Drabble Examples: Three Original 100-Word Stories With Notes
Quick answer: Three original drabbles at exactly 100 words each, with notes on what the form demands, the history of the term, and how a drabble sits at the floor of most flash contests.
A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words, no more and no fewer, with the title conventionally excluded from the count. The term comes from a 1980s British science fiction fandom game, itself named after a Monty Python sketch, and the form has since spread to every genre. The three original drabbles below are each exactly 100 words and each has a beginning, a turn and an ending. After them, notes on what the form asks of you and where a drabble fits in the wider world of flash fiction submissions.
Permit
Rosa Delgado had written four thousand parking tickets and had never once let a car go. That was the job. You did not decide who deserved it. So when she came round the corner of Merchant Street at 8.52 and saw the blue Corsa on the double yellow, she had the pad open before she recognised the dent in the rear door. Her son's car. Outside the hospital where his daughter was born at 3 a.m. She wrote the ticket. Then she took a twenty from her purse, folded it inside the envelope, and wrote on the back: Congratulations. Mum.
Cradle
From the cradle on the fourteenth floor, Sunil could see into the boardroom, where a man in a good suit had just gone down on one knee. The woman by the window put both hands over her mouth. Sunil kept squeegeeing; you did not stop for anything up here. The woman lowered her hands. She was shaking her head. The man stayed down a long time and then stood, and she touched his arm, and he moved away from it. Sunil finished the pane. He lowered the cradle slowly, so that the last thing they saw of him was going.
Starter
Nell had kept Jamie's sourdough starter alive for eleven months after Jamie left, which was longer than she had kept anything else of his. She fed it on Sundays. It bubbled at her from the back of the fridge like something that expected to be forgiven. In August she baked with it. The loaf came out lopsided and dark and better than any of his. She stood in the kitchen with the heel of it in her hand, still warm. Then she carried the whole loaf next door to Mr Okoro, who had lost his wife in spring, and knocked.
What the form demands
One hundred words is roughly six to ten sentences, which means each one is load-bearing. Permit uses its first sentence to set a rule and its second to explain why the rule matters, then breaks the rule in the last line with a twenty-pound note. Cradle is a story about not intervening, told from the only vantage point that makes the not-intervening physical. Starter puts a whole relationship into the tense of a fridge. In each, the character is named in the first four words, and the ending is something done with the hands.
A drabble is also exactly the minimum for many flash contests, including Writory's, which takes stories from 100 words upward and scores every entry out of 100 with a certificate. If your draft lands at 92, do not pad with adjectives; add a concrete noun or a place name that the story was missing.
What writers can take from this
- Name the character in the first four words; pronouns waste the count.
- State a rule or habit early so the ending can break it.
- Spend the last sentence on an action, not a thought.
- Count with a tool; hyphenated words and numerals trip up eye counts.
- If you are under, add a place. If you are over, cut an adjective.
Try it yourself
Write a drabble in which a character with a strict professional rule meets the one case that tests it. Exactly 100 words. The ending must be a physical object changing hands.
Questions
Does the title count in a drabble?
By convention, no. The 100 words are the body. Some contests count the title, so read the rules, but if none are given, assume the title is free.
Where does the word drabble come from?
From a Monty Python sketch in which the game Drabble is won by the first player to write a novel. Birmingham University science fiction fans adopted the name in the 1980s for a 100-word writing game, and it stuck.
Is a drabble the same as a 100-word story?
Yes. Drabble is the older, fandom-derived term; 100-word story is the plain description. Editors use them interchangeably.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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