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
Weekly Prompts Contest
Reedsy Literary Prize
Magazine
FAQ

“Include a moment in which someone says the wrong thing — and can't take it back. ”

Posted in Short Story on Jan 2, 2026

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?

✍️ 30 stories

Productivity With Purpose

Shortlisted for Contest #336 ⭐️

It all began with a simple miscommunication. I’d told Amy that I thought Ewan Knowles was an idiot; Amy communicated that to Ewan and he obviously took it personally, which shows what an idiot he really is. Frankly, I don’t have a particularly high opinion of any of my co-workers. Ewan, as we know, is an idiot, Mark is a bully, Simone is lazy, Barbara is a hypochondriac (though she is about ninety, so she’s probably just sick a lot for real), Josh is a bore and Amy is, obviously, a snitch. And it’s tiring being the one who constantly ca...

42 likes 28 comments 28
Read story

I Have Strong Feelings For You Too

Weekly Contest #336

Today, I tell Neveah that I’m in love with her.The confession has been burning in my chest for what feels like years. Truthfully, it may have only been a few weeks or months. The exact time is hard to quantify. Every time I walk into her coffee shop, she greets me with a “Hey hun, havin’ the usual today?” Then everything else fades into the background. Yet, every time, I still leave the coffee shop with nothing but the usual.Not this time. Today, I tell her. Butterflies be damned.With Neveah on my mind, my morning routine is a blur. One mom...

22 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Fear in the Air

Weekly Contest #336

This story explores how a single, ordinary sentence—spoken at the wrong moment—can’t be taken back, and how its consequences ripple through a relationship and an entire town. Reuben Ortiz and Chantelle Beaudoin had been together for four years—long enough for their hopes to harden and their habits to settle into something that looked like certainty from the outside. They had been prom king and queen once, the kind of couple that still photographed well, the kind that suggested permanence even when it wasn’t true anymore.Chantelle wanted t...

20 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Licorice's Mistake

Weekly Contest #336

Licorice is more flexible than other confections, which makes it stronger under pressure. That was why the first court had been built from it.Between the first castings of the realm and the final dissolving of the First Confectioner, licorice had proven itself again and again. Where other substances demanded balance to survive, licorice endured imbalance and remembered it. The Sugarborn said that every structure made from it carried the echo of what it had resisted. That echo was strong. It was also a warning.Amareth, the first court’s confe...

18 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Table Tennis

Weekly Contest #336

*** Contains adult themes. *** Jamilla threw her purse on the table and nodded to the waiter. “Top shelf margarita, rocks, salt,” she said. “Thank you.” Marina took a long sip from her cocktail before staring at Jamilla. “Who pissed in your Cheerios?” she asked calmly. Jamilla frowned. “Freddie locked me out of the accounts and closed my credit card.” She drummed her fingers on her cell phone, glaring at it as if it had insulted her. Liz laughed. “That is sort of to be expected when you get divorced, Jamilla. I’m surprised he hadn’t done tha...

18 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Anniversary

Weekly Contest #336

The restaurant was too bright, Claire thought. Everything was too bright—the white tablecloths, the chrome fixtures, the afternoon sun streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Her mother had chosen this place. Of course she had."Forty years," her father said, raising his water glass. His hands trembled slightly, the way they had since the stroke. "Can you believe it, Claire-bear?"Claire smiled and lifted her own glass. Across the table, her mother sat perfectly straight in a cream-colored blazer, her lipstick the exact shade of rose it ha...

18 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Arthur's Choice

Weekly Contest #336

Myra had understood and accepted Arthur from the moment they met. Did she wish he was more mainstream and less constrained by rigid routines and an unusual worldview? Yes, but at that point in her life—after a heartbreaking number of disappointing love affairs—she decided that this strange but brilliant and kind man was not only her way out of a lonely, dreary existence, but the right one for her.A few weeks after Myra had invited Arthur to move in with her, she used just the right words (Arthur loved words) to convince him to let her brothe...

18 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Reasonable Doubt

Weekly Contest #336

Sarah ate her moo goo gai pan while the man lay dying on the floor. The stench of vomit hanging over the cramped kitchen ruined her appetite. Death was messier than the fantasy she had played out in her mind. She pushed the mushrooms to the side to save for her brother, an old habit that lingered despite his absence. Months of planning had led to this moment, but the satisfaction she was hoping for didn’t come. Sitting on a barstool in his tiny, shabby home, Douglas James Miller wasn’t the monster from her memories, only a fragile human bein...

14 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

When I See You

Weekly Contest #336

Jason spotted her at the rail, waiting for him, but something in the way she held herself made him slow his steps. The crowd pressed around her, shifting, restless forcing her hands to wrap tight around the metal. She kept leaning forward, as if the plane passengers would flood into the airport sooner if she strained enough. The doors slid open and closed. Men came through, women, kids with stuffed animals, business suits. She stayed on her toes. He walked slowly, the weight of his duffel slung over one shoulder, his camo uniform, slightl...

14 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Dimensions Within Words

Weekly Contest #336

Every possible word would lead to a different life, a different everything. Danville Lorden stood at a crossroads in time and space. Eighteen years ago, he’d nearly bled to death from an aneurysm and woken up with a whole new concept of eternity. Now, at forty, he stood in a room lit by the cobalt glow of dimensional portals. The Interdimensional Transport, or IT, was the culmination of five trillion dollars of multinational government spending. As a younger man, he’d fired off his scrawled scientific equations to the top minds at NASA, not ...

13 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

That's Dan

Weekly Contest #336

Someone at our table said, “He’s here.” I was tearing a piece of bread in half when she said it. It was warm, and better than the chicken. Butter soaked through the napkin when I set it down. “Who,” a man asked. “Maya’s ex,” she said, nodding toward the bar. I turned. He stood near a tall cocktail table with a drink in his hand. The drink stayed low, near his hip. He didn't lift it. He kept scanning the room, looking away, scanning again. Like he needed to memorize something. “He actually came,” the man said. “He flew in this morning,” the w...

13 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Before It Shattered

Weekly Contest #336

The room goes quiet in a way that feels physical, like the air just dropped. Not silence exactly. More like pressure. Like everything that was moving a second ago decided to stop at once. The refrigerator hum cuts out. The traffic outside seems to pull farther away. Even the light feels different, flatter somehow, as if it’s waiting to see what happens next.“I mean, it’s not like you were really there for her at the end,” Joshua says, shrugging a little, casual in a way that doesn’t match the sentence. His voice tilts upward at the end, like...

12 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Tom

Weekly Contest #336

“You’ll be able to say goodbye shortly,” the funeral director says.“But he’s still alive,” she says.The man checks his watch. “That doesn’t change the schedule.”The funeral director strides on, hurried. His face is greyer than that of his average client. Deep grooves in his forehead. Drooping corners of the mouth. But that may be occupational deformation. In his line of work, there is no laughter. His profession is solemn. Oppressive. He has adjusted his character accordingly. Like an owner who slowly starts to resemble his dog, he is starti...

12 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Loving Aedera

Weekly Contest #336

The words are like rancid honey, a sickly-sweet poison that coats my tongue in a thick layer of regret. We are both still, holding our breaths as if the words will disappear if we don’t acknowledge them, if we stay as quiet as humanly possible. But they hang there, bearing down on us, demanding to be recognized. The weight of truth is oppressive, suffocating. And there is no denying my words rang true. They’d remained caged in my heart like a feral animal. Clawing, fighting, stalking for the right time to escape. The right time to flee from...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Engine Failure

Weekly Contest #336

Engine FailureByPeter Alexander James It was the worst thing I’d ever said to a human being—and I said it to Lucy. A heavy silence settled between us, underscored by the rain bouncing on our car’s roof and down our windshield. I glanced over to her; as I did, she hid her face in the collar of her jumper, breathing heavily to ease her urge to cry. I turned away, but my gaze caught us smiling back at me from a picture on my keychain. It was taken on a road trip we had done a while back. The Nowhere Tour, she had called it. A surprise five-da...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story entirely in dialogue (e.g., an argument or a conversation that spirals out of control).

– 63 stories

Write a story with a time, number, or year in the title.

– 61 stories

Start or end your story with two characters going in opposite directions (literally or figuratively).

– 71 stories

Write a story with the line “This isn’t what I signed up for,” “This is all my fault,” or “That’s not what I meant.”

– 75 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