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#203 Back to Basics

If you’re signed up to the Prompts newsletter, you’re probably interested in writing short stories — and love getting emails from people called Laura. With that in mind, I have a recommendation for you...


Editor Laura Mae Isaacman offers a free, 10-day email course on How to Craft a Killer Short Story. She has edited literary giants like Noam Chomsky and Joyce Carol Oates, and her course breaks down the principles of short story writing into manageable chunks. 


This week’s prompts take cues from Laura’s tips and examples, taking us back to the basics of storytelling, and can help you brush up your short story skills alongside the course.

🥇 Winner

Echelon

Winner of Weekly Contest #203 🏆

Leaning against a tarnished railing aboard a ferry, Katherine watched ocean waves curl into themselves. Close to her chest, she held a pewter urn containing her mother’s cremated remains. She breathed deeply, the taste of brine caking her tongue like damp ash. The midday sun reflected in droplets that quavered on the balusters, then trickled down like little rivulets, only to reappear from the periodic spray of waves breaking against the prow. Other ferry goers chattered around her, though Katherine was only vaguely aware of them. Her though...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write a story during which two conversations happen simultaneously.

– 28 stories

Write about how a single event affects a seemingly unrelated area of a character’s life (their friendships, career, romantic relationships, etc.)

– 35 stories

Write about two friends getting into a fist fight.

– 30 stories

Write a story that experiments with tone — perhaps a difficult subject dealt with in a playful way, or an ostensibly happy scene that hints at darkness lurking beneath.

– 62 stories

Start your story in the middle of the action.

– 68 stories

Stories

Heart

Weekly Contest #203

He was impossibly tall. That was the first thing that caught Missy’s attention that night at the bar. He moved through the throng of drunks like a river crashing through rocks and mountains and boulders. People had no choice but to move out of his way or be trampled. He didn’t shoulder his way through the crowd or intimidate them or anything, but who wouldn’t be? The next thing Missy noticed was his smile. Oh, it made her heart beat faster. There were deep grooves in his cheeks, with permanent smile lines that caught her eye. His eyes w...

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Just Ripe

Weekly Contest #203

Things are not always as they seem. There is no definitive good or bad. There is no right or wrong, just what we make of it. Bees sting but help keep our ecosystem stay alive. Dogs are great companions, but they can bite. Food keeps us nourished and alive but can poison us and rot us from the inside out. Even Mother Earth herself shares this duality, harboring all known life in the universe while seemingly trying to destroy it all in one breath. You get what I’m trying to say. So you see, I’m not a good person. I’m not a bad one either. To l...

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I Was Gonna Offer You a Brewski, But I see You’re Covered

Weekly Contest #203

Her hand shaking as she wipes the tears away from her rosy cheeks, Modesty Naylor, soda mogul Percival Warren Naylor’s shapely twenty-seven-year-old widow, leans against her mother Empress for comfort. Modesty’s babyish lisp endears her to the reporters and photographers gathered by her Olympic pool to interview her. “I wuved him. I weally did. But people wouldn’t wet me.” Embarrassed by the cutting headline he’d published the day before, (“Gorgeous Gold Digger Strikes Gold As 92-Year-Old Soda King Goes Pop!”). Eyewitness News Reporter Har...

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The Uber from Hell

Weekly Contest #203

This is the story of how George’s life changed forever.            He was standing in the dirty McDonald’s bathroom late at night, examining his thinning hair. George’s glasses were smudgy but cleaning them meant getting a clearer look at his balding head and aggressively average face.            “Hey, who was your favorite serial killer?” he asked out loud.            “You are m...

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Written On The Board

Weekly Contest #203

Malo 'etau ma'u e efiafi ni (Good Evening)       Hello my fellow classmates. We stand here on this great evening to close off on an era that has now ran it's course over the past four years. Starting off as freshmen, now ending it on a graceful note as seniors who are blossoming into young adults with the wings on our back to take to the sky in which we are about to fly off to in the direction of the sunset. When my counselor and principal approached me to give this speech about a door closing right at the nick of ti...

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Rocco’s Hiking Adventure

Weekly Contest #203

Rocco bent down on his front legs, pulled some water out of the pond with his hooked tongue, and bolted again. He raced along the hiking trail, jumping over tree roots and sliding beneath outstretched branches. The dried leaves, prickly thorns, and small sticks that gripped his fur bounced back and forth with each bound. As he approached a fork, he instinctively turned left. He’d made this turn a hundred times before and knew the way to the trailhead. It was only eight miles from the peak of the mountain to the nearby town and he was running...

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December 19th, 1995

Weekly Contest #203

GREETING CARD FROM ANNETTE CARPENTER TO HER DAUGHTER ALLIE COOK Allie, Rob, and Danny, Congratulations on your first home! I hope this card is waiting for you in your mailbox the first time you check it! I just wanted to tell you all how proud I am of you! I can’t wait to come visit! I just wish your father was still here to bless the house for you, but I know he’s looking down and very proud. Miss you, All my love, Mom (Gramma) * * * July 18th RRRRRRING! RRRRRRING!...

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A Woman's Role

Weekly Contest #203

It was the best day of the year for now 11-year-old Sofia: her birthday. She was surrounded by her relatives and classmates singing “happy birthday” to her. She was the centerpiece, the star of the show today. She stood at her stage at the head of the dining table with her chin almost held up high. Father stood across the room, his glazed-over eyes aimed in the general direction of the table. As the small crowd wrapped up the song, the birthday girl took a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly. Sofia cherished this moment when the world ...

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Only Madness

Weekly Contest #203

I feel the cool metal slide between my ribs and gasp. Pain explodes throughout me, pain I’ve felt before, but it is somehow different this time. Worse knowing that he was the one to put it there. My knees knock into the floor, a gasp releasing from me and a whimper from somewhere else. My hands go to the weapon in my chest, gripping it as hard as I can while it leeches strength from my limbs. I know not to pull it out, but it feels so wrong, an incorrect outcome, a falsity. My hands are too slick from the blood now freely seeping from my wou...

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The Letter

Weekly Contest #203

Aaaaaaaa... A strangled, mute cry of pain and despair escaped from somewhere deep in my chest. I was sure that I had forgotten how to make sounds. My lungs were immediately filled with piercing icy air. At once it became indescribably painful, as if thousands of needles had stuck into my throat. I think I made it, I thought to myself as I sped up my pace. I tried to remember how it all started, but all I could remember was the moment when I received a letter from an old friend from school. We hadn't seen each other for a long time, and out...

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Sisters

Weekly Contest #203

Sisters I will not shoot an unarmed woman. She’s not unarmed, she’s holding a nail-gun. It’s not a real gun though. What part of ‘nail-gun’ makes you think that’s not a gun? … A strange, strangled scream from the bedroom. The door burst open. Good morning my love, coffee? Fuck off! What…? I said fuck off! No coffee, no fucking cornflakes.   He blinked. She slammed the front door behind her. … A nail-gun can’t hurt anyone at this distance. It’s a powder-actuated model. What? It’s powder-actuated. As in gunpowder? As in gunpowd...

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Have Time Will Travel

Weekly Contest #203

Have Time Will Travel Time is said to flow like a river. And people enter these streams of time, sometimes at the identical moment. Many people wonder if each affects the lives of their other time travelers, entering the ebbs and flows at similar points, but exiting the chronological estuary at some varied journey's end. Another example of a passenger in time would be those who ride a train together, at the same moments of their existence. But there are unrelated destinations for the riders, different towns to work in, familie...

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Every Prompt Everywhere All at Once

Weekly Contest #203

"Come in Butt plug, Anvil. This is Goldhammer. Roof status? Over.""Take it off. Take it off," Anvil, also known as Ted, says.I shake my head because the beautiful medal with two rifles crossed over a wreath belongs to me now. I took the medal from Ted and pinned it to my chest because I have good aim and he does not.Ted swings his fist at me again. But I am not there. Again."That is strike two," I say, but only to Ted and not into my walkie talkie. That is so it can be a private word joke between two companion friends.Ted does not laugh, so ...

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The Mishaps of Knovas Episode 7: The Mishmash with Markolmid, the God of Exploration

Weekly Contest #203

Hello, denizens of Myrthol! I, Knovas, God of Logic and Keeper of Time, am about to embark upon a whole new mission, one submitted not by any God, but by you, my loyal supporters! This mission is an odd sort, unique in its design, and understandable as to why no mortal has partaken in this undertaking: the World Rings. Salutations, children of the land of Etemburo! Markolmid, your God of Exploration and Keeper of the Compass (that’sa me, by the way), shall commence with a quest submitted by popular demand amongst the...

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Sometimes we do things to help ourselves but instead those choices change our lives forever

Weekly Contest #203

Although it's been nearly a decade since I appeared on the Dr.Phil show titled, "My sister wrote a book of lies" being on the show still haunts me. My life has been completely torn a part and I am not blaming anyone but myself and how I handled coming to terms with my past abuse. I had never blamed my father since he was mentally ill and an alcoholic. I always excused his inappropriate behaviors towards me hoping it was because he was under the influence of alcohol or who knows what else. The women loved him, they would always say he was so ...

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