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g_uavaI've completed a set of Toku100 Challenge's Alternate Universe Drabble Prompts featuring Melto/Asuna from Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger. Here are my AU drabbles, and here are the AU prompts. As it's unusual for me to finish more than three AUs for a ship, I'd like to reflect and share what I've learnt through completing this set of AU prompts.
Finishing many drabbles that are exactly 100 words
Toku100 Challenge allows the submission of different kinds of drabbles, giving the flexibility to submit a piece between 100 to 500 words as long as its wordcount is a multiple of 100 within that range. When I first attempted the challenge, I tended to write quintuple drabbles (500 words) for the AU prompts, and seldom wrote hundred-word drabbles for the challenge as a whole.
I had more practice in finishing hundred-word drabbles after finishing all the prompts for a different drabble challenge. The All-Valley 100 Cobra Kai/The Karate Kid Drabble Challenge only allows submissions of hundred-word drabbles or drabble sequences comprised of hundred-word chunks. Though All-Valley 100 has long been concluded by then, I followed its guidelines and got more used to telling a self-contained story within just a hundred words.
Carrying the skill over to write Tokusatsu drabbles enabled me to sooner complete one drabble and start another, and finish multiple prompts within the same day. For this set of drabbles, the hundred-word ones have premises simple enough to introduce with a line or two and just a single exchange between my ship.
Deciding whether to write a drabble or drabble sequence
Toku100 Challenge is also open to submission of drabble sequences of interconnected drabbles as long as all the drabbles have the same length.
When the wordcount nears a multiple of 100 while writing each drabble, I look for the opportunity to end the story or create a transition to another part. If it seems more satisfying to continue the story, I try to keep each drabble in a sequence as short as possible so it'd take less effort to write more parts until the story's natural stopping point.
I kept in mind the main goal to finish the prompt for completing the challenge's prompt set, and gave myself the option to continue or re-write any of the drabbles as a one-shot free from the challenge's wordcount restriction if it turned out that I had more to say about how the drabble's premise influences my ship's dynamics.
Brainstorming premises loosely inspired by movies for each AU
Writing AUs seems like a test of a writer's familiarity with different fiction genres. For my first attempt at Toku100 Challenge's AU prompts, I left aside the prompts based on genres I've not seen much of in both fanworks or professionally created media. Since then, I've watched a lot more movies, and I kept a handful of titles in mind when planning how to tackle an AU prompt.
For example, for the Horror AU prompt, I thought about casting my ship in premises loosely inspired by these horror movies:
- Alien (which could also serve as an inspirational source for the Sci-fi prompt)
- The Haunting of Hill House
- The Wicker Man
- Shutter Island
- The Fly (I went with this one though the end result seems more inspired by a Batman villain origin story)
Writing Fusion AUs
Along with the drabble challenge, I'm on a side quest to explore writing Fusion AUs. I 'fused' Ryusoulger with different Tokusatsu shows and franchises in three drabbles, and wrote one more loosely inspired by the Ultraman franchise that I don't count as a fusion.
Slight tangent away from drabbles on distinguishing between regular AUs and Fusion AUs -- I see Fusion AUs as a more wholesale transfer of the characters of a primary canon into the world of a secondary canon, while regular AUs involve worldbuilding that's customised to more closely resemble the worldbuilding of the primary canon. These are just my loose definitions that I find useful for planning what to write and look up before writing.
Spaced repetition of perspective
I alternated between writing from the perspective of one half of my ship and the other when going from one drabble to another. This has been my usual method for writing a set of stories for one ship. What's new to me is repeating the same action in different AU drabbles and presenting that action in a different way — I had Melto wear glasses in both the Modern AU and Espionage AU, and Asuna snatch his glasses away in both AUs, but Melto turns out to only need glasses in the Modern AU.
Repeating perspectives and specific actions accelerate the completion of the prompts as I only focus on writing for one ship and having the drabble challenge as my only writing project. If I were to tackle different kinds of writing projects at once, it'd be tougher to keep track of what I've written recently and what to repeat.
Looking at the wordcount as I write
While writing on Obsidian's PC version, I kept the wordcount visible as I write and prepare myself to end or transition as the wordcount nears a multiple of a hundred. When writing stories without a word limit, I usually hide the wordcount and only check it when I want to take a break. As I change my usual pattern, checking the wordcount becomes less stressful as it marks when I could set myself 'free' from my draft, so to speak.
Also, I somehow gained the intuition to know without checking when I've written about a hundred words, as I learnt while writing on Obsidian's mobile app for which it's impossible to keep the wordcount immediately visible.
