble, than with someone only offering Single Drabble, or someone offering Single Drabble and Single Drabble Series/Sequence.

Q: Do I have to write single drabbles to participate?
A: If you have matched to someone who has only requested the "Drabble" freeform tag, then yes, you have to write a 100-word drabble for your assignment. If they have requested other drabble types, though, you are welcome to write any of them for your recipient.

Q: What if I don't like this rule change or it ends up sucking?
A: We tried implementing the rule change in a way that caused the least disruption on the participant side of things, but we will be soliciting feedback at the end of the round. If you have opinions or ideas you'd like to share at that time, we would love to hear them. This is admittedly a test run.

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( Guidelines )