The Prompt
Where film and television can give us rich soundscapes and nuanced visuals, only the written word allows us to access the whole range of human senses. The challenge: write a story that uses touch, smell, and/or taste, and avoids visual and audio descriptions.
Delve into some of the other senses if you wish: proprioception / body position, nociception / pain, or internal senses like hunger, thirst, suffocation, or nausea. Give your character a more exotic sense like echolocation or the ability to feel magnetic fields, extrasensory perception or knowing, but limit or eliminate sound and vision.
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Elizabeth Twist
Elizabeth Twist (she/her), untames a garden and teaches meditation in Hamilton, Ontario. Lately she’s been writing about sacred pacts, systems of power, and fungi. Her stories have appeared in Dracula After Stoker, Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight, and Unfettered Hexes. Her latest piece appears in Agita Magazine:
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
This prompt called to me, Elizabeth, but I couldn’t get to it on Saturday, so I swapped it in for Sunday’s prompt. The MC has to walk to the convenience store (they’re out of diapers) on a miserable, foggy day, filled with the smells of decay from the harbor and of sulfur from the refinery. Sight and sound are so rare that they become things to cling to; most of the story takes place in touch, taste, and smell.
Working with the senses in stories is my absolute favourite. What fun it was today to explore and create a new sense for a character. My story has a few characters in it, the main one is a ghost and can sense when someone is having a creative inspiration. Then, this ghost must find a way to communicate to the person that their idea is important and needs to be given an outlet. It is the longest story I have written all month and feels the most complete. I’m going to play with it later and shape it into a scary story, or at least I’m going to try! Thank you so much for this prompt and thank you for the challenge. Only eight more stories to go! Only eight more days to go! Go team! We can do this.
201 words and only one line of dialogue, though the characters mouths were quite busy. Lots of touching and tasting going on. 😊
My story is titled Senselessness, and I love the texture that the prompt inspired. 780 words that I’m pleased to call a story. Thanks, Elizabeth!
Here’s a line from the story I wrote:
“After school the next day: the ground’s vibration when he dropped the bat, legs’ ache running bases, dust flying.”
I’ve never written a story this way. It was like writing poetry.
Valerie, that’s like a tease, I get a sense of what you are doing here m, yet feel like I don’t quite get it without reading the lot. What is the approach you are trying?
Hi Andrew, I guess it’s not clear out of context; or maybe it’s not clear period lol. My MC’s a teenage boy in love and what I shared here is him playing baseball after school.
You are right it does read like a line from a poem
@Brenda, quick recall for me (Day 2), you mentioned the NYC Midnight Story competition (https://www.nycmidnight.com/). Have you done this before, and are you doing it again?
I’m curious, as I am thinking of doing it myself this year.
OK – here is my Day 23 story – I went with #12 on my backlog, which was a Mixed Metaphor – boy who cried wolf & chicken little’ – supposedly that turned into a Fable/business Analogy sort of.
Well, let’s call it a fable.
https://afstoryaday.blogspot.com/2026/05/shared-accountability.html