I really like exchanges. I usually do several a year, mostly fandom specific (Queen’s Thief and Tolkien fandoms, primarily). Every year I read through dozens of prompts and DNWs (partly because I like writing treats in addition to my main fic) and I always end up stumbling over a lot of things where I’m like “this is going to make it unnecessarily hard for your writer.”
Disclaimer: writing good prompts is not an easy thing to do, and fandom exchanges are something we all do for fun. So at the end of the day, if you’re rocking up with any kind of prompt, respecting the rules of the exchange, and participating, I’m happy to see you, because I love exchanges! But I have realized in talking through things I like and don’t like to see in prompts with friends that there are certain guidelines I can throw down that would probably be helpful for people trying to craft better prompts, so that’s what I’m going to do here.
Further disclaimer: The examples I’m using are either things I’ve seen a bunch of people do in various forms, things I’ve done myself and thought better of later, or things I blatantly made up for the purposes of this conversation. I find specific examples are really helpful for me when I’m trying to explain or understand concepts, but I am not trying to embarrass anyone or call anyone out.
Final point: What is the purpose of an exchange? Everyone is going to have different ideas of what the point of any particular exercise is, but it’s important we’re all on broadly the same page, particularly for the purposes of an essay like this one. I am defining the point as the chance to build up a community and have fun in a shared fandom, and I’m writing from that perspective. Obviously, if you’re coming from a very different set of assumptions, you may not agree with me, and that’s okay, but at least this way you know it’s because we don’t share the same basic axioms.
Without further ado:
(1) Assume good faith. This is pretty big! Yes, we all want to get the nicest gift we can that we’ll be the most excited about, but you’ll probably do better if you assume that’s what your writer wants, too. We’ll come back to this a couple times along the way, but the fact is, you can’t use your prompts to stop a bad-faith actor from acting in bad faith. Someone who really does want to screw with you will be able to do so regardless. So if you treat your author as a potential adversary all you’re going to do is annoy or frustrate them in 90% of cases.
(2) Be sparing with your DNWs. It’s tempting to cram in anything you think you don’t want to see, but in reality, it’s going to make it harder on your author, and DNWs themselves can be difficult to craft. I’d recommend asking two questions when putting things into your DNWs: (i) is this thing truly a dealbreaker and (ii) is someone actually likely to write this for me? If you’re in an exchange that allows you to say what ratings you’re okay with and you ask for T, you don’t need to DNW anything to do with explicit sexual content; the author isn’t going to write that. Similarly, most people will stay away from really dark stuff unless there is some indication that the recipient wants that, either in their prompts or in the exchange itself (cf. also point 4). If something isn’t truly a dealbreaker, I’d say it’s better to leave it in, because the fewer absolute no-gos you have, the easier it is for your author. However, you definitely want to guide your author towards what you want to see! Along these lines…
(3) Say what you DO want, not what you DON’T. I’ve seen a LOT of DNWs that would be much better crafted as a part of the main body of the prompt. It can be tempting to shove things you really want in as a kind of backwards DNW (and I’ve been guilty of this myself, as well). For example: “no character bashing,” which I’ve seen show up a fair bit recently. On the face of it, this is a pretty reasonable DNW. We all like different characters, and there’s nothing worse than having your favorite character turned into a one-dimensional villain. But because DNWs must be adhered to, this requires a value judgment on the part of the author that may leave them floundering. (Is it character bashing to focus on the Kinslaying at Sirion if you’re writing about the Feanorians? Is it character bashing to have Elrond thinking agonized and angry thoughts about Elwing?) In general it will be much less frustrating for everyone if you spend more words on the prompts and less on the DNWs. (e.g. “I love all the characters, and I love complex takes on them! Would especially like to see something where Elrond and Elwing come to terms with Elwing’s decisions at Sirion. I love complex narratives where no one is totally right or totally wrong.”) Honestly, if you’ve got the time, it really is worth trying out all (or at least most) of your DNWs to see if you can reframe them as something positive in the main body of the prompt, to steer your author toward. It feels like praise-in-advance, whereas having a bundle of too many DNWs can feel like scolding-in-advance. Again, if we’re assuming good faith, most folks are going to try to abide by general likes and write something they think their recipient will enjoy.
Some examples of DNWs that could be rewritten as positive:
“DNW: AUs other than canon-divergence”
could be rewritten
“Likes: canon compliance, missing scenes, or ways that things could have gone differently (canon-divergent AUs)”
“DNW: black-and-white morality”
(this is one that I’ve personally done a lot)
Could be rewritten
“Likes: Complex, morally grey characters, narratives where no one is wholly right or wholly wrong”
Important note! Your DNWs are there to make sure you don’t get a nasty surprise on a gift fic. They are not there to act as backhanded instructions to force your author to write an exceedingly specific scenario. For example,
DNW: Any story that doesn’t focus on Maglor and Daeron having a song battle in Doriath at the Second Kinslaying.
Yes, this is ludicrous and I wouldn’t expect someone to go this far, but sometimes I’ve seen DNWs getting pretty close–see how this basically attempts to control the author into being unable to write anything they might be interested in, unless they’re super lucky in the match?
Obviously, this is the kind of thing that’s super easily fixed by turning it positive:
“I will go ABSOLUTELY FERAL for any story focusing on Maglor and Daeron. Bonus points if they get into a song battle, double bonus points if it’s a canon divergence AU set during the Second Kinslaying.”
(4) Be aware of context. This is related to and will allow you to be more sparing with your DNWs. If you’re doing an exchange focused on a particular kind of content, that is going to shape the expectations of the author and the recipient. For example, smut4smut is an explicitly, well, smut-focused exchange, so this is a good time to dust off your specific sex acts DNWs. In a non-smut focused exchange, it may not realistically be necessary to DNW something like watersports, unless your prompts are themselves very smut-focused. People do generally steer clear of subjects that are comparatively common squicks unless they’re explicitly asked for them except in cases where the focus of the fandom or of the exchange centers on or brings those things to the fore. Another example of context-specific DNWs might be incest: the Silmarillion fandom tends to have quite a lot of it, because everyone is related to someone, so there are understandably a lot of incest-focused DNWs for people with squicks in that general area. If you’re writing for a different fandom, where incest ships are less common, I would recommend instead simply relying on whatever ships you DID request, because people probably won’t write incest without prompting in the context of, say, Legend of Zelda, because it isn’t a feature of any of the major ships and there aren’t five million different cousins and siblings all over the place.
(5) Do not treat an exchange as a commission. You are not paying your author, and the purpose of an exchange is not to get The Perfect Fic! For heavens’ sake DO NOT put in anything that requires a specific level of skill from your author. No “DNW not thinking deeply about canon,” don’t “DNW blatant use of modern English.” If you really can’t enjoy a fic without requiring a certain level of skill on the part of the author, you should be commissioning someone, not participating in an exchange. The only requirement for a fandom exchange is the desire to participate and the willingness to abide by the rules. I consider myself to be a pretty accomplished author, and as soon as I see DNWs like this, I don’t want to write for the person in question. It comes across as elitist and honestly rude. As I said at the beginning, this is not what exchanges are about; they are about love of fandom.
(6) Be specific with your DNWs, and don’t assume that everyone shares your opinions, your likes, and your dislikes. It’s really common for people to say things like “DNW kink” and I’m like, I don’t know what you consider to be kinky. Are you saying no sex-outside-the-missionary-position-for-the-purposes-of-procreation? Or are you only trying to say that you can’t handle sadism in the bedroom but power-play is fine? This one can also end up coming across unnecessarily judgy (I’ve seen things skating really close to “no evil sex acts please” which is, um, let’s just say I am a firm believer in Kinktomato1, but aside from that, once again requires a value judgment on the part of your author that they may not be comfortable making on your behalf.)
A more concrete example:
DNW: Extreme kink
Requires value judgment and isn’t terribly specific. Could be rewritten as something like
“Prompt: I really like tender sex for this couple, some of my favorite sex tropes include: woman on top, explicit consent, equal levels of power. They can fool around a little with powerplay but I’d appreciate avoiding any substantial power imbalance, and for them I tend to prefer more vanilla sex.”
(positive rewrite)
Alternatively,
“DNW: kinks that involve blood, feces, urine, substantial power imbalance, or BDSM. In general, I’d prefer mostly vanilla, with maybe a light flavoring of painplay, like a couple butt swats or similar.”
(keeps DNW, but makes much more specific, guides your author)
(7) Do not invoke canon. This is especially important in the Tolkien fandom, where there are 90,000 different canons, Jirt contradicted himself every other page, and half the time there’s debate over whether a detail was introduced by Jirt, Chris, or GGK, but honestly, I think it’s a reasonable thing to consider even outside that context. As soon as you invoke canon, you’re invoking the necessity of critical scholarship on the part of your author, and your author may very well not agree with you. For example, instead of “DNW non-canon couples” consider “DNW unrequested pairings.” (The Russingon and Turleg shippers will thank you for the clarity2.)
Example of what not to do and how to fix it:
DNW: Canonically villainous characters portrayed sympathetically.
Requires value judgment about canon and villains! (In the Silm fandom, you’re immediately going to run your author into a morasse of questions about the Feanorians.)
A possible rewrite might be
“Prompt: I like my villains villainous, and in particular, for the purposes of this exchange, I really want to see Sauron and Melkor be as mustache-twirlingly evil as physically possible! No sympathy, no nuanced takes, just some good old-fashioned Saturday Morning Cartoon villainy.” (makes it positive, makes it specific)
Alternatively
“Prompt: I want an exploration of the evil that the Feanorians did and the damage it wreaked on Sirion. I’m not interested in why they did what they did–I want to see the impact on their victims, in particular, Dírhavel, Elwing, and Pengolodh.”
(again, positive, specific)
(8) If you’re not sure whether your prompts are clear…ask someone else to read your DNWs. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stared at someone’s DNW going “but what does that mean?” Admittedly, I am personally an inveterate overthinker, which probably doesn’t help, but it is very true that prompts, like any form of writing, can benefit from a quick once-over by someone who can’t read your mind. In this case, it would be ideal to find someone who doesn’t know you well, but as that may be difficult, really any other point of view would be helpful. You can use points where your audience is confused to focus on for rewriting the DNWs.
And that’s it for now, folks! I’m sure there are many points I didn’t touch on, and I’d be more than happy to see other people’s thoughts. Which of these points speak to you, which don’t, what else would you like to see? Fandom is a conversation, so let’s converse!
A/N: Many thanks to AnnaRobots and Kimikochi for extremely helpful feedback!
- Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay, abbreviated YKINMKATO, which fandom at some point started affectionately referring to as “kinktomato” ↩︎
- I have also seen people explicitly make note on the more contentious canon, i.e. “Russingon and Turleg count as canon to me.” This may be another option–guiding your author towards your own interpretation of canon and not leaving it up to them to make a judgment call. ↩︎
Mertiya Writes (and Draws) 