I am a big fan of 100-word stories, commonly know as drabbles. However, if you look up “drabble” in a dictionary, you’ll find a definition like “to wet and muddy.”

So why are they called that?

It turns out, the 100-word story is a fairly new form of storytelling with a history dating back fewer than 50 years. Yet despite its recent development, the origin of the drabble involves some surprising players: Monty Python, Terry Pratchett, and Isaac Asimov.

History time

The moniker harkens back to the game called “Drabble” described in Monty Python’s Big Red Book published in 1971. In this parlor game, the competitors raced to write an entire novel in a single sitting.

Obviously, this competition was a joke, but in the 1980s, the Birmingham University Science Fiction Society adapted the farcical game to a real one by changing the novel to a 100-word story—a far more manageable feat—and thus the wordcount was set for the modern-day drabble.

The drabble was then established beyond the confines of Birmingham University in 1988 with the publication of The Drabble Project, edited by Rob Meades and David B. Wake, which contained 100 drabbles. You’d likely recognize several of the authors in this anthology—including Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov. Two subsequent anthologies followed: Double Century and Drabble Who? (which was Doctor Who themed).

Now as to why the Monty Python game was called “Drabble,” I don’t know, but I suspect it sounded humorous and reflected the difficult and unenjoyable nature of the original game.

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This blog was first posted at the 100-Foot Crow.

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