by: Victoria Brun
A drabble is a story that is exactly 100-words. It’s a fairly new form of storytelling with a history dating back fewer than 50 years.
However, if you look up “drabble” in a dictionary, you’ll find a definition like “to wet and muddy,” which may leave you wondering how this word connects to a 100-word story.
History time!
The moniker harkens back to the game called “Drabble” described in Monty Python’s Big Red Book published in 1971. In this parlor game, the competitors raced to write an entire novel in a single sitting.
Obviously, this competition was a joke, but in the 1980s, the Birmingham University Science Fiction Society adapted the farcical game to a real one by changing the novel to a 100-word story—a far more manageable feat—and thus the wordcount was set for the modern-day drabble.
The drabble was then established beyond the confines of Birmingham University in 1988 with the publication of The Drabble Project, edited by Rob Meades and David B. Wake, which contained 100 drabbles. You may notice some familiar authors in this anthology—including Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov. Two subsequent anthologies followed: Double Century and Drabble Who? (which was Doctor Who themed).
Now as to why the Monty Python game was called “Drabble,” I don’t know, but I suspect it sounded humorous and reflected the difficult and unenjoyable nature of the original game.
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Many other words
Drabbles also fall under a variety of other names and categories: flash fiction, microfiction, microstories, and short-short stories.
Interestingly, the word “drabble” predates the word, but not the concept of, “flash fiction,” which wasn’t coined until 1992 with the anthology Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories edited byJames Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka. Flash fiction is any story that is 1,000 words or less (although some magazines raise this limit to 1,200 words or so), so a drabble is a specific type of flash fiction.
Another word that gets thrown around in the drabble space is “microfiction.” Microfiction, like flash fiction, also has a variable definition. Some set its word limit at 100, some 300, and others 500. This term was first used in the 1980s, making it align with the development of the 100-word drabble.
You also may hear the word “dribble,” which is a 50-word story, modeled after the drabble but for people who really take their love of brevity to the extreme.
Posted June 30, 2024.
