Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Your character has always viewed the past with rose tinted glasses. Write about what happens when they’re finally confronted with the truth.

Posted in Angst on Oct 26, 2022

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 25 stories

Meditation

Winner of Contest #120 🏆

[CW: eating disorders] Breathe in. Let your eyes close. Let your mind wander. Think back to a time when you were happy as a child. There must have been times when you were happy. Notice any tension in your forehead. Relax the muscles between your eyebrows. The time when you were three and your parents took you to a water park. You were scared of the tallest slides, but you felt safe in Daddy’s arms. You loved the bright pink flowers on your black swimsuit, the neon green ruffles around your waist. The river stone pathways bisect...

230 likes 90 comments 90
Read story

The Houseguest

Submitted to Contest #120

The first thing that struck Carole about the young woman who booked her guestroom on HomeBnB was that her name, Xaria Lemieux, both began and ended with an “X.” It made her lip curl. She'd had all types of people stay in the second room of her two-bedroom Ardmont, Pennsylvania rowhome since she put it on the site, but something about those bookend X’s gave her a bad feeling. This would definitely be a weird one. She clicked the guest’s profile. Shocker — Xaria Lemieux was from California. A hippie freak, probably. Likely to stink u...

43 likes 25 comments 25
Read story

Sarah, Sarah, By the Sea

Submitted to Contest #120

In the other boat, he’d sing the loudest. Shanties and songs his father taught him. Blue-and-green crusted melodies learned in bars and passed on to children late at night with no consideration for school the next day. Iris would watch him get into the other boat despite her protests that the new boat was nicer and safer and could carry him home with certainty. She would watch as her husband of forty-eight years boarded the rain-stained craft--not much more than a dinghy these days--and sailed away singing “Sarah, Sarah, By the Sea” withou...

22 likes 15 comments 15
Read story

Rose-Colored Memory

Submitted to Contest #120

Rose-Colored Memory By Debra Birdwell Winkler When I received the invitation for our 20-Year High School Class Reunion, I was skeptical. I hadn’t made it to our 10th year because my husband was in the hospital having been diagnosed with cancer. I was going to pass on this reunion, but my daughter convinced me that seeing old classmates might be fun. I thought about it and decided it might be a breath of fresh air for me, especially if the boy I loved all through high school was there. He probably wouldn’t remember me. Then, I don’t think h...

16 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

R.T.G.

Submitted to Contest #120

Andre Jackson loved life. His apartment was small, but he had everything he needed and everything was of the finest quality. He could dine out at amazing restaurants for every meal every day, and drink at fantastic bars every evening. Since all the manual labour became automated, nobody went without. You could work if you wanted to persun a craft or intellectual pursuit, and of course there were still artists and celebrities, but the hardships and worries of his parents and grandparents generations were consigned to history. "What a time to ...

14 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

My Mother's Miracle

Submitted to Contest #120

My Mother’s Miracle My story begins with a series of incidents that encapsulate how my mother who was completely sheltered from the even the slightest adversity faced a situation so demanding it could have destroyed her. But instead, with a strength and vivacity she never knew she possessed, she rose up to meet the challenge that brought about a resolution one can only hope for. The significance of these events will become apparent as I reveal what has become a miracle for my mother, and for me. It was the early 1930’s when my mother, an onl...

13 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Predicament 291, No More

Submitted to Contest #120

Everything seemed perfect. Maybe too perfect. You could blame it on my naivety. Maybe through some childlike wonder. I used to think things were happier then. I used to feel like my family was together, like nothing could tear us apart. Laughter filled the house, we would tell jokes, play games. The fun was never ending. I remember when my brother Andrien and I would stay up half the night and listen to records, just the two of us. We would think about the endless wonders of the world. We would get lost in the music. We would tell stories of...

12 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Shard of Glass

Submitted to Contest #120

I found your secret, you were a hoarder, Natalie thought to herself. Her mums’ loft was full of cardboard boxes, over flowing with their contents. That was not the only secret she would find up here. Natalie had wondered whether she would come across some long lost artefact, a valuable treasure that may be desired by the British Museum. It was more likely that everything would be sent to a charity shop, failing that, the tip. Mum had not left much of a legacy when she died. Even the house was mortgaged to the limit, so her estate was not wor...

12 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

A Walk Down Widow's Lane

Submitted to Contest #120

A Walk Down Widow’s Lane Patricia Hesse Looking back I realize my little sister and I were an oddity in our neighborhood; the truth is even my parents didn’t fit in.  Our house was right in the middle of what I knew was the biggest concentration of old people this side of a nursing home. Most children probably conjure up the same image and assumptions when they hear the word “old” used to describe someone; however, growing up among these individuals I learned how different everyone is even though their ages may be almost the sam...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

On Grafham Lake

Submitted to Contest #120

12th April “My darling Kerri, I want you to know that I am okay. I am well in myself but missing you and kids so much right now. I managed a good workout this morning. I am keeping myself fit, as you know. They always serve something sweet with every meal here but I only eat a bit of it because I don’t want to put weight on. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Getting fat in this place! Anyway, I’m keeping trim because I know I am coming home soon. I know it. They can’t keep an innocent man locked up in here forever. They can’t. The t...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Memories-Imagined

Submitted to Contest #120

                                                                                           &...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Her World Unending

Submitted to Contest #120

Chelsea mulled it over, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she stared unseeing out the van window.With her stockinged feet up on the dashboard, her toes grazed the bauble dangling from the rearview window.She blinked.Once.Twice.With a strangled yelp, she kicked at it with disappointingly little effect. It swung back and forth, swaying in tandem with how she felt. Her world had shifted on its axis, leaving her perilously close to falling off the face of it into oblivion.The words were still ringing in her head from the voicemail her sister...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Can Things Change?

Submitted to Contest #120

"Pain will be your final convincer."I've heard it so many times. They say the truth is unspoken. I thought it must not be true, then. They say that, too. That I don't want it to be true. Can you really hear some things and not others?I stare at the bottle. Now, it looks like poison. Now, I feel like dying. Like I'm dying.I want to go back. Back to when I felt like living. Like I was living. That same bottle used to make me feel... And now? Won. Numb. None. Can you really feel nothing at all?I sit up, and the world stands. But just as suddenl...

9 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Enter, the Clowns

Submitted to Contest #120

"That's the thing about this city," Carson whispered, "it is only partially visible." Dane leaned closer, because that could not be what his best friend had said to him. "Huh?" he replied, definitely not whispering. An older gentleman, who had been half-heartedly reading his newspaper, glanced over at them as the bus wheeled around the corner of 9th and Vine, pulling up with a rough stop in front of the Public Library. Carson straightened, pressed his lips together to indicate silence, and nodded his buddy off the bus. "What did you say?" Da...

8 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Through Rose Tinted Glass

Submitted to Contest #120

Rose Faith Tinderwall never knew her past. She was a young orphan and the age of twelve. She was going through her very basic and normal day, strolling through the barren almost always empty streets, when an old man fell right in front of her. She rushed to his side, helping him up. "Sir, are you okay?"She asked, worried. "Yes kind girl, I am fine."He said, dusting off his brown pants. Rose inspected the man, he was very old and very wrinkly but he had a warmness to him that she couldn’t quite touch. The man smiled and continued on his way. ...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about a character who yearns for something they lost, or never had.

Angst – 111 stories

Start your story with the line ‘Back in my day…’

Adults – 27 stories

Write about two characters’ different perspectives of the same past event.

Middle School – 36 stories

Start your story with a character looking through an old family photo album.

Fluff – 44 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel