reedsymarketplace
Assemble a team of professionals
reedsystudio
The writing app for authors
reedsylearning
Writing courses, events and memberships
reedsydiscovery
Get your book reviewed
reedsyprompts
Weekly writing prompts and contests
Writing courses, events and conferences
Upcoming events
The Bigger Picture: Writing with a Series in Mind
April 13, 2026
Writing Beyond Your "Brand"
March 16, 2026
Publishing in Audio: What You Need to Know in 2026
February 10, 2026
What's in a Name? Naming Characters, Places & Titles
February 09, 2026
Learn how to succeed as a writer from the best in the business.
Every writer needs a Studio
Check out our writing app for authors!
Menu
More apps built by Reedsy
Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2025
Submitted to Contest #340
“The Ferryman.” Four women in ten months. All victims were under thirty years old. Found barefoot and stretched across church pews; hands folded together neatly over their chests like they’d expected someone else to pray over them. Uniform slit throats – one swipe, no mess. Executed. Bodies washed clean. Neat. Methodical. No prints. No DNA. No witnesses. No motive. Except. The killer always left something behind. A silver coin underneath each woman’s tongue. Methodical. Precise. Organized. After four bodies, the 8th Precinct Homi...
Submitted to Contest #341
To the individual who has contacted this department under the name “Northbound,” I am writing because you indicated in your last communication that you would continue to correspond only with a single officer. I have been assigned that role. This letter is not an admission of cooperation or concession. It is an acknowledgement of receipt. You claim to possess information regarding the locations of unidentified human remains connected to the missing persons cases currently catalogued under regional cold files 611 through 618. If that claim is ...
The new intruder steps into me at dawn. I feel the pressure of their presence before I see them, skin brushing stone, heartbeat pressing against silence. They are alone. They always are. That is the rule. I unfold quietly around their edges. I have been many things to many people: trial, punishment, sanctuary, curse. I am a place without a name, yet older than nations. I do not remember when I was made, only that I was given purpose. And that purpose is clear: None leaves. But this one, this one tastes like smoke on old marble. Something in ...
By the time the Hero returned, the village had already buried most of its joy. They still called it Mirefold, though there was no mire left, and not much to fold. Once, a river had braided through its hills, turning the soil to velvet. Now, the riverbed was cracked. The hills were half-shaved for trenchwork and timber. The war had taken the rest—roots and harvest, sons and songs. Still, they hung crimson banners from scorched beams. They sang. They toasted. Someone carved a likeness of Kael of Velshyr—the Hero—in softwood and mounted it wher...
The clock on my office wall accused me of murder at twelve-oh-seven. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Legally. The second hand lay snapped off at the base of the face, as if it had tried to keep going and failed. Beneath the glass, the red Court indicator pulsed once every three seconds—slow, deliberate, official. A street clock didn’t signal like that unless it had recorded a violent crime and decided the memory mattered. I stopped writing mid-line. Ink bled across my ledger, turning a neat column of fees and timestamps into a dark smear...
Submitted to Contest #339
In the heart of Tallowmere Hollow, where the trees grew low and polite, and the flowers never dared bloom out of season, sat a bakery that regularly defied the laws of nature—and, on evil days, gravity. Crumb & Kindling, home of the finest elderflower turnovers in the valley and the only known hearth to sneeze when insulted, was run by the Bramblebake siblings: Tilla and Pip. At sunrise, the bakery’s shutters clattered open of their own accord, the hearth yawned, and somewhere in the rafters, a squirrel cursed softly as it spilt a jar of...
In Grindlewood, the trees didn’t just whisper — they eavesdropped. They leaned over the moss-covered trails, gnarled and ancient, heavy with mist and secrets. Roots twisted across the ground like drunken vipers. The canopy draped the world in green gloom, and somewhere overhead, a crow laughed — like it knew what was coming. Jinx Quickpaw flicked a slug off her boot with the tip of her dagger and scowled. “This forest smells like wet bark and tax evasion.” “That’s because it’s alive,” Miri Thistlewhip said calmly, kneeling beside a lichen-co...
Tessa Fairwill had been promised adventure. Not in those exact words—the Royal Bureaucracy of Eldwyn rarely used language that optimistic—but the recruitment scroll had definitely included “field work,magical engagement,” and “direct post-heroic impact.” So yes, she had envisioned dragons. Glory. Fireballs. A tasteful amount of shouting. Instead, on her first day, they gave her a clipboard, a reinforced quill, and a partner who smelled like burnt ink and old rules. “I’m Grent Velthorn,” he said without looking up from his desk. “Assignment o...
Submitted to Contest #338
The book was already open when I found it, which felt rude. It lay on my desk between my government-issued study tablet and a cup of synth-coffee that tasted like regret. Its spine was cracked. Its pages were yellowed. Its existence was illegal in at least twelve clearly posted ways. I stared at it for a full ten seconds, waiting for the apartment’s monitoring system to scream. It didn’t. That was problem number one. Problem number two was the title, printed neatly on the first page in dark, confident ink: THE ARCHIVE OF THE UNLISTEDA record...
The first time Mara touched paper, she expected it to feel like the screens in the Museum—flat, cold, pretending to be old. It didn’t. It breathed beneath her fingertips, a dry whisper of fibres that caught on her skin like it had been waiting. The smell came next: dust and something faintly sweet, like dried flowers pressed too long between pages. It made the back of her throat ache with a memory she couldn’t place. The book was tablet-sized but heavier, bound in cracked leather, the colour of burnt sugar. No glow. No wake-swipe. No complia...
The book insulted him before he realised it could talk. “Ah. Dirt road. Again,” it muttered from inside his pack. “Bold choice, Boots. Nothing says destiny like ankle-deep mud and a quick escape route.” Edrin stopped. Mist clung to the hills like breath held too long. A crow startled off a fence post. For a heartbeat, Edrin wondered if exhaustion had finally tipped him into hallucination. He reached back and pulled the book free. Edrin did not look like the sort of wizard stories remembered. He was thin rather than imposing, his shoulders sl...
Submitted to Contest #337
Nova named the rocks. Not because she was sentimental, but because no one else would. The ridge she climbed every morning for signal range was Mother’s Spine — a long, jagged curve like a sleeping serpent. The dark crater beyond it was Father’s Silence. The line of crystalline trees she passed daily? Ghost Choir. She logged them all in her journal. Not the station logs. Hers. Her parents would’ve hated that. Her father would’ve corrected her pronunciation. Her mother would’ve logged it properly anyway. They believed in proper protocols. GPS ...
Submitted to Contest #335
The wizard had been walking for so long that even the road had forgotten his name. He wore no sigils now, no bright robes or staff crowned with jewels. Just a travel-cloak patched more times than he could remember, boots worn thin by centuries of patient wandering. In taverns, they called him Hedge-mage, or Old Bright, or nothing at all. He preferred nothing. Magic was quieter when you did not demand it to announce you. He was crossing the salt flats east of Greywater when the raven found him. It landed on a mile-marker stone that predated e...
Submitted to Contest #334
“Don’t talk to strangers,” Matron Gribble warned, thumping Gribnock on the back with a ladle crusted in turnip paste. “And if one offers you gold, it’s either cursed, fake, or about to explode.” Gribnock nodded solemnly. He even repeated it back to her. “Don’t talk to gold, explode the curse, curse the fake—” “Close enough,” she sighed. Exactly twenty-three minutes later, he joined a gang of strangers who were planning a gold heist. So really, he tried. The plan was “flawless,” according to Gribnock the Green, who had drawn it on the back o...
Once upon a time, in a half-collapsed ruin that smelled like burnt rat and broken promises, a goblin and a kobold reached for the same silver spoon. Zruk’s grubby green fingers froze an inch from it. So did Kippi’s claw. They stared at each other over the dull gleam of the utensil, both crouched like criminals in a pantry, neither blinking. The spoon sat alone on a velvet pedestal in the centre of the stone room, bathed in a beam of light that came from nowhere and smelled faintly of judgment. Zruk hissed through his teeth. “I touched it fir...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email:
0 likes
