I suck at the five-minute game, and have been trying to figure out why. I come up with story ideas for a given pairing pretty quickly, but can't hold to the time limit at all. I can do stupid-funny pretty easily, but have only been able to produce one five-minute ficlet that's any good.
I think it's because of what and how I write. I'm a story freak. I love characterization, and banter, and I'm a sucker for good romance, but for me writing is all about *people doing something.* Making decisions, solving mysteries, facing challenges -- whatever. But I'm very much a beginning-middle-end-in-an-Aristotle's-P
It's not that I don't like ficlets. They're fun. But they're not really stories. They're more like the kind of thing one SF writer (Ray Bradbury, I think) called, "Here's an interesting idea; the end." My Two-Face story definitely falls into that category: it's a portrait, not a story. And I keep trying to write stories with a beginning, middle, and end. So I keep busting the time limit and writing longer ficlets, to the point that they're not really ficlets at all. I think my Lucius/Lois still falls into the "portrait" category, but my Jason Todd/Maggie Sawyer and my Scarecrow/Harley don't. And I prefer the story to the portrait. My reaction to a lot of ficlets is to say, "Neat -- so now what?" The best example is
marag's "Fathers and Children" -- I'm annoyed that it ended, because I want to know what happens next. (She has another example of the contrast I'm talking about here: the first is a portrait, the second a story.) So: ficlets are fun, but ultimately a distraction from storytelling. Which is where my interest lies.
