Although hint fiction is the shortest form of fiction currently in print (that this writer is aware of), there are lots of other types of so-called nano fiction or micro fiction in print that book collectors also may find appealing. Many of these forms of micro fiction focus on a specific word count (i.e., setting, character[s], conflict and resolution have to be developed using exactly X number of words).
One such type of extremely short fiction that relies on a very specific word count is the drabble. The drabble uses exactly one hundred words -- not one word more or less -- to tell a complete story (unlike hint fiction, which -- given its upper limit of 25 words -- can only ... hint ... at a complete story). This word count is exclusive of the title, which may consume up to fifteen additional words.
Conflicting explanations are given as to the drabble's origins. The term supposedly originates with Monty Python's 1971 Big Red Book, where the term referred to a game in which the first person to write a novel was declared the winner. The term was co-opted by the UK's Birmingham University Science Fiction Society in the 1980s, which apparently added the 100-words-maximum requirement. Contests promoting such fiction became popular, and in 1988 Beccon Publications published The Drabble Project, the very first collection of this extremely short fiction. The book contained "one hundred stories, each of exactly one hundred words, and cost one hundred shillings," and it went on to win a 1989 British Science Fiction Convention award for Best Short Text:
Beccon followed this up with 1990's Drabble II: Double Century (which again contained "one hundred stories of exactly one hundred words but this time by [a different] one hundred ... authors and, for the hell of it, published on the 100th day of the year ... [for only] 100 shillings") and 1993's Drabble Who (which celebrated the Time Lord's 30th Anniversary):
The drabble continues to attract interested readers and collectors (though it has long since shed its mostly-science-fiction focus), in part through the efforts of sites like 100words, 1000livesin100words, 100wordstories, The Drabble Protection Society and DrabbleMatic. To make things more interesting (and slyly "evade" the 100-word requirement), some of these stories are written with words borrowed from other languages, especially when such individual words require virtually an entire English-language sentence for proper translation (Finnish apparently is a popular choice for this purpose, as is Cherokee).
In case really, really, really long novels are not what you want to collect for your private library....
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