Drabble

Drabble

A drabble is an extremely short work of fiction of exactly one hundred words in length[1], although the term is often erroneously used to indicate a short story of fewer than 1000 words.[citation needed] The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.

The concept is said to have originated in UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by the Birmingham University SF Society, taking a term from Monty Python's 1971 Big Red Book. In the book, "Drabble" was described as a word game where the first participant to write a novel was the winner. In order to make the game possible in the real world, it was agreed that 100 words would suffice. [2] In drabble contests, participants are given a theme and a certain amount of time to write. Drabble contests, and drabbles in general, are popular in science fiction fandom and in fan fiction. Beccon Publications published three volumes, "The Drabble Project" (1988) and "Drabble II: Double Century" (1990), both edited by Rob Meades and David Wake, and "Drabble Who" (1993), edited by David J. Howe and David Wake. It was popularized online at 100Words.com.

"Drabble" is also sometimes used colloquially to refer to any short piece of literature, usually fan fiction, where brevity is its outstanding feature. Some stories, called "drabbles" by their authors or readers, total as many as 1,000 words in length. However, such a story should be termed by the more accurate description of "flashfic", "shortfic," or "ficlet," in addition to the older "short-short story".

The particular language used may greatly affect the ease or difficulty of writing a drabble. For example, the Finnish two-word sentence "Heittäytyisinköhän seikkailuun?" translates into English as "What if I should throw myself into an adventure?", a sentence of nine words. This density of meaning makes Finnish a much easier language in which to write a drabble than English. Even easier languages would be those which exhibit extreme polysynthesis, such as Cherokee, where an entire English sentence can often be expressed in a single word.

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  • Drabble — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda Un drabble es una obra literaria de ficción extremadamente corta, de exactamente 100 palabras, aunque se suele aceptar como drabble cualquier historia corta de menos de 500 palabras. El objetivo de un drabble es la… …   Wikipedia Español

  • Drabble — Drab ble, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Drabbled}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Drabbling}.] [???.See {Drab}, {Draff}.] To draggle; to wet and befoul by draggling; as, to drabble a gown or cloak. Halliwell. [1913 Webster] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • Drabble — Drab ble, v. i. To fish with a long line and rod; as, to drabble for barbels. [1913 Webster] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • drabble — index sully Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 …   Law dictionary

  • Drabble —   [ dræbl], Margaret, englische Schriftstellerin, * Sheffield 5. 6. 1939; schreibt Romane, Kurzgeschichten, Dramen und Literaturkritik. In ihren traditionell realistischen Romanen behandelt sie mit moralischem Engagement vor allem die… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • drabble — [drab′əl] vt. drabbled, drabbling [ME drabelen, akin to (or < ?) LowG drabbeln, to walk in mud or water] to make wet and dirty by dragging in mud and water; draggle vi. to become drabbled …   English World dictionary

  • Drabble — Le Drabble est un travail extrêmement court de fiction littéraire contenant exactement cent mots en longueur, bien que le terme soit souvent utilisé pour indiquer une histoire courte de moins de 1 000 mots. Le but du Drabble est d évaluer la …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Drabble — Ein Drabble ist eine pointierte Geschichte, die aus exakt 100 Wörtern besteht. Dabei wird die Überschrift nicht mitgezählt. Ursprünglich als Fanfiction betrieben, wird sie aufgrund ihrer einfachen äußeren Form gerne von ungeübten Autoren als… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Drabble — There are two possible sources of this interesting name, the first being that it derives from an Old English pre 7th Century personal name Drabbe , which is recorded as a name of a Peterborough festerman in 963 992, in A.J. Robertsons Anglo Saxon …   Surnames reference

  • Drabble (comic strip) — Drabble is an internationally syndicated comic strip that appears in about 200 newspapers. Kevin Fagan created the strip in 1979 and still remains the sole writer and artist. The strip centers around the Drabble family. Contents 1 Characters 2… …   Wikipedia

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