(no subject)

[salinea]

1. I've got a throatache, hopefully getting better. Just the week when I was blissfully all by myself at home, meh.

2. Wrote two drabbles from the drabble request

Harry Potter
Aconite
Remus/MacNair
313 words

and

Tokyo Babylon
Sugar
Hokuto, Karen
120 words

3. booklog_sff is now really kicking with the discussions starting about Curse of Chalion. Yay!

4. Something Positive holiday strips really, really amuse me. As we say in French, âmes sensibles s'abstenir, though.

Comments

Drabble

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

A drabble is a short story of EXACTLY one hundred words so your stories are not actaully drabbles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drabble

Re: Drabble

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I know this definition. There's not only one definition of the word. I use both. *shrugs*

Re: Drabble

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

As the article on wikipedia states clearly, the word is often misused. There is only one correct definition, that laid down over 20 years ago and enshrined by the publication by Beccon Publications of The Drabble Project and its subsequent volumes.

Re: Drabble

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

A word isn't defined by the wikipedia, or by a publication. It's defined by the consensus of the people who use it.

Re: Drabble

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

In general usage I would tend to agree with you, language evolves and is flexible.(*) However, technical terms such as Drabble, Sonnet, kilometre etc are only viable terms if their precise definition is maintained.

In the case of Drabble the use of the term for a specific Literary test and its definition in the rules of that contest make it a fixed an immutable definition.

(*) I also believe that whilst language evolves we should attempt to avoid explicitly erroneous usages becoming the accepted form.

Re: Drabble

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Generaly speaking I would agree with you, I rather like drabble being used for the specific form of 100-words story and keep ficlets for more flexible forms of short fics (under 500 words). But I'm lazy, and in the specific context of asking and giving small short fic upon simple prompts, people always (AFAICS) use the term "drabble request". Therefore I use it, in that context.

Nobody seems to be using ficlets anymore nowadays, I wonder why ^^

Do you know of any other good word for short forms?

Re: Drabble

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

People talk about 'Flash fiction' but i don't know if that fits your defintion. Ellen Datlow used to commission what she called 'short shorts' for OMNI but they were often 1000 words or so.

Drabble has been modified to Dribble for stories of exctly 5o words too. This defintion fails if the original is ignored.

Re: Drabble

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

'Flash fiction' to me is a story which is written in a flash. I think it comes from contest comms where you were supposed to post the fic less than 30 minutes after the prompts went up. While those stories are generally short, that's not what defines them. (and I certainly didn't write mine in a flash ^^)

Short shorts just doesn't work given the context of fanfic (where 1,000 words is medium lengthed). I didn't know about dribble, I kept calling 50 words fics half-drabble.

Re: Drabble

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

This isnt the palce to explain it all, I am sure, but from my background as a reader/critic of written SF the idea of fanfic as anything other than an occasional frippery is beyond me. Why do so many seemingly talented writers not write about their own characters in their own universes?
Maybe if you can explain it email me....

Re: Drabble

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Oh, boy. There's a lot to it. There's not one reason people write fanfics, in any case. For most people it's a hobby, it's both a creative one, a way to express love/interest in a canon, and way to connect and share stuff within a community.

And using other characters and other settings can be just as "original" as original fics. Think of it as collage. It's not because one uses material which belonged to previous works that the final work isn't new or worthy in itself.

It's an appropriation of a ubiquitously broadcasted material by people instead of being simple readers/buyers, and thus a subversion. It takes place out of the frame that work of arts are sold and bought, but instead are exchanged by friends. And it's an appropriation which often has a context of a less sexist, heteronormative reading of the text (the SFF genre isn't yet the most welcoming to women, despite the fact that they're the biggest readers of fantasy). It's folktales. People taking a story and re-telling them, and re-telling them.

There's a bunch of ways to analyze fanfics and to see it's got worth, both as a creative work and as a cultural community.

[dizilla.livejournal.com]

not going to jump in to the discussion already here... but in essence, as long as it's under 500 words it can be considered a drabble. It's hard for me to keep to 100 words so I tend to do double or triple drabbles. ^^;; As for defining stories by word length, I always like to use this site as a guide:
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp162.html

Even there the author indicates it's mainly defined by the fandom and fen you're writing for.

-Yeah I finally got over my cold a few days ago and just when I find out I have my nephew for the week, I develop another cough. >_> Dontcha love how that always happens? XD

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Ooh fun informations. I guess it was flash fic actually. *doesn't like the term* oh well...

arghness for cold.

[catrionamacnair.livejournal.com]

Hope you get better soon!

And I liked both stories.. regardless of whether they are technically drabbles or not.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Yeah, I can't find myself caring much about the name ^^

[scriva.livejournal.com]

When I read about your throatache, I had to think for a moment: but throatache is not transmittable via the internet.

I hope you are feeling better soon. And, yay, for a little creativity push. ^^

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is XD

[scriva.livejournal.com]

I should have added that, since yesterday, I have a throatache as well. That's why I had the strange idea.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

aaah, that makes more sense.

Hihi, stranger things have happened ^^