In Defense of Drabbles

[tears_of_nienna]

Yes, this is an attempt to keep myself from going all lit-student crazy over certain spurious character studies. Deal.

I guess this has been rolling around in my mind for a while, but a recent rant over at fanficrants finally got me to put my thoughts into some kind of coherent order

Comments

[byslantedlight]

Yeay drabbles! I'm with you - I love writing drabbles! And I like reading drabbles too. They're bite-sized chunks of fandom, perfect for when you don't have time to read, but you want to drift with a story and all its implications... *g*

I had a quick look at the fanficrant entry (that I assume set you off) and just... *headdesk* It'd help if she knew what she was talking about - and the few correspondents that I read in the thread, too... As you say, drabbles aren't writing exercises any more than any other writing is an exercise (or just as much so). They're supposed to tell a whole story in 100 words, and that's the challenge of them - 100 words is neither impossible, nor too easy.

I do agree with her in hating "drabbles" that aren't drabbles - that are just unfinished pieces of fic, or where the author say something like "I'm three words over, but it's just three words so I'm posting anyway" - that's so not the point!

It would help massively if she'd done any research at all into what they were supposed to be, too, where they originated etc. It wasn't just random fans making it all up, starting off with short ficlets/vignettes and then deciding to put a random word count on it - even a quick glance at wiki should have given her the idea there was more to it than that... Stoopid people...

So... yeay, drabbles!

[tears_of_nienna]

Yeah, that was definitely the entry that touched off the spark. ;)

I do agree with her in hating "drabbles" that aren't drabbles - that are just unfinished pieces of fic, or where the author say something like "I'm three words over, but it's just three words so I'm posting anyway" - that's so not the point!

Yes! It's one thing if a drabble grows into a fic, but just randomly cropping a story into a drabble rarely works.

I mean, I don't count words when I'm reading a drabble, so if somebody sneaks an extra word or two in, and still claims it's 100 words, I'm not going to notice. But I feel like it's disingenuous in a way.