Markup View

Author: Kilyle

May 19th 2017 at 3:21:43 AM

I'm surprised this was raised back in 2013 and hasn't got a page up yet.  It's definitely an existing formula for fanfiction that I've seen everywhere.

I've been seeing it a lot while reading PersonOfInterest fics lately, which is why I decided to look up more info on it here.  But a quick AO3 search nets:
*Five Times John Let Harold Sleep and One Time He Didn't
*Five Times Nathan Died, and One Time He Didn't
*Five Times Reese and Finch Didn't Hug and One Time They Did
*Five Times John Lost Harold, and One Time He Found Him
*Shaw Is from Mars, Finch Is from Venus: Five Times Shaw and Finch Weren't on the Same Page (and One Time They Were)
*Five Times Reese Was There for Finch
*Five Times This Happened, and One Time That Happened
*Five Times Finch Compared Reese to Dillinger
*Five Times Harold and John Died Together (and One Time They Lived Together)
*Five Times the Machine Wooed Shaw

That's just the POI fandom.  It does appear that the 5+1 formula can be truncated to just 5, but the 5+1 is more common.  It's like a challenge format to encourage writers to just churn stuff out and exercise their imaginations, and some of them are pretty neat.

As far as a limit on examples, I'd be more inclined to say "Don't just post a name/link and run off -- explain why the example is worth looking at while exploring this format."  Because, yeah, there's tons of them, and obviously there needs to be a bit of weeding to keep the example list useful.