Drabble

A drabble is "a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length." The form "originated in UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s," with the Birmingham University SF Society fixing the hundred-word rule; the name comes from Monty Python's 1971 Big Red Book, where "Drabble" was a word game in which "the first participant to write a novel was the winner," and a hundred words was agreed as a workable stand-in for the novel. The article also files the French writer Félix Fénéon's three-line nouvelles en trois lignes as a precursor.

The discipline is the point: exactly one hundred words, no more and no fewer, makes cutting an art. Drabbles live where communities trade prompt pieces, and they are the strictest corner of flash fiction and a staple of fan fiction challenges; serial writers use them as warm-ups that fit inside a coffee break.