On Blogging | Author Skills | Fiction | Writing Prompts

What Exactly Is a Drabble?

A fiction form that’s ideal for Medium

JF Danskin
The Fiction Writer’s Den
3 min readSep 15, 2022

--

Lines and dots painted onto a wall.
Photo by Katie McNabb on Unsplash

Greetings, authors!

Don’t you want to be able to write a bunch of short but punchy stories… and do so much quicker than a traditional short story?

Enter: the drabble. An ultra-short but fully-told story.

For a few marvellous examples, I shared some great drabbles in the story below, including interlinked sets by some of my favorite authors:

The rules

So, what exactly is a drabble?

A drabble is a fiction form. It’s at the shorter end of flash fiction, to say the least. It is defined by its word count — each drabble should have only 100 words, no more, no less (usually, this limit includes the title).

It should nevertheless be a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Tips

--

--

JF Danskin
The Fiction Writer’s Den

Writing fiction (fantasy especially) and poetry, enthusiast for creativity, collaboration, community. An Editor at the Fiction Writer's Den.