drabble request meme: meta

[owlmoose]

I started this as a response to auronlu's post regarding the current craze in the Final Fantasy fandom for drabbles and drabble exchanges. Then it got long and took on a life of its own, so here you go.

(BTW, for the purposes of this ramble, I'm using "drabble" interchangably with "ficlet" -- a very short one-shot story, anywhere up to let's say three thousand words, not just the more traditional 100-word drabble. I know some people are really picky about that terminology; I tend not to be. You have been warned.)

So, why drabbles? And are they taking away from people's interest in reading and/or writing longer stories? Personally, I am most focused on the collaborative novel right now -- it's my top priority, and when I have to choose between working on it or writing up random drabbles I'll usually chose the former. I'm more likely to look at the drabbles as an opportunity to take a break, clear my palate with something different. At least a couple of times a prompt has given me the opportunity to write up a plot bunny that I knew was never going to make a full-length story. And drabbles with enforced word counts are good practice for me; I tend to be long-winded, so I appreciate the ways a hard limit forces me to cut the fat and get to the essense of the scene (I hesitate to say "story", because I think very few true drabbles tell a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end). All of these are worthwhile ways to spend my time. Am I producing less on DSHnD? Possibly, but not in any way that's causing a negative effect, I don't think. I know I'm not spending as much time editing it compulsively, but maybe that's a good thing -- I can get into a cycle of overtweaking. Maybe it's better that I don't have as much time to poke at it, to rearrange the deck chairs.

But I do admit, the drabbles get much more feedback than my longer stories, and that's satisfying. When you write a story to order, you know that at least one person is going to read it, and chances are good that they'll review. I wonder if that isn't a large part of the attraction for some of us, knowing for a fact that someone out there cares that we have written this story. I parrot the party line that I write for myself and the feedback is gravy, but if that were really, really true, then why post it? It's not just for the warm fuzzies of a love note, or the useful feedback found in good concrit. I think it comes down to one basic thing: knowing that you have made a connection with someone through your writing. There's something very powerful about that.

I don't know whether drabble madness is taking away from production of longer stories or not. I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on larger cycles and patterns because I'm so very new to the fandom (posted my first story in April 2005, made my first fandom friends about a year ago, but have only really been involved on a more connected level in the last couple of months). Some people just don't like writing long chaptered works; some aren't really good at it (or don't think they are, anyway). But people are still working on epics; I see at least two people on my friends list updating them regularly, not counting DSHnD. Now, I do think it makes people less likely to read longer stories. But I have a hard time blaming anyone for that; why should I expect someone to invest their hard-earned free time in a 46-chapter epic when they can get several quick fixes by blasting through half a dozen drabbles in a couple of hours? And is that a bad thing? I'm not completely convinced that it is.

I don't have any answers; I almost never do. ;) Mostly, I just enjoy musing on the questions. As always, I welcome any thoughts.

Edit: What do you know, fanthropology is having almost the exact same conversation.

Comments

I

[kunstarniki.livejournal.com]

You are, as is your wont, clear-sighted and honest in your analysis. The drabbles are amusing to me whenever I am sufficiently familiar with the characters to understand them. Since I have no skill in this game, I must take my pleasure where I can. These little morsels seem more like challenges than writing as an art. It is all about trying to catch the reader and stay firmly enough on the canonic path that everyone is recognizable. They are bonbons, not a meal.

I hasten to state I have no quarrel with that. It is a different discipline. I write my 'feuilletons' for much the same reasons you give for doing drabbles. They are good practice and set down ideas in a form which leaves them fixed, yet accessible. I think writing drabbles is different from almost any other form in that without humour they are flat. Having no sense of humour, I must content myself with the less favoured path of the complete story/novel.

This is a most provocative entry. ;)

Re: I

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

They are bonbons, not a meal.

I think that is true. Although some of the drabble series I've seen, taken as a whole, can constitute a meal of sorts. Do half a dozen related drabbles make up a complete story? Maybe.

without humour they are flat

I don't know that I would go that far. But I do think a drabble needs a kicker of some sort, even if the punchline is deadly serious.

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Okay, having pondered a bit more.

I guess we're both in agreement on this: the drabble craze does take people away from reading the epics and longer pieces. Those take more time and commitment to read, just as they take a lot of sustained commitment to write. I'm as guilty as anyone of not jumping into those that have been around a while: yours is the only one I'm following, apart from two Aulus that have emerged since I started mine. I

Drabbles are an art form just like haiku which can be polished gems as well-realized as a good haiku in the right hands (cupcakemonster and mneme_forgets make me bow down in awe at the way they cause words to dance). For myself, I find the drabbles addicting and distracting -- why spend a week polishing a chapter when I can take half an hour to solve one tiny little knotty problem, which usually doesn't require me to address my weak points as a writer: plot, sustained longterm characterization, and multi-character interaction? The drabbles are fun and will garner me more reviews. And I'm unfortunately a comment whore.

I used to be a shortfic writer -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000-5000 words was normal for most of my vignettes. I'd work through a scene, a situation. I always had a few serials. In around 2000, LJ wasn't being used for fanfic (or at least I didn't know it, which may be a quite different thing), and fanfic writing centered around fandom forums. In my experience, things were very different. We had a great variety of writing styles and abilities all together, almost everyone posted a comment when someone posted, and the "archive" system meant people tended to go back and browse older work and keep up with the longer stuff... at first, sure, you'd play with the small scenes and challenges, but sooner or later, "real" fanfic writers got in on the "great" stories, the ones that people worked on over a long time. There was also a lot more poetry, which is a medium I miss. There weren't drabbles.

Challenges were usually once-a-month affairs, so the greatest body of fanfic writing work was not people writing to order or having quotas or themes to fulfill (homework assignments), but rather, people just picking up and writing their own thing.

The challenges help stretch one out of one's own rut to try new things. They guarantee readers (at least one). They are fun. They can trigger truly exquisite writing. But sometimes they also seem like work, and there's something very special to me about seeing what people come up with spontaneously. It is harder and more rewarding to supply your own challenges, and now it seems even harder and less rewarding since people are less likely to stop by and have a look.

So while I really do enjoy the drabbles and challenges, both playing with and reading them, sincerely, I want to promote people's more spontaneous and/or longterm from-the-heart work.

These are the biased and blinkered perspectives of someone who's just getting back into fanfic, though. I am still learning the advantages of this fleeting, and diffuse LJ environment, which has its own advantages.

(One other change: I'm pretty sure genfic was more common than ship about 5 years ago, though it may vary by fandom. I think the LOTR movies and HP may have swung things more that way.)

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that most of the chaptered fic on LJ right now is from the Auron/Lulu community, and I'm wondering about that. Because it's a pairing that's just become popular, so there are more long stories left to write? That's one of the themes on the fanthropology thread, that fewer people are writing epics because, in older fandoms, so many of the epics have already been written. They talk about a "been-there, done-that" feeling. Much easier to find something new to most readers in a short, punchy piece. Maybe. Or, maybe, once again it's the built-in audience thing. Because you have the community, you know there are people reading and following along.

You raise an excellent point about externally-generated challenges. It probably is better for discipline and ultimately more rewarding to write a challenge that comes from within. But then, wouldn't some people say that about original fic versus fanfic? Our characters, settings, and sometimes plots are externally imposed as well, and yet I think there is plenty of creativity and challenge in writing good fanfic. Not better, just different? Maybe.

Anyway, thanks for your response! I appreciate the comparison to your past experiences; this is all so new to me that I have no benchmark. The Internet has changed so much since 2000 -- fewer barries to access, more young people online, easier interaction via media like AIM and LJ. I have found very little community in the archives (I came to FF.net too late, and I have yet to post in FicWad; I probably ought to, since the main reason to post to FFN is eyeballs and I don't really get them there anyway), probably because it has all moved here.