Fic In A Box Rules & Info 2025

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Schedule:

July 24-August 2: Nominations Pre-Gaming (participants can load tags from last year’s tagset into this tagset)
August 3-12: Nominations
August 13-16: Nominations Cleanup
August 17-August 31: Signups (Countdown)
August 20: Swap requests open
September 6: Assignments Out By This Date
September 7: Swap requests close
October 19: Assignments Due (Countdown)
November 9: Last Day To Submit Makeup Assignments
November 15: Work Reveals
November 29: Creator Reveals

All deadlines are at 10:00 PM EDT except for those in November, which will happen at 10:00 PM EST

Information

A gift exchange is an event where participants create fanworks to gift to each other. Fic In A Box is a fanwork exchange with a large minimum gifting requirement and several unique features:

• All participants in Fic In A Box are requesting 10,000 words of fanfiction by default, but can opt in to other mediums (such as art, podfic, knitting patterns, and so on). Participants who work in non-writing mediums are very welcome and will get specially matched (as long as they give the mods a heads-up) so they'll have an assignment they can complete.
• Participants have the option to split the 10k words (or equivalent) that they owe between several separate works (say, one fic of 3k and another of 7k) to reach 10k total.
• The minimum word count per work is 1k by default, but lower wordcount works will count if your recipient has opted into receiving them.
• Initial assignments are 10k for one person, but at the start of the exchange we run swaps which will give you the chance to spread that 10k out over multiple assignments for multiple recipients!

For mediums other than the written word, pretty much any medium will be accepted, as long as we can agree on a clear and easily checked equivalent to 1k of written fic. Participants who work in non-writing mediums get specially matched with participants who have opted in to receiving works of that kind so they'll have an assignment they can complete.

If you cannot complete the full 10k (or other medium equivalent) but have posted one or more smaller, complete works, you can default on just the remaining wordcount. You will then be guaranteed (via pinch hit if necessary) a gift equivalent to the amount submitted (rounded down to the nearest 1k). There are also options to "earn back" guaranteed minimum amount by taking pinch hits or completing your original assignment.

Are you new? Or confused? Fic In A Box is a complex exchange even for exchange veterans, so we thought that if we were going to invite a bunch of new people to the exchange we should provide a space where they can ask lots of questions throughout the process. This server is open to everyone (we won't kick you out if you've been doing FIAB for years already) but its purpose is to help people participate in the exchange, so it will probably be most useful/enjoyable if you're kinda confused about the exchange. Like FIAB itself, the server is an 18+ Choose Not To Warn space.

Join the FIAB Newbie Discord! (link)

Non-Dreamwidth Links:

• Email: ficinaboxmod@gmail.com
• AO3 Collection
• Tagset
• Automagic App (for browsing requests!)
• Tumblr

Dreamwidth Post Links:

• Screened Mod Contact Post
• Medium Rulesets
• Posting Guidelines
• Assignment Swaps
• Google Forms (Defaulting, Extensions, Summaries)
• Pinch Hitter Requests
• Fandom Promo

( Participant Expectations )

( Nominations Pre-Gaming )

( Nominations )

( Signups )

( Swaps )

( Assignments )

( Pinch Hits )

( Defaulting )

( Earning back your minimum after defaulting )

( Extensions )

( Delays )

Additional Rule & Schedule Updates

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Hello friends! It’s almost time for us to begin nominations pre-gaming. We have additional updates concerning the schedule, the rules post, and the medium opt-ins.

Time is shifted forward on all deadlines

We are updating the schedule to have an earlier deadline time this year. Last year, we found ourselves pushing checks and deadlines off to the next day on behind-the-scenes things, and realized that we hadn’t left ourselves enough time to do admin-y stuff. The new deadline will hopefully allow us to keep on top of the schedule.

All deadlines are now 10:00 PM EDT except for those in November, which will happen at 10:00 PM EST

(This is two hours earlier than before.)

Rule post updates:

We've significantly revised parts of the rules so that they're clearer to new participants and easier for everyone to find info in. We didn’t add anything we weren't already enforcing). The new rules will be posted by the end of the day July 22nd, and available for your perusal at that time!

The updated sections are:

• Official Communication (under "Participant Expectations")
• Sign Ups (whole section)
• Do Not Match Requests (under "Sign Ups", but calling this out specifically because it has more instructions now!)
• Swaps (whole section)
• Assignments (whole section)

We hope these updates will lead to a smoother experience for everyone!

We have a few more medium tweaks

We thought we were done but we found a couple more lying around, oops.

Illustrated Text (Visual Medium & Text Medium)

We updated this ruleset's description to more clearly explain that when you fill an illustrated text medium, the work as a whole needs to fill a requested relationship-field tag, but the individual parts don't.

For example, if you were filling an A/B relationship tag for a recip who'd opted into Medium Opt-In: Illustrated Text (Art & Writing) - In-Universe Newspaper Front Page then you need to make a newspaper front page that has both text and fanart and which depicts A/B in a romantic and/or sexual light…but the art or text components themselves don't individually need to both be shippy.

Medium Opt-In: Writing - Game Walkthrough
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Translation Analysis
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Product Description

These three mediums will now be updated to have “In-Universe” in front of them. The new tags will be:

• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Game Walkthrough
• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Translation Analysis
• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Product Description

Medium Opt-In: Writing - TTRPG Supplement

TTRPG Supplements will be moving into the Instructions Ruleset. This will allow any TTRPG Supplement to gain wordcount for included art or photos that may accompany the medium. The updated tag will be “Medium Opt-In: Instructions - TTRPG Supplement”

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - In-Universe Infographic
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Infographic
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Meta Infographic

We are condensing the Infographics tags down to two. “In-Universe Infographics” and “Meta Infographics” cover the two types of infographics that have been made in past rounds of the event, and we decided that this is a sufficiently small number of tags that they don’t need an umbrella tag. The “Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Infographic” tag will be retired.

Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard
Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard of Canon Scene(s)

We are condensing the Storyboard tags down to one. The “of Canon Scene(s)” specification for the second tag feels more appropriate for the optional details of a request rather than part of a medium tag. We will be retiring the “Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard of Canon Scene(s)” tag, and will retain the “Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard” tag.