Tag: me

Okay so I have a question! How do people typically define things like ‘drabble’ and ‘ficlet’? What word count do people think those should have? Because I remember wayyy back in the day before ao3 was around, I got my ass absolutely handed to me on another archive for labeling a fic as a drabble because “drabble = 100 words, double drabble = 200, ficlet = under 1k” and that was commonly accepted. Nowadays though people seem to use them more loosely? What’s the general opinion on these terms

bloodgutsandstarbucks:

inkandblade:

ao3commentoftheday:

Excellent question, anon. I don’t know that I’ve ever been that strict in my own definitions. For me, a drabble is probably 200 words or less (ish?) and a ficlet is 750 or under? 

You’ve got me curious now! Let’s see what other people think 🙂

-Mod Pi

Old school fandom says that a Drabble is exactly 100 words – the art of the Drabble was a “thing” in some communities back in the day. It was a test of skill to fit a whole* story into that particular format.

It still irks me now to see people call something that doesn’t fit that perfect 100 words a Drabble. 200 words exactly is a Double Drabble, if one wants to really stretch the definition. A pentadrabble is 500 (though I’ve not heard this one often in the fandoms I’ve been in.)

Long titles, or long introductions/captions, were frowned upon (in the communities I was in, anyway) as “cheating” on the 100 words. 

As for not exactly 100 words? 1-99 words, and 101 to ~1000 makes a ficlet in my mind. 

Here’s the Wiktionary article on the subject of Drabbles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drabble

Here’s the Fanlore article on the subject of Drabbles:
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Drabble

*Not that we, as writers playing in other people’s sandboxes (having canon background when we’re writing), ever really start a story at the first word. 

Agreed. The “back in the day” definition of a drabble was strictly 100 words – no more, no less, the modern day haiku. 200 words was a double drabble. A ficlet is anything from 101-1000 words. I think the terms nowadays are a little more generous/liberal but to me, they once gave the impression of a certain technique/skill -e.g. with a drabble that you could succinctly communicate a story in one hundred chosen words, not one wasted or wanting.

notebooksandlaptops:

Does anyone else have that one fanfiction that they’re dying to to write but it’s like, mega long and basically a whole universe, and then you’ve got head-cannons to go with that fanfiction and like fanfiction to go with that fanfiction an back-stories for every character and you get frikin’ feels about that universe and it’d be the most coolest thing if you could just be bothered to frikin’ write it.

robotmango:

me, crouched down in front of my tomato plants, examining a pattern of insect bites on their lower leaves: i’m going to fucking kill whoever did this. i’m going to kill them for you. don’t worry, babies. I’m going to murder every single son of a bitch who ever got a mouthful of you. they’ll die screaming

my neighbor, who i did not realize was also outside, standing behind the fence: oh! okay. you’re talking to the plants. okay.

Look, do you want to make another sketchy doodle piece to turn something out quickly or do you want to push the envelope and practice every new technique you’ve come across and maybe after a year have something finished that you’ll hate anyway?