On drabbles

[daemonluna]

Dear Fandom,

A drabble is not a short-short story, a scene, a vignette, or a ficlet. A drabble is exactly one hundred words. That's what makes it a drabble. The challenge therein lies in fitting what you want to say into a very small space with a very specific limitation, often with a last line that rewrites the reader's expectations.

Three or four paragraphs? 264-word drabbles? Cut that shit out.

Sincerely,
Me.

(Okay, sometimes it's up to a hundred words, according to Wikipedia. But still.)

And now, I need to go write some of the drabble that I owe assorted people. And yeah, deal with the low blood sugar.

Comments

[zulu.livejournal.com]

*raises hand*

Guilty.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

(looming over you, ready to count words) *g*

[meadowlion.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

ide_cyan has ranted on this topic a number of times as well, and someone else once wrote a really cool entry about how maintaining the seemingly limiting 100-word definition of drabbles helped also define them as an art form that took skill and effort to create.