I dunno. I feel 1k is pretty fucking tiny. Not tiny enough to be a drabble certainly, but it is a very tiny work. Enough so to be a short story. As for the drift in the usage...it's kind of sad because it is a handy category, though honestly I had kind of forgotten about the term? It's not used much in the circles I keep to so it's kind of new to me to hear that it's just become a thing that means "short fic", if it's used at all.
I also think that in some ways, fanfiction length expectations have been impacted by longfic. I know I've scrolled through AO3 before like "lol 20k, that's barely a story" and have to remember that 50k is... novel length. That's a sizable amount of story right there. A fic doesn't have to hit 80k before it's novel length, but there's a lot of them that I scroll past while thinking that.
i mean, i’d say it’s a short story for sure, but you can put a lot more into 1k than into 100 words (10 times more, actually :y) also most fanfic exchanges have 1k as their minimum word count so that’s what i think about when i think of 1k: long enough to meet minimum requirements
I can understand how people would only think of "drabble" as another word for "short fic", but otoh, it only takes like five seconds to look up "drabble" in a search engine and find out that it typically refers to a specific type of writing exercise. that a writer won't take the very tiny amount of time to check the definition of a single word to see if they're using it correctly is disheartening, frankly
to expand on @Acey's gripe: people referring to any and all anthros as "nekos". i once saw someone refer to their character as a "dog neko".
Still pretty tiny. That's not a bad thing. It's just tiny where I'm concerned. Ah but there's the rub. If you've been taught via communication that drabble means "short fanfic", then why would you think to look up the definition? If it has an accepted meaning among your peers then that's the word's meaning as far you know, and you're not likely to go looking it up because language is intuitive that way. I suppose there are people who do look up words that they use all the time like that, but for a lot of people you just learn a word's meaning via exposure and then use it that way.
I know when I started out writing (in the German scene, mind you), people were praised for putting out 1k chapters once a week but then within a year it started shifting. People did weekly updates of 2k chapters, then 3k chapters. Eventually by the time 10k chapters became the norm I had to tap out of weekly updates. Now I see some stories that are one shots that go for 50-80k and that's not even unusual. And I know I expect a similar length when looking for finished fic. idk it's just kinda interesting to me how much people expect longfic these days?
Granted I can't seem to do prose fic at all lately and have honestly forgotten how to fucking write prose.
Saaaaame hat. I am also very much not a longfic writer (heck, I'm not even much of a longfic reader) and, you know, it's great that some people can write that much but they're kinda screwing up the average for the rest of us. (Not that there's anything wrong with reading or writing novel-length fics! It's just not my scene.)
As someone who can only really put out a few thousand words of writing a month if I'm lucky, I have to agree with Aon and valenstyne on that. It makes me feel inadequate as a writer too, ngl? Like, the expectation that You Must Write This Much.
I also don't read too much longfic. Usually I'm looking for something in the short story length. Maybe novella length at most, but usually I just want something that is self contained and ends in like 1000-4000 words. Enough time for the aspects of prose I like to get doing but not enough that I have to commit to reading a novel. Personal preferences there. also like half of what i read is pwp porn so i mean
i do have to admit I'm definitely a slut for a good longfic because I read on commutes and i read fast enough that anything under 10k words barely tides me over between switching trains so
Yeah I basically read in bed and want something I can get done in like an hour at most when it comes to fanfics. Commutes I play video games during usually.
Thankfully mine always end at like a big transfer station where all the buses head and sit for a while while drivers get swapped out so I don't have to worry about that too much.
I don't know if the meme spread from LJ, but to certain people, the phrase "IT COULD GET ON DISNEYLAND ATTRACTIONS BY ITSELF" is never gonna leave their heads. I just got reminded of that and now I'm going to be snickering for the rest of the week.
yeah i'm 34, been writing in fandom spaces for 15 years, and i've never seen that exact definition of "drabble." to me it's always meant any short paragraph-ish length piece of writing. which, yeah, in practice is usually around 100 words... but this is literally the first time i've seen anyone use that more specific definition. (and like Aon said, i never looked it up, because i thought i knew what it meant!)
It's even more hilarious and lame and offputting when the character in question should actually know better. (It's also a good way to get Lissa to decide you have nothing of value to add to any conversation ever in any RP with her lol.)
