Welcome, everybody. Thanks for your interest. This is actually going to turn into something of an extended editorial so I had better introduce myself. "Hi. my name is Andrew Stitt, and I'm an Editor" Over the years, both for the magazines and meetings of the Norwich Science Fiction Group and the Norfolk Comic Strip Creators, I have thrust a variety of literary diversions under the noses of our group. Drabbles, Haikus and Round Robins have all been sniffed at.
Some of these forms are very restricting (especially when you give people six words that they must refer to in a hundred word Drabble (and let's not get started on Haiku (at least not here))) but that can be the fun of them. However, I had been toying with the idea of setting a slightly higher word count - limiting each person to exactly 1001 words. It seemed a good figure - not too short, not too long and with resonance of the Arabian Nights.
Although I didn't use the idea immediately, it sat in the back of my mind. While I was pondering the ponderable on the way home from work, it dawned on me that if 'a picture paints a thousand words' then adding a word to that picture would bring it up to '1001'. This train of thought, while waiting for the lights on the crossing to change, emerged from the tunnel of tinkering with the idea that if 9 panels of a comic strip could be seen to paint 900 words, this would leave 101 words for any dialogue, thoughts or captions required.
Which brings us to the reason for this page. I'd like you to have a go . . . Part of my web-site will be given over to the project, and we may even publish a selection in upcoming periodicals The basics are covered by Sod (sorry, 'Sodio') in the panels above, but here are more details:
1001 words - including the body of the text plus the titles (but excluding the author's by-line) is what you have to tell your story. Contractions ('isn't') are counted for their components, except when used in dialogue. Hyphenated phrases are also counted as if they were separate words (apart from prefixes such as 're') '1001', or even 'MI', are counted as one 'word'. 'One Thousand and One' counts as four. Any more information, FAQs and tips we get, will be added to this site.
Although I don't want to stifle creativity, setting the A4 page as the standard backdrop will allow for ease of reproduction - it also transfers fairly well to the computer. A single page for art and comic strips - don't forget it can be 'landscape' or 'portrait' (please bare in mind it might be reduced down to A5 for printing) If anybody wants to play around with the options presented by displaying on the internet, then please let me know what you would like to do. Also, if anyone has a suggestion of any possible hosting sites, I'd be interested in the details.
As we are discussing about computers, I'd better take a moment to talks about formats. Aren't there a lot . . . I'm still working with Publisher 2000 and Word 2000 (so no .docx). '.jpg', '.tif' and '.gif' are the main picture files I use. The best thing to do, is get in touch with me first if you have any queries.
The
last
thing
we
needed
was a name for this new 'lit-form'. I considered
'Burton' or 'Super Drabble', but have been most taken by 'Zade' (rhymes
with 'shard' - as in "We can all sh-hare a Zade.")
Creators
retain
copyright
but
with
submission is conferred the right to publish
it on our web-sites. Any actual (rather than virtual)
publishing/reprinting will not be done without further consent.