How to Write Drabbles (and other very short fiction)

This is going up too late for Three Sentence Ficathon, and too early for any drabble challenge that I know about. (seasonsofdrabbles is the big one.) But, well, now is when it was finished.

And I like short fiction for its own sake. I like writing it, I like seeing a prompt, having an idea, writing, finishing, and posting within an hour or two. I like editing something to absolutely polished, shining prose levels in a way that is impossible or at least enormously time consuming for longer works. I like having five different ideas in my head and being able to write all of them, if I want to.

Also, there's a pandemic on, and even before then things were stressful. Sometimes 100 words is all you've got. Doesn't mean you shouldn't write those 100 words anyway. It can feel like it; but drabbles are worthwhile fics in themselves. For that matter, sometimes these days all I can read is 100 words.

So first of all, a note on terminology. A drabble is exactly 100 words long.* That is inherent in its definition. A work of fiction which is not exactly 100 words long is not a drabble. This is my hill and I will die on it.

But there are lots of other very short stories. One sentence fiction, twitfics, 55 fiction, 60 word stories, three sentence fiction, 221bs, double drabbles, triple drabbles (etc.), and all kinds of counted-word and non-counted fiction. In fandom these can all be generally called ficlets.**

I have posted over 30,000 words of very short fiction in the last ten years, including over 70 drabbles.

Most of this advice is going to be relevant to all ficlets. Some of it is more relevant to counted-word fiction, by which I mean stories that have a mandatory exact wordcount, whether it's 60 words or 100 words or 221 words.***

So, there are two main problems when writing very short fiction: subject matter and details.


Subject Matter: Narrow Your Scope
( Read more... )

Trust Your Audience
( Read more... )

The Details: Fiddling with Contractions
( Read more... )

This process is sometimes frustrating and can feel like you're making the story worse for the sake of an arbitrary wordcount. And you can stop at any point, and say, no, the original was better, I'll just post it at 107 words. But in general, this process—this thinking, in depth, about the sound and purpose of every single word and phrasing and sentence and how they work together—this is how you improve your prose style. In all writing, not just drabbles.

Not that hyperconcise bare-bones prose is necessarily better. It's not. It's also not actually necessary, even in drabbles. And of course different kinds of short fics, like three sentence fics, encourage a very different style.

And you may write three drabbles, say "Fuck this format," and never write another one. The point is not writing one specific way. The point is paying attention to how you write, learning different ways to write, and then deciding if you like them.

Drabbles are one way of challenging yourself as a writer. They're prose, but in some ways they work the same as poetry does. They're quick, they're fun, and they make you think about your writing in a different way. Try some. Post them. Have fun.

Also on AO3.

( Footnotes: just more of me being pedantic, do feel free to ignore. )