Huh I never thought about this before — There are 2 completely different kinds of iteration in any kind of work. There’s rework loops wired to internal standards and expectations and rework loops wired to external tests and risks. Each loop you have to choose which kind it is
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Apparently each episode of Futurama spent a year in dev. South Park, I read somewhere, can still go from concept to execution in a week. You can tell, and not just from the extreme currency South Park manages to maintain. There are always frayed edges.https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/each-episode-of-futurama-takes-at-least-a-year-to-make/258736/ …
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I suspect the biggest popular successes have a much higher ratio of external to internal iteration. Partly because they have to, since they’re likely running lean budget-wise. But that also makes them more likely to break new ground (and suck and run aground as well).
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Critical and/or niche darlings otoh tend to be low E/I. In fact I’d say low E/I ratio that “works” initially does so by being born fully formed and therefore appealing mainly to an OCD type of consumer who won’t tolerate loose ends and frayed edges as an iterative work evolves.
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Low E/I vs high E/I. This is the choice between the curse of nerd fandom that might limit future broad appeal vs the curse of shoestring budget bootstrapping which risks sucking too much to ever get off the ground.
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Another point, internal and external loops don’t just differ in speed and locus of feedback. They differ in purpose. Internal feedback is about deciding what’s worth doing, external feedback is about figuring out if it works in an environment. QA is secondary in both.
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QA (quality assurance) is actually a trivial cost/risk trade off. Both you and your reader can detect typos for examples. Whether you do an extra copy editing pass or let the first few readers find them and complain/point out is just a cost/risk decision.
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Setting aside objective harmful risks (anything from consumers spending non-refundable money on bug-ridden things to planes crashing) QA is actually a function of the king of consumers you want and how foolish you’re willing to look.
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I am fairly willing to look foolish and tend to solve for readers who will be forgiving towards rough edges in the interest of getting to sillier, more speculative places. If you can’t get past a misplaced comma or misattributed quote, you’ll hate my schtick anyway
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End of conversation
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