Tag: Drabble

  • Darla’s Writer Wednesday – Dabbling with Drabbles


    Many years ago I discovered a website through which people shared their stories.  I met some really great people and read some remarkable fiction.  Another unexpected discovery turned out to be learning a miniature story format termed the drabble.
    Each drabble should be a mere one hundred words and sketch a complete scene.  Some readers and writers despise them.  I became addicted, which is not necessarily a good thing.  But positive results have stayed with me to this day.  For one thing, pithy storytelling can be some of the best.
    (Flowery language certainly has it’s place, though; don’t get me wrong.)
    In addition, I have learned to tackle the challenge of National Novel Writing Month a hundred words at a time.  The concept is no different than taking baby steps, of course.  Still, it works for me.
    On that note, I better get back to my NaNoWriMo story.  There are about five hundred more words to go before I reach today’s goal.
    Oh, and if you decide to adopt my ploy, try not to be obsessive about counting.  ~grin~  Stopping to constantly hit alt→ t → w in Microsoft Word contributes unproductive key strokes and takes time away from the actual composition.
    Happy writing!
    –

  • To Drabble or Not to Drabble?

    As part of my reintroduction to writing this year, I began participating in a monthly drabble challenge. Drabbles are defined in this case as 100 word stories (or 200 for double drabbles and 300 for triple drabbles). Drabbles are challenging, but I really enjoy them.

    I was involved in some discussion this week around word count, though, and ran into someone who claimed they could not drabble. They said it simply wasn’t posssible for them to write using so few words.

    Now, this group of folks in chat are people who regularly write 20,000 to 30,000 words or more a month, and the longest story I’ve written recently is less than 5,000 words. Still, it surprised me to find that narrowing the focus down to a drabble-length story would be considered more difficult than writing tens of thousands of words.

    So why drabble?

    One of the first things I noticed about drabbling was the way it forced me to choose words carefully. When you only have 100 words, every single one of them matters. I’m more likely to break out the thesaurus to find the perfect, descriptive word on a drabble than a full length story.

    Another thing I like about drabbles is that they can be relatively quick. If I’m blocked or frustrated, a drabble can shake me out of it. I can usually start and finish them in an evening, and completing something always makes me feel good. It also keeps the juices flowing when I’ve been stymied on my other works in progress.

    Finally, drabbling helps with plotting, too. Distilling a scene down to its primary elements, making sure you convey enough detail to fully tell the story but avoid going over the wordcount is great practice for longer stories.

    I realize that dabbling is not going to be for everyone. Still, everyone can do it with practice, and I think most people really will get something out of it.