Drabble thoughts

[flemmings]

Drabbles are indeed looking at the white spaces instead of the drawing. You have to make that white space your friend, something that works /for/ you, because you're deprived of the usual stock of words to work with. I see now why people use conversation and that reflective omniscient- they give you the meat with the fewest trimmings.

Drabbles are also close to poetry as I've written poetry, which usually is haiku/ waka or something rhymed and metre'd, where again you don't have much leeway. Put in a word here, take out another there: a word for a word, always.

With these constraints on you you then up the difficulty a good deal by stating the pairing when you have a theme of some kind. 'The theme is colours and it's Gojou and Hakkai' at once demands that you betray, and betray sucessfully, the readerly expectation that red or green will turn up in that one. A pro like incandescens can side-step the obvious as if it didn't even exist, but not everyone has that expertise.

I find the same goes for cross-overs. Name the two series involved and most of your readers can at once make a stab at guessing the theme. (Unless it's Onmyouji/ Teletubbies where the points of congruence don't exactly leap immediately to the eye.) That's the problem with this: I like the idea- I've always liked it, though it isn't worth more than a drabble- but it's so obvious there's no real point in writing it.

But I did. It's half Wild Adaptor:

'A puppy?'

'Or a kitten. Not for me,' he extemporized. 'A young friend who needs cheering up-- I thought maybe a pet...'

Polite smile. The man knew his store was being checked out: it amused him. Not guns or drugs then. Politics? No. The atmosphere was tourist-trade 'Chinese': incense, ceramics, cheap brocade. Aimed at the locals. Ahh. 'Perhaps you have more... exotic animals for sale?'

'I have all kinds of animals. I will accommodate your request.' He spoke as if the transaction was finished.

Kou blinked, startled, and met the owner's bright smile:
'I think a cat should do it.'

Comments

[incandescens]

Thanks. And oh, that one is very neat.

(Though... how can you introduce the concept of Onmyouji/Teletubbies and then leave it hanging like that?)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thank you. But the Onmyouji/ Teletubbies concept was introduced, not by me, over here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/flemmings/30387.html#cutid1) and I'm still poking at it mentally to see if it will yield anything. So far all it yields is a desire to write 'Now the sun sets in the sky/ Teletubbies say Good-bye' in classical Japanese, when all I remember of my grammar is the past form, arikeri.

[incandescens]

our hands wave like grass
stomachs jiggle at sunset
pinkness veils the world

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

See, it has to be a tanka because they didn't do haiku back then. Unless you were doing renga but even so, the 5-7-5 bit didn't stand by itself: the 7-7 always followed.

the baby yawns and gurgles
periscope sinks underground

[incandescens]

Mmm. I love formed poetry. ;)

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

I love both of you. =D

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

And we love you, qwerty!

(Ohh look what neat things happen now when you delete a comment. Cool.)