On occasion, I write drabbles.<\/p>\n
A drabble is a particularly unforgiving form a fiction. One hundred words. No more. No less.<\/p>\n
I’ve written sentences that barely get going at fifty words; a story at twice that<\/i> length must surely be impossible!<\/p>\n
I began writing drabbles because of, for all things, Strange New Worlds<\/i>, the Star Trek<\/i> short fiction contest that Pocket Books ran for a decade. One year, in a fit of pique, I decided that I would only<\/i> submit drabbles. “I’m determined to piss Dean Wesley Smith off!” I said, and I wrote and submitted ten. Some were good. Some were not so good. I don’t know if they pissed Smith off or not.<\/p>\n
The fantastic thing about a drabble is that it fits on a single sheet of paper, even in manuscript format. A single sheet! No extra postage necessary. A standard envelope is all you need. I felt good every time I dropped a drabble in the mailbox that summer.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if there is a secret to writing a drabble. One hundred words allows for very little. I think of a drabble as a “plot moment.” It should be complete in and of itself, but it suggests something larger.<\/p>\n
There are drabble communities on LiveJournal, and I watch them. Not to read the drabbles, though occasionally I’ll see a title that catches my attention. But because of the writing prompts. Each word, a word or an idea is suggested. Maybe something clicks. Or maybe not.<\/p>\n
There is a Sherlock Holmes drabble community<\/a>.<\/p>\n And I must admit — this one intrigues me. This one intrigues me very much. Because a Sherlock Holmes drabble would be very much a challenge.<\/p>\n Just consider Watson’s style as a narrator! Very mannered and verbiose, not qualities that would lend themselves to a drabble.<\/p>\n And yet, I’ve given Sherlock Holmes drabbles a try this week. Something about a challenge…<\/p>\n “Scientific Study<\/a>” is a response to the “7 Percent” challenge. This, obviously, would have been Holmes’ seven percent solution of cocaine. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Today, I wrote another — “After Reichenbach<\/a>” for the “Waistcoat” prompt.<\/p>\n Both were written, like the earlier drabbles for Strange New Worlds<\/i>, longhand and then revised. I’ve found that this is a system that works for me — sketch out the idea on paper (because I can judge the length to some extent), count the words, and start amending. “After Reichenbach” was heavily<\/i> amended; the first sheet of paper was a bloody mess of ink, the longhand copy (to incorporate the extensive changes) was only slightly<\/i> better.<\/p>\n Something I like about the drabble form is that it’s a quick hit. It can’t overstay its welcome, and it should leave the reader wanting more.<\/p>\n And it’s something that can be written in ten minutes or less.<\/p>\n The drabble isn’t for everyone, though. But for me? Challenges are fun. :cheers:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On occasion, I write drabbles. A drabble is a particularly unforgiving form a fiction. One hundred words. No more. No less. I’ve written sentences that barely get going at fifty words; a story at twice that length must surely be impossible! I began writing drabbles because of, for all things, Strange New Worlds, the StarContinue reading “On Drabble Writing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[737,29,4102],"class_list":["post-5067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-drabbles","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}