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

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

For a while a couple years ago I was doing (what I considered) weird and/or unlikely crossovers. I wrote an Iron Chef/X-Files crossover, and had plans for an Iron Chef/One Piece story and an Iron Chef/Harry Potter one. Having since fled Iron Chef fandom, those last two projects are on the shelf, probably permanently.

Can't do drabbles, though--I lack the discipline. (upends a potted plant to prove the "lack of discipline" point)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of cross-overs; I like the sensation of familiar characters seen through the eyes of different familiar characters so they look, uh, different. Alas that people seem to want to write them in Omniscient, so that all the characters look the way they do to you anyway.