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
Writing Beyond Your "Brand"
March 16, 2026
Writing Sprint Session #1
January 28, 2026
Previous events
Live Editing #4 with Noah Charney
January 26, 2026
Raising the Stakes: Build Tension on Every Page
January 19, 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 Aug, 2020
Submitted to Contest #339
I didn’t have anything to do, but watch the snake. We were not supposed to go out, but there was over a foot of snow on the ground. No one was going anywhere. The man pushing the snow blower outside my window had a mask on. I yelled something to Steve about wearing a mask outside, and he yelled back that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Steve would die of an embolism at the age of seventy-four. By then, I’ll have already been gone for two years. My death will be peaceful. It will happen on a Friday night. How exciting. Today is a Sunday. W...
Submitted to Contest #338
He brought a copy of A Winter’s Tale. It was July 18th and, in the dead of night, it was still close to eighty-five degrees. When the central air in his apartment broke, his landlord told him it would take two to three days to fix. Being almost eighty-five himself, Ronald Dill might not have made it that long with the heat and, as they say in New England, the humidity. His landlord being a nice woman named Lisa who was very fond of her only tenant, she decided that she would put him up in a hotel across town until the issue was resolved. He ...
Submitted to Contest #337
CW: Physical violence, gore or abuse, prostitution I thought I’d find him near the Corkscrew. A pair of overalls and a t-shirt that showed some of my waist. A five o’clock shadow that was going on six. A thin gold chain around my neck. The guy who dropped me off shaved ten bucks off my fee to supply the ride. He was a regular, but he always broke my rule about cigarettes before a session. I let him off the hook, because he told me his wife was dying. I didn’t ask what she was dying of, but I hope it wasn’t lung cancer. He asked me as I was g...
Submitted to Contest #336
Teresa puts a wilting rose in a sea green bottle and admires her handiwork shortly thereafter. She looks outside her window and sees you looking in at her. The water is up to your chest and you are gulping in air as though practicing for when it will consume you. Teresa doesn’t quite laugh to herself, but she makes a little noise indicating that she thinks where you are is the result of your choices and nothing else. We try to tell her that you have amnesia, but she doesn’t believe it. Don’t take it personally. She doesn’t believe in amnesia...
Submitted to Contest #335
I was asked to go home and take care of my sister. She had been ranting about a man following her all over the island, and I was supposed to come home and assure her that no such man existed. She was refusing to leave the house, and even though she worked for our uncle, he had confided in our father that if she didn’t return to her bartending job at his restaurant, he’d have to let her go. He couldn’t show any favoritism or his other employees might complain. All of this was explained to me over the phone a few days before Easter. The plan w...
Submitted to Contest #334
The man who came over left a box of doughnuts on the coffee table. He’s been over before and he always brings treats. Not treats for me. Treats for the Doctor. Even knowing that there are doughnuts in the box, I must examine. I nudge the box once, twice, until it falls onto the floor. I wonder if the Doctor and his man will exit the bedroom, but they do not. I hear a sharp intake of breath, and then a short laugh. They are occupied. I see a doughnut release a little jelly onto the hardwood floor. It looks like blood, but fresh blood. Blood t...
Submitted to Contest #333
CW: References to self-injury She wants me to go play pool with her. I have eggs burning on the stove, and she wants to go play pool. What am I supposed to do? Let the house burn down? I know I was out there on the ice for too long. Cookies on the ice. Brownies on the ice. Sitting waiting for something to bite. That’s one kind of meditation. Pool is another. She plays pool. And I’m not allowed to remind her of two years ago. I’m not allowed To bring up when we met. To bring up when we were introduced to each other To bring up our kids Our ki...
Submitted to Contest #332
Bonnie didn’t come into work on Thursday, because the storm destroyed her shoes. Bonnie keeps all her shoes in one part of her closet, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the part that caved in when the rain was coming down like “Noah get the boat” and she told everybody she was under the weather, but really, she was just shoeless and you can’t show up with no shoes on even if everybody feels bad for you, because of your house. The steakhouse is a Joe Jeremiah’s and they have high standards for their employees. The JJ’s we worked at was right o...
Submitted to Contest #331
It was too warm outside to leave the pies on the porch the way Lillian would have back when the kids lived at home. She put them in the spare room instead (the one that used to be Jodie’s before it was Kristin’s), and turned the ceiling fan on hoping that would take the temperature down far enough to keep the apple and blueberry cool until the following afternoon. It was just after midnight, and she was behind on her cooking. This never used to happen, but when Ken passed away, she found herself becoming less and less punctual. Retirement ha...
Submitted to Contest #330
No one was going to make him leave the cupboard. If he wanted to stay in there forever, that was his choice. This was not a family that believed in rushing someone when they were grieving, and this was a kind of grieving. He was going to be dressed up in a tuxedo as soon as he got to the new house. Once a very small boutonniere was pinned to his lapel, he would be asked to perform four or five marriages before retreating to a new bedroom that would be much tinier than the one he was leaving behind. His mother kept a thousand and one plastic ...
Submitted to Contest #329
The first time we played Danish after Sloop disappeared, Maggie O’Neill had a fever that nearly killed her. She put down a Queen and a seven and that meant it wasn’t going to be her night. I had a King and if I placed it upside down, I’d have taken a clean twenty dollar bill off Kate Ebbott. Something told me to wait, and Kate won the hand. Aisling sat out as she always did. Kate told Maggie to go home if she wasn’t feeling well, but at home, the police were outside Maggie’s home putting pieces together and she didn’t want to be there when t...
Submitted to Contest #328
He became a giant ship sometime around his thirty-eighth birthday. Floating in the harbor, a doctor arrived to examine him. The doctor was having an affair with his wife, but he was also the only medical professional in the city who specialized in maritime transformation. The affair was a short one anyway. It had begun a month earlier when he and his wife decided they didn’t want children. He began to feel an itch down near his right knee, and his wife began to commit infidelity. The doctor wasn’t her only paramour, but he was her favorite. ...
Submitted to Contest #327
None of us wanted to deal with the rhino in the tree. Half the burgers were already burnt and the pasta salad didn’t have nearly enough vinegar in it. I like pasta salad with mayonnaise, so I wasn’t going to touch it anyway, but I had sympathy for the vinegar members of my family. My aunt kept going in and out of the house she’d rented for the long weekend, and every time she did, my uncle would yell that she was “letting the cool air out.” I took a sip of my pomegranate lemonade. From across the deck, my mother locked eyes with me and silen...
Submitted to Contest #326
CW: Physical violence, gore, domestic abuse, body horror And oh, she begged for another rest, but weren’t the fields on knees of their own? Pleading with us to bring them succor. They had survived one of the hardest winters to ever settle into Woodcatch, and now spring had arrived, and they demanded their gift. And wasn’t she to blame for going out there in the first place when she was younger? No childhood age excuses mischief when it leads to the genesis of a starvation. She put on her party dress and shunned her cake. Out she went with a ...
Submitted to Contest #325
The man sitting next to you is not a gnome. He may appear to be a gnome, but he’s simply shorter than most people. There’s nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t even be looking at him. Staring at him. You’re staring. How embarrassing. Who raised you? Just look down at the magazine you’re reading. It’s from 1812. There’s a test to find out if you’re possessed by Satan. Take the test. Find out. If you fail the test, the magazine recommends you turn yourself in to the village clergy so that you can be thrown into a well. The man next to you i...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email: