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I'm amused by the way a proposed FW report about a drabble wank instantly repeated the wank in the comments.
And people say it doesn't matter how many words a drabble has?
CLEARLY IT DOES.
ETA For utmost clarity, I am a diehard believer that they're 100 words exactly, not counting title. That's what a drabble IS.
I shall post a short essay I did about them many years ago to relieve my feelings and then stop being a cranky fandom ranter.
And here are some links about the history:
http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/drabbles.html
http://www.meades.org/drabble.html
In Defence of Drabbles
Drabbles need defending? Who knew? Well, maybe not, but they need petting and appreciating more than they get and that’s what I’m doing here.
I didn’t know what they were for a while; I saw people prefacing fics with ‘Drabble’ on the newsgroup where I first read fanfic and I thought it just meant a very short fic. I’m not alone. I posted some drabbles to fanfic.net and got the puzzled feedback,
“All of a sudden you have a lot of short - - well I don't know what to call them since they aren't long enough or complete enough to be stories. What's up with that? Usually you are one of my favorite authors.”
It doesn’t help that fanfic.net word counts them as 90 odd for some reason, forcing an insecure me to hand count - but I’m wandering.
When I found out what a drabble was, I was fascinated and set about writing one straight away. I produced, with ease, several 200 + word drabbles, or, to be more technically accurate, complete failures. It took me a while to get the hang of them but now they’re one of my favourite things to write.
So when I hear people saying “Yes, it’s all right, I suppose, but there isn’t much to it, is there? I mean, what’s the point? Why don’t you make it longer? I hate them,” I go ‘grr’ and fizz slightly. (That’s my husband speaking by the way; no one on LJ, or the net.). It’s an attitude I’ve come across before, though; as if the shortness of them makes them insignificant, trivial, easy to write.
Not so. Yes, I can write one, inspiration to posting in five minutes, but there are others I’ve taken thirty minutes or longer over, pulling and stretching to make it fit, agonising over cutting out a perfectly stunning adjective, a really, really clever phrase, a bit of dialogue whose wit is dazzling – and finding out, to my baffled, slightly resentful delight, that each excision, each slash of the blue pencil, left the drabble stronger, not weaker.
Drabbles are bloody hard to do. Consider: what makes a good fic? Without heading into contentious waters, I’d say the basics are firstly good grammar/spelling. Fine; a drabble can, should and must have that. Not a problem.
In character protagonists. Well, here a fanfic drabble has a slight advantage, right? One word, ‘Spike’ for instance, and you’ve got an instant image floating across the eyeballs of your reader and, possibly, a slight watering of the mouth, but let’s not make assumptions. Yes and no. Spike is legion. We all have our own Spikes. You still have to do a little work, just a little, unless you cheated with an Author’s Note that exceeds the word length of your drabble and goes into excruciating detail about where Spike is in his journey, if he’s got inside Buffy’s knickers yet, where precisely in season X your drabble takes place, etc. So fine, with a few telling words, you lightly sketch in Spike’s character, his ice-blue eyes, the way the moonlight glints off a fang and ...woops. There go twenty words.
Never mind. We all know what Spike looks like. Dialogue; that’s not a prerequisite of a short fic by any means, but it’s always fun. Spike, through his words can show us what he’s like, set the scene, get this plot – wait, there has to be a plot! Oh, shit ::hits word count:: 76! 76 already? No way!
At this point strong writers weep. Because you can’t have it all in a drabble. You get them talking, even a soliloquy, and it eats the words, just gobbles them up. It’s bye-bye to the atmospheric detailing of the dingy alley/crypt/graveyard/Magic Box or whatever and hello to the terse, ‘Spike pushed open the shop door’.
But a drabble has to have something to fill up the space; if there’s no time for character, dialogue or plot, then what the hell do I put on this blank, indifferent page?
Well, that’s just it. You have to have them all. You just have to have them tiny. Pared down. Scaled down, rather so that under a magnifying glass, they’re still there, still perfect.
And you have to have a killer last line. Because drabbles are like peanuts; they leave you wanting just one more.
So, David, husband mine? You try and write one; go on; I dare you.
And people say it doesn't matter how many words a drabble has?
CLEARLY IT DOES.
ETA For utmost clarity, I am a diehard believer that they're 100 words exactly, not counting title. That's what a drabble IS.
I shall post a short essay I did about them many years ago to relieve my feelings and then stop being a cranky fandom ranter.
And here are some links about the history:
http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/drabbles.html
http://www.meades.org/drabble.html
In Defence of Drabbles
Drabbles need defending? Who knew? Well, maybe not, but they need petting and appreciating more than they get and that’s what I’m doing here.
I didn’t know what they were for a while; I saw people prefacing fics with ‘Drabble’ on the newsgroup where I first read fanfic and I thought it just meant a very short fic. I’m not alone. I posted some drabbles to fanfic.net and got the puzzled feedback,
“All of a sudden you have a lot of short - - well I don't know what to call them since they aren't long enough or complete enough to be stories. What's up with that? Usually you are one of my favorite authors.”
It doesn’t help that fanfic.net word counts them as 90 odd for some reason, forcing an insecure me to hand count - but I’m wandering.
When I found out what a drabble was, I was fascinated and set about writing one straight away. I produced, with ease, several 200 + word drabbles, or, to be more technically accurate, complete failures. It took me a while to get the hang of them but now they’re one of my favourite things to write.
So when I hear people saying “Yes, it’s all right, I suppose, but there isn’t much to it, is there? I mean, what’s the point? Why don’t you make it longer? I hate them,” I go ‘grr’ and fizz slightly. (That’s my husband speaking by the way; no one on LJ, or the net.). It’s an attitude I’ve come across before, though; as if the shortness of them makes them insignificant, trivial, easy to write.
Not so. Yes, I can write one, inspiration to posting in five minutes, but there are others I’ve taken thirty minutes or longer over, pulling and stretching to make it fit, agonising over cutting out a perfectly stunning adjective, a really, really clever phrase, a bit of dialogue whose wit is dazzling – and finding out, to my baffled, slightly resentful delight, that each excision, each slash of the blue pencil, left the drabble stronger, not weaker.
Drabbles are bloody hard to do. Consider: what makes a good fic? Without heading into contentious waters, I’d say the basics are firstly good grammar/spelling. Fine; a drabble can, should and must have that. Not a problem.
In character protagonists. Well, here a fanfic drabble has a slight advantage, right? One word, ‘Spike’ for instance, and you’ve got an instant image floating across the eyeballs of your reader and, possibly, a slight watering of the mouth, but let’s not make assumptions. Yes and no. Spike is legion. We all have our own Spikes. You still have to do a little work, just a little, unless you cheated with an Author’s Note that exceeds the word length of your drabble and goes into excruciating detail about where Spike is in his journey, if he’s got inside Buffy’s knickers yet, where precisely in season X your drabble takes place, etc. So fine, with a few telling words, you lightly sketch in Spike’s character, his ice-blue eyes, the way the moonlight glints off a fang and ...woops. There go twenty words.
Never mind. We all know what Spike looks like. Dialogue; that’s not a prerequisite of a short fic by any means, but it’s always fun. Spike, through his words can show us what he’s like, set the scene, get this plot – wait, there has to be a plot! Oh, shit ::hits word count:: 76! 76 already? No way!
At this point strong writers weep. Because you can’t have it all in a drabble. You get them talking, even a soliloquy, and it eats the words, just gobbles them up. It’s bye-bye to the atmospheric detailing of the dingy alley/crypt/graveyard/Magic Box or whatever and hello to the terse, ‘Spike pushed open the shop door’.
But a drabble has to have something to fill up the space; if there’s no time for character, dialogue or plot, then what the hell do I put on this blank, indifferent page?
Well, that’s just it. You have to have them all. You just have to have them tiny. Pared down. Scaled down, rather so that under a magnifying glass, they’re still there, still perfect.
And you have to have a killer last line. Because drabbles are like peanuts; they leave you wanting just one more.
So, David, husband mine? You try and write one; go on; I dare you.
From:
no subject
Drabbles have a specific definition. The farthest I've seen it extended is the double drabble.
And it's a writing exercise. It is HARD to get it to come out
From:
no subject
No way in hell will I.
There exists a game I like to play and it has a name and rules and is harder than cryptic crosswords and when I post a drabble I want people to know what it is I just did.
I don't want them to think, Jane posted a super-short fic, what's up with that?
Call me a bitter diehard whiner all you like, people, but I see no reason for short fics not to be called ficlets and drabbles to be a word reserved for, well, drabbles.
Is that really too much to ask? I mean, really? ::baffled::