by: Victoria Brun

The 100-word story, also known as the drabble, is as small as it is challenging to execute. It takes a lot of thinking, a little bit of writing, and a ton of editing—but it’s well worth the effort, because these stories can deliver a powerful punch despite the miniscule word count.

Here are 10 tips to get the most out of those 100 words and some bonus wisdom from a handful of 100-Foot Crow’s contributors.

1. Read 100-word stories with a critical eye.

The first step to becoming a great writer—of any genre or style—is to become a great reader. In fact, becoming a thoughtful reader is the single best thing you can do to improve your writing.

By its very nature, the 100-word story is a quick read. You can finish one in 30 seconds—but if you’re looking to write them you shouldn’t. Slow down. Analyze them. What’s working—or not working? Why? How did the author structure it? What did they actually say and what’s left implied?  

If you’re looking to sell your drabbles, reading widely will also help you identify markets that best suit your stories.

For speculative 100-word stories, check out our small but growing collection. For science fiction drabbles, there is also The Martian and for horror there is the Black Hare Press’ Dark Moments. For romantic stories, read the New York Times’ “Tiny Love Stories,” or for a wide-ranging collection, visit ScribesMicro.

Obviously, you should read in the genre you want to write—but you should also read outside that genre too. You’ll learn tricks you can bring back to your genre of choice and employ in novel and creative ways.

2. Start in the heart of your story.

You’ve probably heard the advice to begin in medias res—in the middle of things. This is doubly true for the drabble, where your first sentence is a mere breath away from your last one. You don’t have time for exposition, you’re racing to the finish.

Starting too early is a common problem for new writers. If you’re having a challenge with the word limit, try starting your story later and experimenting with your story timeline.

“The thing I love about the short form is it allows the writer to drop the reader into what is essentially a moment of a larger story. And because readers tend to look at short pieces as microcosms of larger—imagined—works, I think the best way to approach short form works is to get the reader excited by what is happening, by what has already happened, and then, of course, by the idea of what will happen. “The other thing I really like about the short form (and hundred-word stories especially) is how intentional you must be with your language. The story must have a goal, and every word must serve that goal. There can be nothing extraneous. Nothing frivolous. Nothing capricious. At least not unless your story happens to be about those things. ‘Those things’ being the extraneous, the frivolous, and the capricious. The irony of course being that it is impossible to write a hundred-word story about frivolity that includes a bunch of frivolous words.” – Saul Lemerond

3. Narrow your focus.

The most successful stories are tightly focused. They show a moment in time—but it’s a moment that manages to convey a greater story.

The least successful drabbles feel like the blurb you might find on the back of a novel. Those aren’t stories; those are synopses. They are trying to convey so much plot in 100 words that they accomplish minimal emotional impact.

To keep a tight focus, you need to keep your cast of characters small (typically one or two). Similarly, there is usually a single setting, and often it’s implied rather than explicitly described—and this leads us right to tip #4.

“For me, the hardest part of 100-word stories is getting to the end without being wildly over the word count. Before I write, I need to know the central novum of the story and the ending, so I can ask myself, ‘What needs to be conveyed to get from this idea to this ending?’ Thinking through that can help me decide if it’s possible to write the story as a drabble and also forces me to assess my own storytelling to see what I want to include versus what the reader needs me to include.” – M.A. Dosser

4. Trust your readers.

Trust the readers to fill in the gaps—but make sure you leave cracks, not gaping holes. You can imply a much larger story with minimal words, as long as you choose the right ones.

Be aware that drabble readers are different from novel readers (even if they’re the same people). When reading a drabble, readers understand that there is a hard 100-word limit, so they don’t expect all the details. They’re willing to fill in the rest of the world if you give them enough of an outline to do so.

“When writing a 100-word story, your canvas is small, but its impact can be huge. When choosing what to include on the page, it is important to remember to trust your readers to read between the lines.” – Ariya Bandy

5. Include all the essential elements of a story.

You may find this tip contradictory to the above two points, but I promise you it’s not. Your drabble still needs characters, plot, setting, conflict, and a resolution. However, these may appear in innovative ways. For example, the setting may be the character.

Conflict and resolution are critical for separating a 100-word story from a 100-word sketch. These elements can be subtle (see tip #4), but they need to be present. Something must happen. Something should change—and the reader needs to feel something about it. With drabbles, you don’t have time to explain a conflict in-depth, but if you can show that it matters to the characters, the readers will care about it too.

One important caveat is that the change doesn’t need to happen during the present-day timeline of the story. Instead, the story can reveal that a change or conflict has already happened or is about to happen. When drafting your story, play around with where it starts and ends.

Endings may be the hardest part of a 100-word story, and the topic of endings could be its own blog post; however, one thing I want to stress is that you need a resolution—but you don’t need a twist. In fact, a twist is extremely difficult to pull off well in a 100-word story because you lack the time to dish out clues and set expectations that make a twist feel earned.

The best endings add something to the story—boost it to the next level and make the reader feel something—not merely conclude it.

“Focus on emotional beats. Think about what you want your characters to deal with and what you want to make your readers feel when they read the story.” ­– Kai Delmas

6. Turn off your inner editor while you write your story.

Even though you’re limited in words, try to turn off your inner editor when writing and let the words flow. It’s okay if your first draft is 200 words; that’s what editing is for.

It’s much easier to edit once your entire story is in front of you, and you can analyze it as a complete unit instead of trying to wordsmith every sentence as you write.

7. Edit aggressively.

Short story writing—at any length—is mostly editing, but this is especially true for drabbles. Some editing is easy (e.g., cutting out the word “very”), but sometimes this step is brutal for drabbles. Each word is 1% of your story, meaning each cut (or addition) is massive.

Once you think you’re done editing, put it aside for several days so you can look at it with fresh eyes. Fresh eyes are powerful. You may pat yourself on the back and call yourself a genius or wonder what the heck this thing is.

If you’re spending forever wordsmithing to reduce the wordcount, take a step back and see if a higher order change is called for (e.g., Can you cut a character? Start the story later? Remove a thread to streamline it?).

Finally, if you’ve edited, trimmed, and agonized over every word but cannot get it to that 100-word target without ruining your story, that just means you have a flash fiction piece, not a drabble. Most story concepts are not compatible with the 100-word length, and if your concept isn’t, that’s okay. You still learned something from writing it.

“The challenge of writing a drabble is more than just that of writing a story in only a hundred words, it’s writing a story in exactly one hundred words. Much comes down to the editing, the trimming back, the playing with form to get the word count right. You might find yourself searching for one word to replace two. You might find yourself searching for two words to replace one. But be careful! There’s a third, implicit challenge. If someone (including yourself) could come along and edit your drabble and reduce the word count and make it stronger, then you have what I call a ‘fat’ drabble, and that’s a drabble that still needs some work. Keep at it!” – Liam Hogan

“Make every word in every sentence count.” – Robin Rose Graves

8. Don’t edit out your voice!

One danger of the 100-word story is that it can be so heavily edited to meet the word limit that you expurgate your own style or voice. Don’t do this! It will make your story a sad, dead husk.

Even though it’s a mere 100 words, there is still space for your unique voice. There is room for dialogue, metaphors, and beautiful but short language—or ugly writing, if that’s what your story needs.

Finally, even though you may think showing will take more words, don’t rely entirely on telling. You can give your reader a lot of information by showing them a tiny, but meaningful, detail.

“One thing I try to do when writing drabbles is to choose the strongest verbs I can. Why have a character walk when they can be strolling, striding, rambling, marching, sauntering, etc.? With so few words, each one needs to do as much work as possible.” — Kimberly Ann Smiley

9. Give it a snazzy title.

As a general rule, the shorter the work, the more important the title. Thus, the intricacies of how to write a great title could—once again—easily be its own blog.

The best actionable advice I’ve ever gotten on titles comes from a content marketing course, but I think it works well for fiction too. It’s very simple: Write down ten different titles. Think of this as a brainstorming session where there are no bad ideas, and no editing is allowed until you have all ten down. This exercise will get you thinking outside the box and not simply naming your story the first thing that pops into your head.

Once you get all ten titles down, you can edit, cross out, combine, etc., to your heart’s content.

10. Share it with the world!

While you could nitpick and wordsmith one drabble until the end of time, don’t! Once you’re (reasonably) happy with it, share it with friends and critique partners to gather reader input. A new set of eyes is immensely helpful for checking whether you’ve correctly assessed how much the reader can read between the lines.

Next, submit it to an open submission call. As noted in tip #1, there are several magazines and presses accepting 100-word stories, so pick the one that is the best fit for your story (perhaps the 100-Foot Crow, for example) and send it off!

Submitting stories could (once again) be an entire blog post, so there are two things I’ll stress here: (1) read and follow the magazine’s submission guidelines and (2) don’t be deterred by a rejection.

A rejection just means the story wasn’t a good fit for that market at that time; it doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer. John Wiswell’s Nebula-nominated story “For Lack of a Bed” was rejected 17 times before being accepted, so it’s a good thing he wasn’t deterred by rejection (even if he sadly doesn’t write drabbles).

Now go read and write some awesome 100-word stories!

Posted June 18, 2024.