Today’s prompt was, er, prompted by a brief literary feud that flared up recently.

A TV critic took issue with the latest episodes of the BBC’s Sherlock, complaining that our hero was more James Bond than Conan Doyle’s Holmes. The episode’s writer wrote a response in verse, then the critic wrote back with his own poem. BUT, in the last couple of lines of the poem, he pointed out that he had embedded a hidden message in his words (the second letter of the first word of every line spelled it out).

I was so tickled that I’m stealing the idea (which he stole from Conan Doyle, so I don’t feel bad).

The Prompt

Write a story with a hidden message

Tips

• You could make the first letter of every sentence spell out a message.
• You could make the first/second/third/last word of every sentence add up to a secret message.
• You should probably start by writing out your secret message and then figuring out the rest of the words in your story, so it fits!
• This will force you to break all the normal rules of your process of storytelling. Don’t be afraid. Be bold. At the very least you’ll learn something about your process!

Go!