Here be Drabbles: Our first fantasy-themed short story competition

A writing competition with a difference makes its debut at Belle Vue Arts Festival 2026. Masterminded by award-winning sci-fi and fantasy short story author Liam Hogan, contestants will be challenged to produce a 'drabble' – a story exactly 100 words long. With two short story collections under his belt, plus contributions to numerous anthologies, prolific drabble-writer Liam is uniquely qualified to spearhead the Shrewsbury competition. Locals may know him from his involvement with Spark Young Writers Project at the Library, while further afield he has regularly hosted London's Liars' League live storytelling event. The Festival Blog met him for a chat.

Festival Blog: Hi Liam! Drabbles...tell us more! What are they and where did they originate?

Liam: A drabble is a story that's exactly 100 words long, excluding the title. As for where it originated, in 1971 Monty Python’s Big Red Book mentioned a parlour game called 'Drabble' in which competitors raced to write an entire novel in a single sitting. Fast forward to the 1980s, and Birmingham University Science Fiction Society used the same term for 100 word stories. Since then they've become quite popular, because it's a very particular format.

FB: Why write one?

Liam: Writing one could be an achievement in itself. Alternatively, it could be a warm-up exercise to get the creative juices flowing before you turn to the thing you're actually working on. Either way – it's fun! There are ways to get your exact 100 words that involve playing around with sentence structures – taking them in different directions or seeing what happens if you add a word here, subtract a word there. So the skill-set for drabble-writing encourages precision – but it's also playful because you get to experiment. It's a challenge, basically.

FB: Does it have to have the classic beginning-middle-end structure?

Liam: It has no particular rules, other than the 100 word length. I'd say it depends on what you want to achieve. You can do it as a stream of consciousness, you can do it as a list. A list story would work fine as a drabble. I've written drabbles where it's a pattern of repeated text that evolves, so it's kind of like a list, but it changes slightly as it goes through.

FB: 'Fantasy' is the competition's overall theme. How applicable are drabbles to fantasy writing?

Liam: Without much space for description/explanation, world-building is something to bear in mind. If you're writing a fantasy drabble, it probably makes sense to use existing worlds. Fairy tale worlds are great because everyone knows the shape of those stories, and the characters. You've got to do something original, otherwise it's just a copy – but if you start with something everyone knows, half your work is done. The Festival has quite a lot of art work involving dragons, so if anyone wants to put a dragon in a drabble, I'd be happy to read it. But it can be any type of fantasy – urban fantasy, even epic fantasy. If you can get an epic into 100 words – go for it!

FB: What form will the competition take and how do you enter?

Liam: There will three age-groups: up to eleven, twelve-to-sixteen and seventeen-and-over. Submission will be via email. Writers of the three best drabbles from each division will be invited to read them out at the Festival Poetry Event at the Hive. Authors who are happy to read out their drabble themselves are encouraged to do so. Otherwise we'll get someone to read it for them. Winners of each division will receive a prize. Further details on how to enter can be found here.

FB: Any tips for aspiring drabble-writers?

Liam: Our winners, I would hope, will all be 100 words exactly because that's the challenge. I personally like a relatively tight drabble. There are such things as flabby drabbles. A flabby drabble is a drabble where you can remove a couple of words and it improves it. I like every word to count –  that's part of the skill. But make sure you're not padding.

For more tips on drabble-writing, Liam recommends this online resource: https://drablr.com/how-to-write-a-drabble/If you need an online word counter, try https://wordcounter.net/ 

To read a recent drabble by Liam, visit https://100footcrow.com/winding-down/

To see a list of all his published drabbles, visit his website at: https://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.com/p/drabbles.html