Drabble Writing
What is a drabble?
A drabble is a short piece of fiction of EXACTLY one hundred words. In addition, a further fifteen words may be used in the form of Titles and Subtitles. The counting of hyphenated words is a touchy subject and is left to the author's discretion, or according to the drabble comm/site/challenge maintainer's rules.
If you were super-astute, you might have noticed that yesterday's introductory post was actually a drabble.
The Origins of the Drabble
The name draws itself from Monty Python's Big Red Book: `Drabble. A word game for 2 to 4 players. The players sit from left to right and the first person to write a novel wins.'
From the early eighties, this "game" was played regularly by members of the Birmingham University SF Society, who decided on the 100 word format. It became widely popularized after a drabble writing exercise was held at NovaCon, 1987. The resulting drabbles were published in "The Drabble Project", a book which was sold to raise money for charity. Two other volumes have followed.
The Drabble in Fanfic
The format lends itself beautifully to fanfic because of the required brevity of the piece. There is little time for character development or scene setting, but in fanfic that is of little concern. The audience by default has an intimate knowledge of these things, so you can use almost all of your 100 words to portray the story or concept. There are many LJ writing comms which embrace the drabble, with many more devoted exclusively to drabble writing and challenges. There are drabble comms to cover most of the active fandoms (BtVS, QAF, X-Files, X-Men, NCIS, Harry Potter, Star Wars... You name it!!) and there are also generic and multifandom drabble writing communities.
Drabble Writing
The drabble has many uses in the writer's toolkit. It's a fairly short exercise that can be be used to distract one's self when writers block hits, or when you'd really like to write, but time does not allow. You can use it to satisfy that nagging little plot bunny that is too vague to work into a longer story. Or you can use it to exercise and strengthen your writing skills. For newer writers, completing a novella or even a short story might be a daunting task... but 100 words seems manageable.
Being concise is the key to drabble writing, and with that comes precision in word use and structure. You have to chose your words carefully, often leaning towards highly emotive or descriptive words which will create the moment most economically. Dialogue can be used to great effect, and can even be used exclusively as the story telling device (he said and she asked are words that can be culled in the interest of word economy).
Where to begin: I start with a draft drabble that I write fairly quickly. I am mindful of keeping things short, but don't worry about the word count too much at that time. Then comes the fun part! Counting. Word does a pretty good job, but I have been caught out. For some reason it feels that ... is a word, and not punctuation. It also counts hyphenated words as one (which may or may not be a problem depending on the rules you follow). There have been other strange anomalies that I just can 't work out, so I always do a manual count too. This is where the you could be questioning your mathematical abilities... because I always get a different count when I double check myself. Who'd have known that counting to 100 could be such a chore.
Then comes the word play. Adding an extra five words into your already perfect piece, losing two because you went over a tad... or even worse... realising you've spilled over to 132, and REALLY have to cut back. The mandatory word count will mean you'll be rethinking the significance of every word and sentence. You'll be more critical about structure and content than you have ever been before. And you will learn to rephrase a sentence in many different ways, each varying by a word or two.
But there's really only one way to understand the process of drabble writing, and that is to go and write one yourself. If you haven't tried it before, give it a go, and come back and tell us about your experience.
A drabble is a short piece of fiction of EXACTLY one hundred words. In addition, a further fifteen words may be used in the form of Titles and Subtitles. The counting of hyphenated words is a touchy subject and is left to the author's discretion, or according to the drabble comm/site/challenge maintainer's rules.
If you were super-astute, you might have noticed that yesterday's introductory post was actually a drabble.
The Origins of the Drabble
The name draws itself from Monty Python's Big Red Book: `Drabble. A word game for 2 to 4 players. The players sit from left to right and the first person to write a novel wins.'
From the early eighties, this "game" was played regularly by members of the Birmingham University SF Society, who decided on the 100 word format. It became widely popularized after a drabble writing exercise was held at NovaCon, 1987. The resulting drabbles were published in "The Drabble Project", a book which was sold to raise money for charity. Two other volumes have followed.
The Drabble in Fanfic
The format lends itself beautifully to fanfic because of the required brevity of the piece. There is little time for character development or scene setting, but in fanfic that is of little concern. The audience by default has an intimate knowledge of these things, so you can use almost all of your 100 words to portray the story or concept. There are many LJ writing comms which embrace the drabble, with many more devoted exclusively to drabble writing and challenges. There are drabble comms to cover most of the active fandoms (BtVS, QAF, X-Files, X-Men, NCIS, Harry Potter, Star Wars... You name it!!) and there are also generic and multifandom drabble writing communities.
Drabble Writing
The drabble has many uses in the writer's toolkit. It's a fairly short exercise that can be be used to distract one's self when writers block hits, or when you'd really like to write, but time does not allow. You can use it to satisfy that nagging little plot bunny that is too vague to work into a longer story. Or you can use it to exercise and strengthen your writing skills. For newer writers, completing a novella or even a short story might be a daunting task... but 100 words seems manageable.
Being concise is the key to drabble writing, and with that comes precision in word use and structure. You have to chose your words carefully, often leaning towards highly emotive or descriptive words which will create the moment most economically. Dialogue can be used to great effect, and can even be used exclusively as the story telling device (he said and she asked are words that can be culled in the interest of word economy).
Where to begin: I start with a draft drabble that I write fairly quickly. I am mindful of keeping things short, but don't worry about the word count too much at that time. Then comes the fun part! Counting. Word does a pretty good job, but I have been caught out. For some reason it feels that ... is a word, and not punctuation. It also counts hyphenated words as one (which may or may not be a problem depending on the rules you follow). There have been other strange anomalies that I just can 't work out, so I always do a manual count too. This is where the you could be questioning your mathematical abilities... because I always get a different count when I double check myself. Who'd have known that counting to 100 could be such a chore.
Then comes the word play. Adding an extra five words into your already perfect piece, losing two because you went over a tad... or even worse... realising you've spilled over to 132, and REALLY have to cut back. The mandatory word count will mean you'll be rethinking the significance of every word and sentence. You'll be more critical about structure and content than you have ever been before. And you will learn to rephrase a sentence in many different ways, each varying by a word or two.
But there's really only one way to understand the process of drabble writing, and that is to go and write one yourself. If you haven't tried it before, give it a go, and come back and tell us about your experience.