Drabbles. And also other short fic.
Off the meds. Am procastinating. Wanna talk writing meta. I haven’t done that for too long. I used to write essays, you know? I miss that about my old fandom. I want to do that again.
Let’s talk drabbles and other short fic, since there seem to be so few people on my flist who write them and so many who have mentioned they aren’t any good at writing short fic. Writing short fic is easy. There are some few basic principles which you discover over time, or are shown, and then you just walk around picking up ideas and attaching them to the right writing principle. Easy as pie.
For me, writing short fic is about having a good last line and making sure the rest of the fic leads up to it. I’ve written many a drabble by writing the last line first, then the one before that and so on.
So here’s how I do it. I’ll write it all snotty because it’s most efficient but I'm not meaning it to be eternal truth. (but also I’m right so listen and learn :p )
1.
The simplest drabble you can write is one where you describe a situation, then add the unexpected twist in the end that puts the rest of the drabble in a new context. So your reader will pause and read the drabble again, this time with new understanding. Easiest version of this is holding back a piece of information up until the end, like here:
Karl isn’t one to spy on other people’s mail, even if it’s just his dorm mate’s, who he barely knows and who doesn’t seem to be overly interested in making nice with him either. She rarely gets any mail though and he’s brought the package up to their room for her in the first place, so when he sees the open cardboard box standing on the desk, he thinks, what the frak, and peers inside.
It’s a palette of what he thinks are acrylics.
Karl snorts a laugh.
Who would have thought? He never would have figured Thrace the type.
Acrylics
The danger with those drabbles is that they’re totally overused, so this gets tiring fast. Also the drabble can look forced fast, especially if it’s challenging to keep the piece of information out of the text up until the last line. So I’d suggest not overusing these.
A less overt version of this would be Misconceptions, including a revelation about Gaeta (not one of my best drabbles though, I think). There’s also Old News which has the added bonus of playing a twist on a canon scene (the important part here is, IMO, that you start with the backstory, not with the canon. If you start with the canon, then add the backstory, it looks like you attached your backstory to the canon artifically, which is not what you want. Doing this often doesn’t work well in long fic because backstory often scares readers away, especially at the beginning. Drabbles are so short though that you can dare your readers a little. Once they’ve clicked the link, they’re likely to read all hundred words. They’re cool like that. ;) )
I would, however, not say that there’s an unexpected twist in Happily Ever After- that’s more like an additional bit of crack there at the end. :) The reason this is not a twist is, this doesn’t put the scene in a new context. Felix making CAG does in no way change the perception of the rest of the fic, which is about Felix’ interesting notions of how to be a dad. On the other hand, Parting of Ways takes its time to introduce the backstory of Helo and Felix, explaining what the situation we’re in feels like to Felix, and then there’s the point when the additional juicy bit about Baltar comes in, again changing the reader’s perception of the drabble.
2.
There are other ways of putting a drabble in a new context by way of the last line. Personally I think the most clever one I’ve ever written was this one:
“Is that your acceptance letter?” his mother asked when he sat down at her bedside.
“Yes, it is,” Karl said. “I’m going to flight school on Caprica.”
“We can’t afford...”
“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted her. “I’ll make do. And as soon as I can, I’ll send money home for all of you. Pilots make lots and lots of money.”
She smiled, leaning into his touch with a sigh when he caressed her cheek. For a moment, her eyes unfocussed, finally resting on the paper in his hand.
“Is that your acceptance letter?” she asked.
Karl tried to smile.
Bearer of News
Obviously the last two lines change the whole situation. I remember I wrote this drabble without knowing where I was going, trying around a lot (as I did with most of my Helo drabbles), writing about Helo sitting at his mom’s bedside and trying to find a good way to end this. It was the most unexpected twist I could come up with.
Similarly, Remembrance tells the reader in the last line that he’s in the present of canon, not in Karl’s past and therefor this is a memory of dead people. So that’s a rather subtle version of the same principle. In Penelope, we learn in the last line that this isn’t the genre of romance as we might have expected originally- it’s a twist of mood. In I Betcha You Can't, a little of this writing principle comes into play, too (I warn you, one time this fic was banned from a challenge by virtue of not being funny.)
3.
Sometimes, you think you have a good last line but you can’t make it work because your readers would need additional information before the twist in the last line starts working. So there you are with a good last line but you can’t get a drabble written where the last line works! Oh no! :) In that case, sometimes I end up figuring out what piece of information it is my readers need in order to appreciate the last line. Then, I work it into the drabble, usually at the beginning because I don’t want one important bit of information be followed by another immediately. There isn’t a lot of space in a drabble so it’s usually new information at the beginning, some blah in the middle, and the twist at the end.
One thing I do a lot with this is, I make the last line a repetetion of the first line. So I give the first line, explain the situation and then use a variation of the first line/thought again to expand on the original notion. For example:
Only rooks drank ambrosia on an empty stomach but Helo had a plan. It almost worked too. In the morning, he only left his rack to puke; but the important part was that he woke up thinking Shit, I’ll never drink that much again instead of Boomer is frakking Chief Tyrol.
It worked beautifully for all of five minutes.
Groaning, Helo crawled back into bed, trying to not remember opening the armory’s hatch and... Gods, had he been the only one on board who hadn’t known?
Now he felt nauseated and ridiculous.
Maybe this hadn’t been his best plan ever.
Best Laid Plans
Plan -> what he did -> not his best plan. Easy, no? Other variations: Helo correcting a false impression about Gaeta in Misconceptions (different fic from the one above). Gaeta reaching a conclusion about the rules of fraternization, which I made up and therefor had to explain first in A Helping Hand. Young Gaius learning how to talk properly in Semantics, except he doesn’t quite have the hang of it. And another variation that’s also one of my personal favorites is this Felix/Dee drabble: Another life.
Longish version of this would be Lilacs, a fic just long enough that I don’t have to introduce the point (the things Hot Dog is missing) quite at the beginning.
4.
Sometimes, you don’t want a punchline because you’re meaning to write about an interesting line of thought (the trick being to find out that that’s what you want to do, of course! ;) ). Figuring out how to write this is easy because you just have to go through the motions of the interesting though process, then wrap it up with a snappy line that completes the picture. The hard part is coming up with a trail of thought that makes sense. :) You want to say something new here. If it’s a thought already expressed in another fic you’ve written or read, don’t write the drabble. Seriously. It isn’t worth the effort. In my experience, this only works if you can say something that you feel hasn’t been said like this before. Never used it in the Harry Potter fandom. ;) Also, tricky part of this certainly is finding a nice balance between thought and action. This one, I think, might be a good example:
Galen meets up with Gaeta once a week to brief him on supplies and schedules. It’s easy to get back into the routine; it all came back to him as soon as he put on his gear. The only thing that has changed is Gaeta, who always looks tired now, and gray, reminding Galen he’s guilty, no matter he cut the man’s chains.
Galen feels there are things he could say to make it better; there are ways to express that he’s sorry although there is nothing he could say he’s sorry for. He thinks he should say, This is my fault, too, and We should have known it was you all along. He wants to hear Gaeta answer, You weren’t supposed to know. That was the whole point. Sometimes, Galen wonders if he doesn’t speak up only because he knows that wouldn’t be what Gaeta would answers. But the truth is that he just can’t come up with the right words, and there never seems to be an opening either.
“Listen, Gaeta,” he says abruptly when they're working through the fuel report, hesitating. Whatever words he wanted to use, they are gone as soon as he opens his mouth. Galen clears is voice. “Are you alright?” he asks instead.
Gaeta glances up. “I’m fine,” he says curtly, eyes back on his clipboard already.
At first, Galen puts it down as a rebuff. But the next day, he overhears Barolay asking the very same thing in the mess, and Gaeta just gives her a look before turning away, not answering at all. Not by way of words, anyway. The message conveyed by his eyes is clear and cutting.
Gaeta isn’t one to like relying on words, either, Galen thinks. Maybe he doesn’t know the right ones just like Galen. Maybe Galen should stop worrying about it overall.
He still asks him again one week later, and Gaeta still tells him that he’s alright.
One day, it might even stop being a lie.
Words
Justice is a lot like this as well, this time it’s Helo thinking about Baltar and making comparisons to Gaeta. Similarly, Scientific Interest with Gaius pondering Head!Six. In a drabble, I did something like this one time here in another of my personal favorites: Relics of War. I’m starting to notice that my favorites are always the ones that don’t quite fit my structuring schematics. :) A longish version of this would be Wings about Tyrol and Gaeta sharing a friendly moment (not that kind of friendly).
This is not that different from #3, really.
5
Sometimes you don’t want to go for a punchline, but what you’re meaning to write about is an interesting, funny, special or otherwise unusual moment. In that case you don’t want a punchline because you don’t want to change the perception of the situation. And you don’t have any trail of thoughts to progress in your fic because there are no thoughts, there’s just a situation. I get these a lot because I have a strange sense of humor, so for example I think people might like to read about sex and math.
The idea is born while they are drunk but is carried out diligently while they are sober, since, as Gaeta points out, you cannot possibly process higher math inebriated... Even if you tackle the matter with a hands-on kind of approach.
Kat remembers the totally unexpected sly look Lt. Gaeta shot her when she first asked him about remedial lessons in jump math. She cracks up again.
Of course, that also has to do with the fingers sliding over her stomach, up her lower ribs, tickling. When they grace the underside of her breasts just so, sighs and giggles interlace. Gods, she needs air, and she needs to be frakked.
"So," Gaeta says in a low voice. "You've just defined your central point, Galactica, as jump point zero. Now, you calculate all the other ships' position vectors in relation to the central point..." She giggles again when his fingers trail down her torso, each hand drawing a line from her breasts towards her belly button, serving as Galactica. "You make sure that no two ships jump into the same spot by keeping all relations constant."
He shoots her an earnest look, crouched between her legs, wild curls brushing the ceiling of her rack, and she can't help but crack up again about the deadpan look on his face.
"Okay," she manages between fits, while his hands travel lower still. "Got it... frak!" A thumb brushes over her clit. She's breathing faster, all of a sudden. Her abdominal muscles are hurting. "Say... Lieutenant... how exactly would you advise me to... execute ... the jump, post-prep?"
Gaeta leans forward, his thumb working a steady rhythm now, the slyness back in his eyes. "At this point, Recruit," he says with a twitch of his lips. "you would just have to push the right button."
Slowly, he slides into her.
Private Lessons
I find these are very easy because you only have to lay out your obscure scene. Then, I find it is important to conclude your fic not with a line that releases the tension (say Kat having an orgasm, in this case) but with a line that indicates the story goes on and the tension is raised. Because short fic isn’t long enough to raise a substantial amount of tension that you can relief. Relieving the tension is basically boring in such a short fic. It’s like you go, “Look, conflict! Oh, over already.” ;) You want to make it memorable, so you have to give a reason to dwell on it, so you need an indication that this isn’t all there is- it’s just a moment, and the fic goes on from here. So you tell your funny, interesting or special moment and then you indicate that the characters move away to a different level, point or place.
Here’s a non-funny drabble for comparison, the sequel of “Best Laid Plans” with a less obscure scene:
Boomer tracked him down at lunchtime, taking a seat across from him. Helo just ate on. He still felt hung-over like hell.
“Thank you for not ratting us out,” she said firmly.
“You know I wouldn’t.” Crooking a smile, he glanced up. “Have an apple.”
“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be grateful.” Boomer ignored the apple and focused on him. “Seriously. Thank you.”
He shrugged, swallowing. “Hope it’s worth the fun.”
Boomer smiled. “It’s not just fun,” she said. “Galen wants to build us a house.”
Smiling became just a bit harder. “Lucky bastard.”
Is he ever.
Boomer’s smile grew.
That Girl
Other drabbles of this kind include Unfit To Represent The Fleet where Helo is a model, the sequel Back on Track (both of which end on the note of thinking of the future, and the next step in Helo’s life), and Kara having filthy dreams in A Night's Rest... and about what she did when she got over the shock. ;)
That’s it! That’s all my ways of writing short fic. :)
Hope it was of interest.
Also I hope this will make people write more short fic? Short fic is good. :)
Let’s talk drabbles and other short fic, since there seem to be so few people on my flist who write them and so many who have mentioned they aren’t any good at writing short fic. Writing short fic is easy. There are some few basic principles which you discover over time, or are shown, and then you just walk around picking up ideas and attaching them to the right writing principle. Easy as pie.
For me, writing short fic is about having a good last line and making sure the rest of the fic leads up to it. I’ve written many a drabble by writing the last line first, then the one before that and so on.
So here’s how I do it. I’ll write it all snotty because it’s most efficient but I'm not meaning it to be eternal truth. (but also I’m right so listen and learn :p )
1.
The simplest drabble you can write is one where you describe a situation, then add the unexpected twist in the end that puts the rest of the drabble in a new context. So your reader will pause and read the drabble again, this time with new understanding. Easiest version of this is holding back a piece of information up until the end, like here:
Karl isn’t one to spy on other people’s mail, even if it’s just his dorm mate’s, who he barely knows and who doesn’t seem to be overly interested in making nice with him either. She rarely gets any mail though and he’s brought the package up to their room for her in the first place, so when he sees the open cardboard box standing on the desk, he thinks, what the frak, and peers inside.
It’s a palette of what he thinks are acrylics.
Karl snorts a laugh.
Who would have thought? He never would have figured Thrace the type.
Acrylics
The danger with those drabbles is that they’re totally overused, so this gets tiring fast. Also the drabble can look forced fast, especially if it’s challenging to keep the piece of information out of the text up until the last line. So I’d suggest not overusing these.
A less overt version of this would be Misconceptions, including a revelation about Gaeta (not one of my best drabbles though, I think). There’s also Old News which has the added bonus of playing a twist on a canon scene (the important part here is, IMO, that you start with the backstory, not with the canon. If you start with the canon, then add the backstory, it looks like you attached your backstory to the canon artifically, which is not what you want. Doing this often doesn’t work well in long fic because backstory often scares readers away, especially at the beginning. Drabbles are so short though that you can dare your readers a little. Once they’ve clicked the link, they’re likely to read all hundred words. They’re cool like that. ;) )
I would, however, not say that there’s an unexpected twist in Happily Ever After- that’s more like an additional bit of crack there at the end. :) The reason this is not a twist is, this doesn’t put the scene in a new context. Felix making CAG does in no way change the perception of the rest of the fic, which is about Felix’ interesting notions of how to be a dad. On the other hand, Parting of Ways takes its time to introduce the backstory of Helo and Felix, explaining what the situation we’re in feels like to Felix, and then there’s the point when the additional juicy bit about Baltar comes in, again changing the reader’s perception of the drabble.
2.
There are other ways of putting a drabble in a new context by way of the last line. Personally I think the most clever one I’ve ever written was this one:
“Is that your acceptance letter?” his mother asked when he sat down at her bedside.
“Yes, it is,” Karl said. “I’m going to flight school on Caprica.”
“We can’t afford...”
“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted her. “I’ll make do. And as soon as I can, I’ll send money home for all of you. Pilots make lots and lots of money.”
She smiled, leaning into his touch with a sigh when he caressed her cheek. For a moment, her eyes unfocussed, finally resting on the paper in his hand.
“Is that your acceptance letter?” she asked.
Karl tried to smile.
Bearer of News
Obviously the last two lines change the whole situation. I remember I wrote this drabble without knowing where I was going, trying around a lot (as I did with most of my Helo drabbles), writing about Helo sitting at his mom’s bedside and trying to find a good way to end this. It was the most unexpected twist I could come up with.
Similarly, Remembrance tells the reader in the last line that he’s in the present of canon, not in Karl’s past and therefor this is a memory of dead people. So that’s a rather subtle version of the same principle. In Penelope, we learn in the last line that this isn’t the genre of romance as we might have expected originally- it’s a twist of mood. In I Betcha You Can't, a little of this writing principle comes into play, too (I warn you, one time this fic was banned from a challenge by virtue of not being funny.)
3.
Sometimes, you think you have a good last line but you can’t make it work because your readers would need additional information before the twist in the last line starts working. So there you are with a good last line but you can’t get a drabble written where the last line works! Oh no! :) In that case, sometimes I end up figuring out what piece of information it is my readers need in order to appreciate the last line. Then, I work it into the drabble, usually at the beginning because I don’t want one important bit of information be followed by another immediately. There isn’t a lot of space in a drabble so it’s usually new information at the beginning, some blah in the middle, and the twist at the end.
One thing I do a lot with this is, I make the last line a repetetion of the first line. So I give the first line, explain the situation and then use a variation of the first line/thought again to expand on the original notion. For example:
Only rooks drank ambrosia on an empty stomach but Helo had a plan. It almost worked too. In the morning, he only left his rack to puke; but the important part was that he woke up thinking Shit, I’ll never drink that much again instead of Boomer is frakking Chief Tyrol.
It worked beautifully for all of five minutes.
Groaning, Helo crawled back into bed, trying to not remember opening the armory’s hatch and... Gods, had he been the only one on board who hadn’t known?
Now he felt nauseated and ridiculous.
Maybe this hadn’t been his best plan ever.
Best Laid Plans
Plan -> what he did -> not his best plan. Easy, no? Other variations: Helo correcting a false impression about Gaeta in Misconceptions (different fic from the one above). Gaeta reaching a conclusion about the rules of fraternization, which I made up and therefor had to explain first in A Helping Hand. Young Gaius learning how to talk properly in Semantics, except he doesn’t quite have the hang of it. And another variation that’s also one of my personal favorites is this Felix/Dee drabble: Another life.
Longish version of this would be Lilacs, a fic just long enough that I don’t have to introduce the point (the things Hot Dog is missing) quite at the beginning.
4.
Sometimes, you don’t want a punchline because you’re meaning to write about an interesting line of thought (the trick being to find out that that’s what you want to do, of course! ;) ). Figuring out how to write this is easy because you just have to go through the motions of the interesting though process, then wrap it up with a snappy line that completes the picture. The hard part is coming up with a trail of thought that makes sense. :) You want to say something new here. If it’s a thought already expressed in another fic you’ve written or read, don’t write the drabble. Seriously. It isn’t worth the effort. In my experience, this only works if you can say something that you feel hasn’t been said like this before. Never used it in the Harry Potter fandom. ;) Also, tricky part of this certainly is finding a nice balance between thought and action. This one, I think, might be a good example:
Galen meets up with Gaeta once a week to brief him on supplies and schedules. It’s easy to get back into the routine; it all came back to him as soon as he put on his gear. The only thing that has changed is Gaeta, who always looks tired now, and gray, reminding Galen he’s guilty, no matter he cut the man’s chains.
Galen feels there are things he could say to make it better; there are ways to express that he’s sorry although there is nothing he could say he’s sorry for. He thinks he should say, This is my fault, too, and We should have known it was you all along. He wants to hear Gaeta answer, You weren’t supposed to know. That was the whole point. Sometimes, Galen wonders if he doesn’t speak up only because he knows that wouldn’t be what Gaeta would answers. But the truth is that he just can’t come up with the right words, and there never seems to be an opening either.
“Listen, Gaeta,” he says abruptly when they're working through the fuel report, hesitating. Whatever words he wanted to use, they are gone as soon as he opens his mouth. Galen clears is voice. “Are you alright?” he asks instead.
Gaeta glances up. “I’m fine,” he says curtly, eyes back on his clipboard already.
At first, Galen puts it down as a rebuff. But the next day, he overhears Barolay asking the very same thing in the mess, and Gaeta just gives her a look before turning away, not answering at all. Not by way of words, anyway. The message conveyed by his eyes is clear and cutting.
Gaeta isn’t one to like relying on words, either, Galen thinks. Maybe he doesn’t know the right ones just like Galen. Maybe Galen should stop worrying about it overall.
He still asks him again one week later, and Gaeta still tells him that he’s alright.
One day, it might even stop being a lie.
Words
Justice is a lot like this as well, this time it’s Helo thinking about Baltar and making comparisons to Gaeta. Similarly, Scientific Interest with Gaius pondering Head!Six. In a drabble, I did something like this one time here in another of my personal favorites: Relics of War. I’m starting to notice that my favorites are always the ones that don’t quite fit my structuring schematics. :) A longish version of this would be Wings about Tyrol and Gaeta sharing a friendly moment (not that kind of friendly).
This is not that different from #3, really.
5
Sometimes you don’t want to go for a punchline, but what you’re meaning to write about is an interesting, funny, special or otherwise unusual moment. In that case you don’t want a punchline because you don’t want to change the perception of the situation. And you don’t have any trail of thoughts to progress in your fic because there are no thoughts, there’s just a situation. I get these a lot because I have a strange sense of humor, so for example I think people might like to read about sex and math.
The idea is born while they are drunk but is carried out diligently while they are sober, since, as Gaeta points out, you cannot possibly process higher math inebriated... Even if you tackle the matter with a hands-on kind of approach.
Kat remembers the totally unexpected sly look Lt. Gaeta shot her when she first asked him about remedial lessons in jump math. She cracks up again.
Of course, that also has to do with the fingers sliding over her stomach, up her lower ribs, tickling. When they grace the underside of her breasts just so, sighs and giggles interlace. Gods, she needs air, and she needs to be frakked.
"So," Gaeta says in a low voice. "You've just defined your central point, Galactica, as jump point zero. Now, you calculate all the other ships' position vectors in relation to the central point..." She giggles again when his fingers trail down her torso, each hand drawing a line from her breasts towards her belly button, serving as Galactica. "You make sure that no two ships jump into the same spot by keeping all relations constant."
He shoots her an earnest look, crouched between her legs, wild curls brushing the ceiling of her rack, and she can't help but crack up again about the deadpan look on his face.
"Okay," she manages between fits, while his hands travel lower still. "Got it... frak!" A thumb brushes over her clit. She's breathing faster, all of a sudden. Her abdominal muscles are hurting. "Say... Lieutenant... how exactly would you advise me to... execute ... the jump, post-prep?"
Gaeta leans forward, his thumb working a steady rhythm now, the slyness back in his eyes. "At this point, Recruit," he says with a twitch of his lips. "you would just have to push the right button."
Slowly, he slides into her.
Private Lessons
I find these are very easy because you only have to lay out your obscure scene. Then, I find it is important to conclude your fic not with a line that releases the tension (say Kat having an orgasm, in this case) but with a line that indicates the story goes on and the tension is raised. Because short fic isn’t long enough to raise a substantial amount of tension that you can relief. Relieving the tension is basically boring in such a short fic. It’s like you go, “Look, conflict! Oh, over already.” ;) You want to make it memorable, so you have to give a reason to dwell on it, so you need an indication that this isn’t all there is- it’s just a moment, and the fic goes on from here. So you tell your funny, interesting or special moment and then you indicate that the characters move away to a different level, point or place.
Here’s a non-funny drabble for comparison, the sequel of “Best Laid Plans” with a less obscure scene:
Boomer tracked him down at lunchtime, taking a seat across from him. Helo just ate on. He still felt hung-over like hell.
“Thank you for not ratting us out,” she said firmly.
“You know I wouldn’t.” Crooking a smile, he glanced up. “Have an apple.”
“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be grateful.” Boomer ignored the apple and focused on him. “Seriously. Thank you.”
He shrugged, swallowing. “Hope it’s worth the fun.”
Boomer smiled. “It’s not just fun,” she said. “Galen wants to build us a house.”
Smiling became just a bit harder. “Lucky bastard.”
Is he ever.
Boomer’s smile grew.
That Girl
Other drabbles of this kind include Unfit To Represent The Fleet where Helo is a model, the sequel Back on Track (both of which end on the note of thinking of the future, and the next step in Helo’s life), and Kara having filthy dreams in A Night's Rest... and about what she did when she got over the shock. ;)
That’s it! That’s all my ways of writing short fic. :)
Hope it was of interest.
Also I hope this will make people write more short fic? Short fic is good. :)