Sunday, May 10, 2009

Want to win a drabble?

I used to write more drabbles in the past. According to Wikipedia, “a drabble is an extremely short work of fiction exactly one hundred words in length, although the term is often used to indicate a short story of fewer than 1000 words.

The purpose of the drabble is brevity and to test the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.”

I used it as a reward to “delurkers” in the forums I posted my stories. Any person who posted their first post in that forum by commenting on my stories, they could give me a word and I would write a drabble using that word. My drabbles were normally around 200 words.

I stopped doing that and writing all together last May due to some family emergency. But now, I hope to start again. So this week, I will make it a drabble week.

Here is one I did before (warning, it contains some sexual references). I will tell you the word the reader has chosen at the end of the drabble:

Something For Little Darcy - 229 words

It was a hard day at work and Darcy threw his tired body onto the sofa when he returned home.

“Ouch! What the hell is this?”

He sat on something. Taking it out, he saw a plastic funnel-shape thing. He pressed it. It was soft. He was scratching his head when he remembered his conversation with his wife the night before.

“It must be very hard on you, William.”

“What’s hard on me?”

“To go without for so long.”

“To go without what, Elizabeth?”

“Sex! The doc said we had to wait for three more weeks.”

“It’s fine, my dear. I got to cuddle little Emma and you as compensation.”

“I will think of better ways to compensate you, especially for the Valentine’s Day.”

Is it a toy for me? A Valentine’s Day gift from Elizabeth? Suddenly he was not tired any more. He put the plastic cup-shaped thing over his bulge. Hmm, it fits. But how does it work? Will she suck or blow through it?

“William, what are you doing with Emma’s suction cup over your trousers?”

Darcy dropped the suction cup immediately and looked at his wife with wide eyes. “Emma’s suction cup?”

“Yes, I got it from the nurse to express milk. What do you think …”

“Nothing, nothing, I will go and take a cold shower now. Too much hard work in the office.”

The End

The reader’s chosen word is “suction cup”. Hope you like the drabble.

You’re welcome to enter the competition and I’ll see if I can deliver a good one for you. First come first serve for the first three readers who comment on this post and request the drabble with a word of your choice. If no one enters, I will see what I can come up with.

7 comments:

  1. Wow. How hard would this be!! It takes me 100 words--or 1000--just to get warmed-up, much less do a meaningful micro story. This is a great exercise. Sort of like a western world Haiku. Let's see, a word...hmmm. Since I'm mean, it's gotta be something difficult. How about...Lexicography. Learned this yesterday on another friend's blog. Ha!.
    Best Regards, Galen
    http://www.galenkindley.com

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  2. I wonder if drabbles will become more popular, considering we now communicate in text messages and tweets.

    Hmm. Can't think of anything obscure. How about, in honor of the book I just turned in, avionics.

    Straight From Hel

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  3. Drabbles are great. In fact, drabbles are a great way to write short stories. For my book Breakthrough I inserted a 15 page unrelated short story as Chapter One. It's a mini-action adventure set in Las Vegas.

    I wrote a couple transitionary chapters at the end to transition into Chapter Two (which was originally Chapter One).

    So props to your blog today. Keep on drabbling.

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  4. Galen and Helen, very difficult words! But let see what I can do. Thanks Stephen. That's a great way you have used drabbles.

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  5. Enjoyed your story. I don't think I can say anything meaningful in less than a 1000 words. Perhaps I should try writing some drabbles if only to learn brevity.

    alan chin
    author of Island Song
    http://alanchinwriter.blogspot.com

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  6. What a cool idea!! I loved your story and creative use of an item not associated with the character's intent. Clever.

    Looking forward to more drabbles.

    Jina

    http://tinyurl.com/BerlinSexDiary

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  7. I write a lot of flash fiction. It's fun to try to fit a lot of narrative into a brief space. I made my grad students this term write Twitter stories (I'll be giving a talk about that in June at the Great Writing Conference in Wales). I think playing to our shot internet attention spans can be entertaining!

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