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violsvaThis is going up too late for Three Sentence Ficathon, and too early for any drabble challenge that I know about. (![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
seasonsofdrabbles is the big one.) But, well, now is when it was finished.
And I like short fiction for its own sake. I like writing it, I like seeing a prompt, having an idea, writing, finishing, and posting within an hour or two. I like editing something to absolutely polished, shining prose levels in a way that is impossible or at least enormously time consuming for longer works. I like having five different ideas in my head and being able to write all of them, if I want to.
Also, there's a pandemic on, and even before then things were stressful. Sometimes 100 words is all you've got. Doesn't mean you shouldn't write those 100 words anyway. It can feel like it; but drabbles are worthwhile fics in themselves. For that matter, sometimes these days all I can read is 100 words.
So first of all, a note on terminology. A drabble is exactly 100 words long.* That is inherent in its definition. A work of fiction which is not exactly 100 words long is not a drabble. This is my hill and I will die on it.
But there are lots of other very short stories. One sentence fiction, twitfics, 55 fiction, 60 word stories, three sentence fiction, 221bs, double drabbles, triple drabbles (etc.), and all kinds of counted-word and non-counted fiction. In fandom these can all be generally called ficlets.**
I have posted over 30,000 words of very short fiction in the last ten years, including over 70 drabbles.
Most of this advice is going to be relevant to all ficlets. Some of it is more relevant to counted-word fiction, by which I mean stories that have a mandatory exact wordcount, whether it's 60 words or 100 words or 221 words.***
So, there are two main problems when writing very short fiction: subject matter and details.
Subject Matter: Narrow Your Scope
One hundred words is enough space to do two things: first, establish a situation, and second, deliver the punchline.
The punchline does not have to be humourous. It can be tragic or romantic or horrifying or orgasmic or angsty. It can just be the comfortable fulfillment of the story's premise, without any surprise attached. (Yes, that was a lot of shilling. Studying examples is how you learn.) All of these are fine. But basically, you have the setup, and the summing up. And then you're done.
A three sentence fic makes this even more evident: one sentence to establish the situation. One sentence of what's happening. One sentence to finish it. That's all there is.
You do not have room for detailed character study unless that is the entire point of your story. (Often it is, in which case you don't also have room for plot.) You don't have room for setting description unless the setting is the most important thing. If all you have is three sentences, you don't have the space for witty banter.
As things get longer, of course, you have more space. If you have five hundred words to play with, then definitely focus on the setting and details and gorgeous prose, as long as you aren't also trying to fit a short story's worth of plot in there too.
Because drabbles are about one moment. You don't need to know exactly what happened before this moment of dialogue, or what happens next, or what's happening around it. You don't have to do any of the planning you might do for a longer fic, but you also don't have the space to let the scene lead in and develop naturally. You've got 100 words.
Depending on your style and how you usually write, it may even be easier for you to write a scene at full length, and then single out the most important 100 words. This is definitely not how I write, but it is how some people write.
So if you are the kind of writer who feels beset by WIPs and all your ideas get longer and longer and you feel like you never finish anything, consider trying to cut an idea down to the most essential 100, or 500, or 1000 words. Consider trying to sum up the most important parts of an AU or a scenario in as few words as possible. Consider looking at an existing story, figuring out the absolute minimum it needs to have added to be complete as it is, and then just writing that, and posting it, and letting it go. If you have more ideas than you know what to do with, some of them can be drabbles.
They don't have to! There's nothing wrong with a story that's 1200 words long, or 756 words long, or 112 words long. There's nothing wrong with long WIPs, even if they stay In Progress for years. And if you want to expand on a ficlet later, you always can. But if you are writing for a drabble challenge, you are going to have to cut.
Trust Your Audience
If you are writing fanfic, and even if you're not, you can actually cut a lot more than you may think.
Because you don't have to spell everything out. You don't have to say "it reminded him of his childhood" if the character's childhood is described in your source material. Your reader has already seen the movies. The point of fanfic is that you have a shared canon: lean on it. Don't redo any work that canon has already done for you. You don't have the space.
And your reader will not be frustrated by this, trust me. If you imply something rather than stating it, that means your reader has to do more of the work puzzling out your meaning themselves—and this work is fun. People like solving puzzles. They like catching references. They like figuring out things that aren't obvious. It makes them feel smart.
And you already know fanfic readers like thinking about these characters—that's why they're reading fanfic in the first place. So they will think about them, and they will catch your references. Let canon do the work, and let your readers do the work. This is part of how you can make a drabble seem much longer than it is, and as deep as a much larger fic.
The Details: Fiddling with Contractions
This section is mostly just going to focus on counted-word fiction. If you're writing a three sentence fic, then you have different problems, not about length but about how many semi-colons you can put in before it's just ridiculous. If your story can be any length under 500 words, then you don't have to worry about wordcount too much. You can just write whatever moment you are focusing on, check that it is short enough, edit it as normal, and probably check it again.
But unless you are very lucky, even if you know roughly what 100 words looks like, you are not going to hit it on the first try. You will hit 110, or 95, or 102, and then you will edit it to whatever standard of prose you like and it will be 109 words, or 87, or 118. And then you have to figure out how to get it exactly right. So this is about that.
The first rule is, a change of more than 10% of your wordcount is probably going to require you to cut, or add, an entire sentence. You are probably not going to take out 18 words by being more concise, or using more contractions, or taking out dialogue tags. Do not worry about adjusting down word by word by word if you have to cut twenty words. Cut a sentence, and then adjust further.
But when you only have 100 words, finding a sentence to cut is hard! Probably every single one of your sentences are doing important work. Which means that cutting one is probably going to mean accepting that you cannot do something in this drabble. Something you wanted to state clearly may have to be barely implied (see "Trust Your Audience", above). Something may have to be left out entirely. You may have to just not talk about setting, even if it's thematic. Which sentence to cut exactly of course depends on what you're writing about.
Therefore, you may want to copy the full text of your drabble, and edit the copy, so that you can still see the original. This is especially useful once you do get to the word-by-word stage, since at that point you may have various different possibilities to choose from.
A lot of the ways to fine-tune your wordcount sound like really prescriptive writing advice. Get rid of dialogue tags. Use strong verbs instead of adverbs. Switch from passive to active voice. I am not generally one for dogmatic writing advice, and normally if you like adverbs then I would say awesome, throw in a bunch of adverbs. But in a drabble, if you can express something with one word instead of two, you probably should.
This process is sometimes frustrating and can feel like you're making the story worse for the sake of an arbitrary wordcount. And you can stop at any point, and say, no, the original was better, I'll just post it at 107 words. But in general, this process—this thinking, in depth, about the sound and purpose of every single word and phrasing and sentence and how they work together—this is how you improve your prose style. In all writing, not just drabbles.
Not that hyperconcise bare-bones prose is necessarily better. It's not. It's also not actually necessary, even in drabbles. And of course different kinds of short fics, like three sentence fics, encourage a very different style.
And you may write three drabbles, say "Fuck this format," and never write another one. The point is not writing one specific way. The point is paying attention to how you write, learning different ways to write, and then deciding if you like them.
Drabbles are one way of challenging yourself as a writer. They're prose, but in some ways they work the same as poetry does. They're quick, they're fun, and they make you think about your writing in a different way. Try some. Post them. Have fun.
Also on AO3.
-----
*Not including the title. Not including the summary. In the purest form, title, summary, and any other additional material should be no more than fifteen words, but that's a matter for argument.
**I would put the max for "very short fiction" at about five or six hundred words, but other people may disagree, and "ficlet" usually maxes around 1000 words.
***Technically there is no linguistic definition of a "word", but we're going to be ignoring that. A word is whatever you/your word processor/AO3/your publisher thinks is a word, except when they're wrong.
seasonsofdrabbles is the big one.) But, well, now is when it was finished.And I like short fiction for its own sake. I like writing it, I like seeing a prompt, having an idea, writing, finishing, and posting within an hour or two. I like editing something to absolutely polished, shining prose levels in a way that is impossible or at least enormously time consuming for longer works. I like having five different ideas in my head and being able to write all of them, if I want to.
Also, there's a pandemic on, and even before then things were stressful. Sometimes 100 words is all you've got. Doesn't mean you shouldn't write those 100 words anyway. It can feel like it; but drabbles are worthwhile fics in themselves. For that matter, sometimes these days all I can read is 100 words.
So first of all, a note on terminology. A drabble is exactly 100 words long.* That is inherent in its definition. A work of fiction which is not exactly 100 words long is not a drabble. This is my hill and I will die on it.
But there are lots of other very short stories. One sentence fiction, twitfics, 55 fiction, 60 word stories, three sentence fiction, 221bs, double drabbles, triple drabbles (etc.), and all kinds of counted-word and non-counted fiction. In fandom these can all be generally called ficlets.**
I have posted over 30,000 words of very short fiction in the last ten years, including over 70 drabbles.
Most of this advice is going to be relevant to all ficlets. Some of it is more relevant to counted-word fiction, by which I mean stories that have a mandatory exact wordcount, whether it's 60 words or 100 words or 221 words.***
So, there are two main problems when writing very short fiction: subject matter and details.
Subject Matter: Narrow Your Scope
One hundred words is enough space to do two things: first, establish a situation, and second, deliver the punchline.
The punchline does not have to be humourous. It can be tragic or romantic or horrifying or orgasmic or angsty. It can just be the comfortable fulfillment of the story's premise, without any surprise attached. (Yes, that was a lot of shilling. Studying examples is how you learn.) All of these are fine. But basically, you have the setup, and the summing up. And then you're done.
A three sentence fic makes this even more evident: one sentence to establish the situation. One sentence of what's happening. One sentence to finish it. That's all there is.
You do not have room for detailed character study unless that is the entire point of your story. (Often it is, in which case you don't also have room for plot.) You don't have room for setting description unless the setting is the most important thing. If all you have is three sentences, you don't have the space for witty banter.
As things get longer, of course, you have more space. If you have five hundred words to play with, then definitely focus on the setting and details and gorgeous prose, as long as you aren't also trying to fit a short story's worth of plot in there too.
Because drabbles are about one moment. You don't need to know exactly what happened before this moment of dialogue, or what happens next, or what's happening around it. You don't have to do any of the planning you might do for a longer fic, but you also don't have the space to let the scene lead in and develop naturally. You've got 100 words.
Depending on your style and how you usually write, it may even be easier for you to write a scene at full length, and then single out the most important 100 words. This is definitely not how I write, but it is how some people write.
So if you are the kind of writer who feels beset by WIPs and all your ideas get longer and longer and you feel like you never finish anything, consider trying to cut an idea down to the most essential 100, or 500, or 1000 words. Consider trying to sum up the most important parts of an AU or a scenario in as few words as possible. Consider looking at an existing story, figuring out the absolute minimum it needs to have added to be complete as it is, and then just writing that, and posting it, and letting it go. If you have more ideas than you know what to do with, some of them can be drabbles.
They don't have to! There's nothing wrong with a story that's 1200 words long, or 756 words long, or 112 words long. There's nothing wrong with long WIPs, even if they stay In Progress for years. And if you want to expand on a ficlet later, you always can. But if you are writing for a drabble challenge, you are going to have to cut.
Trust Your Audience
If you are writing fanfic, and even if you're not, you can actually cut a lot more than you may think.
Because you don't have to spell everything out. You don't have to say "it reminded him of his childhood" if the character's childhood is described in your source material. Your reader has already seen the movies. The point of fanfic is that you have a shared canon: lean on it. Don't redo any work that canon has already done for you. You don't have the space.
And your reader will not be frustrated by this, trust me. If you imply something rather than stating it, that means your reader has to do more of the work puzzling out your meaning themselves—and this work is fun. People like solving puzzles. They like catching references. They like figuring out things that aren't obvious. It makes them feel smart.
And you already know fanfic readers like thinking about these characters—that's why they're reading fanfic in the first place. So they will think about them, and they will catch your references. Let canon do the work, and let your readers do the work. This is part of how you can make a drabble seem much longer than it is, and as deep as a much larger fic.
The Details: Fiddling with Contractions
This section is mostly just going to focus on counted-word fiction. If you're writing a three sentence fic, then you have different problems, not about length but about how many semi-colons you can put in before it's just ridiculous. If your story can be any length under 500 words, then you don't have to worry about wordcount too much. You can just write whatever moment you are focusing on, check that it is short enough, edit it as normal, and probably check it again.
But unless you are very lucky, even if you know roughly what 100 words looks like, you are not going to hit it on the first try. You will hit 110, or 95, or 102, and then you will edit it to whatever standard of prose you like and it will be 109 words, or 87, or 118. And then you have to figure out how to get it exactly right. So this is about that.
The first rule is, a change of more than 10% of your wordcount is probably going to require you to cut, or add, an entire sentence. You are probably not going to take out 18 words by being more concise, or using more contractions, or taking out dialogue tags. Do not worry about adjusting down word by word by word if you have to cut twenty words. Cut a sentence, and then adjust further.
But when you only have 100 words, finding a sentence to cut is hard! Probably every single one of your sentences are doing important work. Which means that cutting one is probably going to mean accepting that you cannot do something in this drabble. Something you wanted to state clearly may have to be barely implied (see "Trust Your Audience", above). Something may have to be left out entirely. You may have to just not talk about setting, even if it's thematic. Which sentence to cut exactly of course depends on what you're writing about.
Therefore, you may want to copy the full text of your drabble, and edit the copy, so that you can still see the original. This is especially useful once you do get to the word-by-word stage, since at that point you may have various different possibilities to choose from.
A lot of the ways to fine-tune your wordcount sound like really prescriptive writing advice. Get rid of dialogue tags. Use strong verbs instead of adverbs. Switch from passive to active voice. I am not generally one for dogmatic writing advice, and normally if you like adverbs then I would say awesome, throw in a bunch of adverbs. But in a drabble, if you can express something with one word instead of two, you probably should.
This process is sometimes frustrating and can feel like you're making the story worse for the sake of an arbitrary wordcount. And you can stop at any point, and say, no, the original was better, I'll just post it at 107 words. But in general, this process—this thinking, in depth, about the sound and purpose of every single word and phrasing and sentence and how they work together—this is how you improve your prose style. In all writing, not just drabbles.
Not that hyperconcise bare-bones prose is necessarily better. It's not. It's also not actually necessary, even in drabbles. And of course different kinds of short fics, like three sentence fics, encourage a very different style.
And you may write three drabbles, say "Fuck this format," and never write another one. The point is not writing one specific way. The point is paying attention to how you write, learning different ways to write, and then deciding if you like them.
Drabbles are one way of challenging yourself as a writer. They're prose, but in some ways they work the same as poetry does. They're quick, they're fun, and they make you think about your writing in a different way. Try some. Post them. Have fun.
Also on AO3.
-----
*Not including the title. Not including the summary. In the purest form, title, summary, and any other additional material should be no more than fifteen words, but that's a matter for argument.
**I would put the max for "very short fiction" at about five or six hundred words, but other people may disagree, and "ficlet" usually maxes around 1000 words.
***Technically there is no linguistic definition of a "word", but we're going to be ignoring that. A word is whatever you/your word processor/AO3/your publisher thinks is a word, except when they're wrong.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-24 04:14 pm (UTC)(If in English "I'm" counts as one word contractions give you more flexibility than in German, convenient.)