What's a drabble, now?

[fajrdrako]

One thing I've been noticing on a number of mailing lists and LJ communities lately is people posting stories they call things like "drabble of 368 words" or "drabble of 85 words".

I thought a drabble was 100 words, no more, no less. As a docedal is 144.

It is being used to mean 'ficlet' these days?

Comments

[shaggirl.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, a drabble is synonymous with a snippet - just a short, short story. For the Wednesday 100, drabbles are specified to be 100 words only.

I don't think there's any hard and fast distinction between a long drabble and a short ficlet, though the term dodecal is always 144 words.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Interesting! It used to be only a piece of 100 words: it looks as if the meaning has drifted and become less distinct.

[dolimir-k.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. I always thought a drabble was exactly 100 words and a dodecal was 144. Everything else should be a snippet or a ficlet.

But what do I know? *g*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It looks as if the meaning has shifted! Which is interesting.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

A drabble has always, to the best of my knowledge anyway, been 100 words. However, it's apparent that this knowledge has not filtered down universally. Thus does English mutate.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So that through linguistic attrition or evolution, 'ficlet', 'snippet' and 'drabble' are now becoming synonymous. How odd!

[digitalwave]

As far as I know, a drabble is 100 words.

I know, for me, I set out to write drabbles for my gift ficlets but the darn bunnies just kept growing. Maybe that's what happened in the other instances and they just didn't call them ficlets instead of drabbles when they were finished.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I love it when people's drabbles get out of hand and you get mini-stories of 200 or 500 or whatever-number-of words.

I don't write drabbles, and I've never had a dodecal get away from me, but I occasionally intend to turn a dodecal into a longer story. I haven't done it yet - but I might!

[acampbell.livejournal.com]

Whatever you say it is, that's what it will be, for me!!!