What Does Drabble Mean?
Fic TypeA story of exactly 100 words — in strict usage, the count is the form. Loosely, the word gets applied to any very short fic, to the mild dismay of purists.
Drabble in Practice
The 100-word drabble grew out of British science fiction fandom, where writing games formalized the exact-count constraint, and fanfiction communities adopted the form enthusiastically — LiveJournal-era drabble communities ran weekly prompts with strict counters, and the tradition continues on AO3 and Discord. The form's discipline is real: 100 words forces a single image, turn, or sting, and writers credit it with teaching compression better than any workshop. Usage drift is the term's eternal footnote; plenty of fans say drabble for anything under a thousand words, while form devotees defend the exact count and its multiples — double and triple drabbles — as the genuine article.
Example usage
"She posts a drabble every Friday, exactly 100 words, and somehow last week's one still made me tear up."
Related Terms
Double Drabble
A fic of exactly 200 words — two drabbles' worth. Part of the family of precise word-count forms that grew from the original 100-word drabble.
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Ficlet
A short fic — bigger than a drabble, smaller than a full oneshot, typically somewhere between a few hundred and a thousand words. The diminutive is the definition.
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Prompt
A story seed offered to writers — a scenario, a phrase, an AU premise, a kink, an image. Prompts power exchanges, memes, fests, and a huge share of fic that gets written at all.
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