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Adrabble is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length.[1][2][3][4] The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.
The concept is said to have originated inUK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by theBirmingham University SF Society, taking a term fromMonty Python's 1971Big Red Book.[1][4] In the book, "Drabble" was described as a word game where the first participant to write anovel was the winner. In order to make the game possible in the real world, it was agreed that 100 words would suffice. French writerFélix Fénéon may be considered as a precursor with hisnouvelles en trois lignes (three-line short stories), inspired by news items.
In drabble contests, participants are given atheme and a certain amount of time to write. (For example,Wilfrid Laurier University conducted a "100 Words Centennial Drabble Contest" in commemoration of its 100th anniversary in 2011, in which contestants were asked to write about "inspiration, leadership or purpose".[1][5]) Drabble contests, and drabbles in general, are popular inscience fiction fandom and infan fiction. Beccon Publications published three volumes,The Drabble Project (1988) andDrabble II: Double Century (1990), both edited by Rob Meades and David Wake, andDrabble Who (1993), edited byDavid J. Howe and David Wake.
Published science fiction writers who have written drabbles includeBrian Aldiss andGene Wolfe (both of whom contributed toThe Drabble Project),[4]Lois McMaster Bujold (whose novelCryoburn finishes with a sequence of five drabbles, each told from the point of view of a different character),[6][7] andJake Bible (whose novelDead Mech was written entirely in drabble format).[8]
100 Word Story is an online literary journal that was co-founded in 2011 byGrant Faulkner and Lynn Mundell.[9] It publishes stories that are exactly 100 words long.
The web has also enabled a rapid spread of the genre, with publishers such asThe Third Word Press using the web to collect drabble stories.[10]
A similar concept is 55 Fiction, which is a form ofmicrofiction that refers to the works of fiction that are either limited to a maximum of 55 words or have a requirement of exactly 55 words.[11] The origin of55 Fiction can be traced to a short story writing contest organized byNew Times, an independent alternative weekly inSan Luis Obispo, California, in 1987.[12] The idea was proposed byNew Times founder and publisherSteve Moss.[13]
A literary work will be considered55 Fiction[citation needed] if it has:
The title of the story is not part of the overall word count, but cannot exceed seven words.