Drabble-Sized Ideas

Are struggling to come up with story ideas? Or perhaps you’re overwhelmed with ideas, yet none seem suitable for the 100-word story. Check out our newest blog for some some tips, including some from past 100-Foot Crow contributors, for getting the creative juices flowing and crafting drabble-sized ideas.

Self-Driving Utopia

By: TJ Rowley

By Thursday, I had to cross the street.

The six lanes of self-driving cars looked like hundreds of ballistic beads on an abacus, uncountable. They buffeted me with waves of displaced air.

My antibiotics were just across the street, but an hour away; the footbridge was hidden in smog. Impossible on my knee. I’d have to sell my good knee to hire a car.

Briefly I glimpsed bloody fur below the blur of cars, gone, then there, then gone. Poor thing didn’t have a lidar detector. Nor did I; but the cars had to stop for a human.

Didn’t they?

© 2025. TJ Rowley

TJ Rowley is a speculative fiction writer whose mass advertising / surveillance dystopia Persistence of Vision (Dixi Books, UK) came out in 2023.

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