How To Write A Drabble

[daibhidc]

1) Write the shortest story you think you can.

2) Discover it's 136 words long.

3) Go through the story ruthlessly cutting out any extraneous passage.

4) Discover it's now 124 words long.

5) Restore the 136-word version and add 64 words. Call it a double drabble.

6) If you can't think of 64 new words, add 14 and call it a drabble-and-a-half.

7) Discover you've actually added 15 new words, and there's no grammatical way to remove one.

8) Give up.

Comments

[pedanther]

Yes... that does seem familiar.

[scarfman]

there's no grammatical way to remove one

There you lost me.

[thisbluespirit]

If it really wants to be that length, you could just post it as a ficlet instead. Drabbles are great, but if it really won't... why be dictated to, at least this once?

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

You could stop it dead after 100 words and then just tell everyone it'll be resolved in a sequel... :o)