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.

Drabble contests, and drabbles in general, are popular in science fiction fandom and in fan fiction. The concept is said to have originated in UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by the Birmingham University SF Society. Beccon Publications published three volumes, "The Drabble Project" (1988) and "Drabble II: Double Century" (1990), both edited by Rob Meades and David Wake, and "Drabble Who" (1993), edited by David J. Howe and David Wake. It was popularized online at 100Words.com.

The particular language used may greatly affect the ease or difficulty of writing a drabble. For example, the Finnish two-word sentence "Heittäytyisinköhän seikkailuun?" translates English as "What if I should throw myself into an adventure?", a sentence of nine words. This density of meaning makes Finnish a much easier language in which to write a drabble than English. Even easier languages would be those which exhibit extreme polysynthesis, such as Cherokee, where an entire English sentence can often be expressed in a single word.

The term comes from Monty Python's 1971 Big Red Book. In this book, "Drabble" was a word game where the first participant to write a novel wins. In order to make the game possible in the real world, it was agreed that 100 words would suffice.

 

Englantilaiset opiskelijat kehittelivät "drabble":ksi kutsumansa pienoisnovellin iltojensa ajanvietteenä. Sateisilta saarilta Suomeen kulkeuduttuaan kummajainen sai Johanna Sinisalon ystävällisellä avustuksella nimekseen osuvasti "raapale". 

Raapaleen syvin olemus kätkeytyy sen kokoon, sillä raapale on sci-fi- tai fantasia-aiheinen pienoisnovelli, jonka pituuden täytyy olla ehdottomasti tasan sata (100) sanaa. Pidempänä tai lyhyempänä tuotos ei enää ole aito raapale, olipa se kirjallisesti kuinka ansiollinen tahansa. Otsikkoon ja väliotsikkoihin saa käyttää lisäksi korkeintaan viisitoista sanaa. 

Lyhyydestään huolimatta raapale ei saisi jäädä pelkäksi vitsiksi, vaan siitä pitäisi löytyä parhaimmillaan samat ainekset kuin mistä tahansa muusta hyvästä novellista. Raapaleen avulla voi erinomaisesti toteuttaa ideat, joista ei riittäisi ainesta tavalliseen novelliin.


English Source: Wikipedia