In the comic industry, a one-shot is a piece that is created as a pilot comic or stand-alone story. Many artists publish one-shots to test a possible new story, or to express information that would not fit with the story arc of a multiple-issue monthly series, particularly a long-running regular series. In the Japanese manga industry, the same concept is expressed by the term yomikiri (読み切り), which roughly translates to "read to the end" (implying no more to the story). See comedian Stand up comedian List of Comedians List of British comedians comics comic book comic strip underground comics alternative comics web comic sprite comics manga graphic novel List of comic characters This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same... For other uses, see Manga (disambiguation). ...

One-shot can also refer to a short anime story, or a short piece of fan fiction, where a fan fiction piece would only last one chapter. Recently, this usage has expanded to refer to any one chapter piece of literature, although one-shot is generally only used in this way for electronic literature.

One-shots in fanfiction are self-contained stories that are meant to be only one chapter long. They're usually divided into one of the following sections:

• A one-time event, like a climatic battle scene.
• The beginning or the end of a romantic relationship.
• A character study, or an introspective look into the pysche of the character.

There is no definite word limit for the length of a one-shot fanfiction. Usually, however, a one-shot is anything longer than 500 words in length. Shorter stories, called ficlets or drabbles, are usually 100-500 words in length. However, these number vary from one archive, community or fanfiction contest to the next.

There is also no definite style for one-shots in fanfiction. Songfics are usually one-shots, but one will find an often more diverse group of writing styles in one-shots. Styles or p.o.v.'s that don't work in longer, chaptered stories, such as present tense, second person pov or monologues, are far more frequent in one-shot fictions.