Fandom meta: to love what I hate, or the drabble is always to blame

[escritoireazul]

Many people have been talking about drabbles lately, and kaalee's call for drabble links made me think about how I view drabbles, especially when I couldn't think of any specific examples off the top of my head.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm a member of a few different drabble communities, and I've written three or four myself (as long as you count the one that was the prequel to the remusremix ficathon), and there are times when I really like the idea of a drabble. (I'm defining a drabble the same way tipgardner quoted gblvr: a self-contained vignette of exactly 100 words, no more, no less. However, this also pertains to pieces of writing that are longer than 100 words, but aren't full length stories.) There are two or three writers who consistently churn out drabbles that catch my eye and that I've enjoyed reading, and any number of one or two shot drabbles that made me glad to be a reader.

However, none of them stuck with me, obviously, and that is why I also hate drabbling. Beyond the enjoyment from the actual reading itself, my favorite part of being a reader is the ability to recall my favorite stories, to share with others, to discuss and debate and enjoy together. I like to remember what I've read, and for the most part, I do. But when it comes to drabbles, no matter how much I enjoyed it at the time, I just can't pull it up later, because it's so fast and so small.

It's hard to write a good drabble; it takes time and effort, because, to me at least, it's much harder to write something clear, interesting, and concise, and 100 words is a very tiny amount of space to tell even a shadow of a story. But that's what makes it fun, the word constraints, and the effort to pare the story down to the bones, with only threads of sinew to hold it all together.

It surprises me that I enjoy drabbles at all; first and foremost, I'm a plot writer, and I like a long, complicated plot to carry the entire story. Characterization is wonderful, the writing itself (word choice, imagery, vocabulary, etc.) is important, but the beginning and the end of why I read and write is the plot itself. It's hard to find true plot in a drabble, and even more difficult to find a good plot handled well in one.

Comments

[illmantrim.livejournal.com]

very true. I like to think of drabbles as a way to express an emotion... not a full on story but a thought caught in glass or amber...

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Someone posted a rant on drabbles a couple weeks ago and I wish I remembered where it was, because I quite liked my answer. I really think drabbles are more for the writer than for the reader. It's a fun writing exercise, and I love whittling it down, adding and subtracting words until I have the story I want in the right amount of words. But as a reader, while I can appreciate them, they're just not satisfying and always leave me wanting more.