Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Challenge Drabble Challenge: #1 Midnight

So, some of you may be looking at this thread and wondering what a drabble is. A Drabble is an extremely short work of fiction with exactly one hundred words. In some of my past communities we have participated in a theme challenge where we had a list of words or phrases and were asked to write a drabble for each one.

For this board I’m going to do it a bit differently. The fun of these are that everyone can participate no matter their level of writing skill. Even the authors who are in the middle of a huge epic can take a little time to write them (hint hint). So here are the rules:

1. I will make a new thread for each theme. Most likely once every two weeks. If it gets popular and you guys want it a bit quicker or a bit slower we can do that.
2. You will write your 100 word response and post it in THIS THREAD. Please don’t make an entry for them on the fic boards. It will get really spammy if you do and will be counter productive to the community.
3. Post any FDK you have for the drabbles in this thread. Let the author know you are talking about their drabble to keep confusion down. This should be pretty easy.
4. Keep your drabbles clean and within the rules of the general fic boards.
5. You don’t have to use the words of the theme in your drabble but it does need to be something related to that theme and the LnC show. If you have questions just ask me about it.
6. I would prefer to be the one to introduce these themes and set up the threads, however if you have a suggestion for a new theme please pm it to me and I can add it to the list. ^_^ They should be simple themes and nothing to specific.
7. NEW: These drabbles will be submitted to the archive. If you DO NOT WANT your drabble to be submitted please let me know. All past drabbles before this rule was made will not be subject to this rule (wow that is a mouthful). I will contact each of you individually.
8. NEW: There will be a one month time limit for each drabble. The cut off date will be announced in each thread. All drabbles for that theme must be submitted by that date in order for it to be included on the archive.

Here is this week’s theme: Midnight

Have fun with it!

CUTOFF DATE: 4/13/07

How do you count things like...
1) hyphenated compounds (all-night)
2) abbreviated forms (it's)
3) compounds without hyphons (ice cream)?

Which is one word, which is counted as two words?

I'd count abbreviations and the compound words as one word. The other... I'd say two words. But if you have to cheat and it is like 101 words because of that compound I don't think we will mind.

~Jojo, who isn't actually planning on counting your words since there is no prize involved. LOL

To be honest my other communities used a different definition of drabble... you guys would call most of those vignettes. I think making them 100 words is more fun for this community though.

MS Word tells me this has 100 words in it. I trust Microsoft... sometimes.

It's an "adaptation" of an episode. And before anyone starts with the "not another TOGOM" please know that this is my first. And I absolutely could not help myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Midnight was just a few short minutes away.

As the container filled up with cement, Lois Lane knew that it was all over. She would never see tomorrow. Her life flashed in front of her eyes: an unhappy childhood, disastrous relationships, a job she lived for, Lex Luthor, Superman. And Clark.

Was there any point in living anyway, she wondered. Clark had been killed earlier tonight. Killed while saving her life. Holding on to shreds of hope that she may be seeing him again, up there, Lois closed her eyes and waited for midnight to come and take her away.

~ the end ~

Nice one, Lara! But only because we know that THE END is not truly the end of all.

So, here's my take on the challenge. OpenOffice claims it's 100 words, but it counts all compounds as two words...

*****Midnight*****

It was a cloudless midsummer midweek night. There was an all-night party going on in the apartment next door, so Lois decided to stay up all night. In her skin-tight, midnight-blue nighty, she was looking out the window, admiring the night sky. She contemplated the men in her life:

Superman, her knight in shining armour – or, rather, tight-fitting tights of bright blue spandex.

And the man with poor sight, a knight of the pen. The man she always went to when in fright.

She should have seen right away that, for her, only Clark was right.

YAY! I'm glad some other people are taking these on. ^_^ I'll make one big FDK post in a bit for all of you guys. But I'm loving them so far! Olympe: I'm trusting my word processor for the word count as well so let's just go with what they tell us. ^_~

---------Midnight-----------

At night she would lay in her bed and fantasized about telling him. Sometimes she barged right into his apartment and told him and other times he was the one to confess to her. There were nights she almost had the courage to call him and tell him right there how she felt, but the clock on her nightstand would glare at her showing the late hour and she would lose her nerve. Closing her eyes she would pray for the strength to tell him in the light of the day when the comfort of darkness was no longer there.

Jojo, your drabble makes me melt into a puddle! And it so reminds me of some lines from one of my favourite songs:

Can you feel the love tonight?
The peace the evening brings
The world, for once, in perfect harmony
With all its living things.

(from: The Lion King)

Mellie - niiiice! Interesting use of hyphenated words... was there a reason or it just happened that way?

Jojo - aawww!!! Beautiful.

Cool challenge, btw. I'll definitely be looking out for more of these, that was *really* fun to do!!

@Lara: There was a reason. My idea included some wordplay. My first step was looking up all sorts of expression containing either 'mid', 'night' or a rhyme on 'night'. I ended up with more than five dozen expression - and, doing the maths, I realized that I couldn't use them all. So I chose the ones fitting best. Then I wrote what I wanted to write. And deleted more than half of it because there were still too many words, thereby erasing most of the puns.

awww! you should post it somewhere so we could read that...

There's just a little problem: I really deleted it. But I still have my brainstorming paper. I'll try to reconstruct it, but not now. For me, it's time for bed - 1:30 am already...

Aw, Lara, I really liked how you showed Lois’ feelings in only a few words. Wonderful!

Cute, Mellie! Yes, she should have seen it right away!

Oh, my gosh, JoJo! So mysterious! I take it she’s trying to work up the nerve to tell her she loves him?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, here's my take. 100 words by MS Word...


Midnight. If he flew slowly enough, it could be midnight for a full twenty-four hours. Or he could experience midnight twenty-four times. Midnight in Madrid, Malmo, Munich. Midnight in Mayaguez, Melbourne, Manchester. He needed the stillness and solitude of midnight. Lois had just said yes to Lex Luthor. How could she do that? How?

Maybe if he just told her the truth then things would be different. Would they? No, he didn’t think they would. She wasn’t ready to know that Clark Kent was Superman. And he wasn’t ready to tell her. He sighed. It was midnight in Metropolis. Again.

~Fin~

So cute. I like all of them.

Lara, I really like the way yours clips so well to the context while still conveying Lois' state of mind. In 100 words it's a vignette that feels really complete (we know what we know...). I can really see it and I like that despairing mood. *shrug*

Jojo, I love how you work in the time and her thinking it's too late. That "glare" of the clock really fits well. Then there's the whole sexiness of the fantasy, but that might be my gutterbrain talking.

Nancy you mention Mayaguez! That gets me oh my gosh. That city is close to my heart, imagine my shock when I saw the name. I love how you weave in his thoughts with the flying and the time. Kinda surreal, I never thought about it but yeah time is interesting when you can get from one side of the world to the next in seconds/minutes.

Alcyone, I lived in Puerto Rico so it just seemed natural to mention a city from there!

Oooh! Nancy! Love what you did with your 100 words!! Excellent!!!

Thanks, Lara!

Nancy, your take on it is wonderful! And it tells us how much can happen in twenty-four hours. Oh, there didn't happen anything?

Nice idea, jojo. I love your takes on the topic. Here is mine...

***Midnight***

He woke as the extra beat of Lois’ heart gave his lullaby a slightly new rhythm. Everything else was the same, returning to normal as her heart continued its steady beat. She was breathing evenly, her chest rising and falling slowly. Those lovely, harmless extra beats of her heart were surely part of the pleasant ways to wake up. Certainly not as good as one of her amazing kisses, but he could watch the tender lines of her lips. And when her faint sounds of sleeping lulled him back to his own dreamland, he would dream of kissing her.

awww! I love that, Barbara! Very sweet!

Thank you, Lara