The Prompt

Write a stroy about a character who is desperately trying to catch a flight, but who has been stopped in airport security because of some unusual items in their carry-on luggage. This exercise is an opportunity to practice revealing character through physical objects. The items in the character’s carry-on—and the character’s defense of those items—will provide information about the individual in question.

This scenario is also an opportunity to practice making a scene, in a literal and a figurative sense. There is a conflict baked into the initial premise: the character needs to catch a flight, but their need is blocked by an obstacle. This offers a tremendous possibility for escalating tension and narrative surprise. How can your character’s decision making both move forward the story and move forward a reader’s understanding of your protagonist?

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Allegra Hyde

Allegra Hyde is the author of the story collection THE LAST CATASTROPHE, an Editors’ Choice selection at The New York Times and a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. Her debut novel ELEUTHERIA was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize, and featured on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Her first story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Hyde has also received four Pushcart Prizes and the O. Henry Prize. She currently lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Smith College.

For more, visit: https://www.allegrahyde.com/

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The Prompt

Context: this prompt is based on a prompt that I gave in my last taboos class (during which the class listed things that workshops or teachers have warned them against). We analyzed why it is a taboo, and then they wrote a scene leveraging the taboo.
Taboo: Bathrooms
Taboo Reasoning: the ICK factor and discomfort that people feel about bathrooms and/or bodily functions such as vomiting; vomiting as stereotypical catharsis; bathrooms as private places that don’t generally involve other people and have prescribed functions.

Opportunities: bathrooms as a place to explore the spontaneous (a sudden breakup, for example); vomiting as something that does not equate to easy catharsis; the claustrophobia of a small space creating unexpected tensions or character revelations; bathroom being used for something completely unexpected/outside its usual function; strangers meet in a public bathroom; embrace the ICK factor!

Instructions: the prompt is wide open, but the goal should be to write a scene that avoids the taboo traps that bathrooms are known for and to instead embrace the opportunities. This can be used to start a new story or as a way to think about adding a scene to a work-in-progress.

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Lori Ostlund

Lori Ostlund is the author of Are You Happy? (Astra House, May 2025). Her novel After the Parade (Scribner, 2015) was a B&N Discover pick, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a NYTimes Editors’ Choice. Her first book, The Bigness of the World (UGA, 2009; Scribner, 2016), received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, ZYZZYVA, and New England Review, among other places. Lori has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has served as the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award since 2022 and is on the board of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, the writer Anne Raeff. www.loriostlund.com

 Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: I don’t recommend posting 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.

 

The Prompt

“Removed from the school library by the local school board, a character from the now-banned book shows up to the next meeting to address the Board of School Directors about their decision.”

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Patricia A. Jackson

Patricia A. Jackson is online here: By Birthright

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: I don’t recommend posting 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.

 

The Prompt

I’ve been thinking a lot about cowardice. Write a story where your protagonist is a coward: their mettle is tested, and they fail. Whether this works out well or poorly for them is up to you; whether they’re sympathetic or not is likewise your choice.

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Sasha Brown

Sasha Brown is a Stoker-nominated writer and gardener whose surreal stories have been called “Creative! But in a bad way.” He’s in lit mags like X-R-A-Y and Split Lip, and in genre pubs like Bourbon Penn and Weird Horror. He’s on bsky at sashabrown, and online at sashabrownwriter.com.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: I don’t recommend posting 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.

 

The Prompt

Vulnerability is a powerful port of connection between people, and it’s how your reader connects to a character. Show a character’s vulnerability, but express it only in hints, never stating it directly. Lay down vulnerability markers with what your character refuses to talk about.

Lani Diane Rich

Lani Diane Rich is a story expert and NYT bestselling author with twelve novels published by the Big 5. She leads the Year of Writing Magically, a transformational year-long writing program that guides writers from inspiration to completion in a supportive, community-driven space. The Drafting module—running from June 21 to September 6, 2025—is a 12-week immersion designed to help writers build momentum, get words on the page, and bring their stories to life with accountability and joy.

Remember: I don’t recommend posting 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.

The Prompt

Write a 50 word story. Expand it to a 500 word story. Now revise that story to a 50 word story and make it as different from the first 50 word story as you can.

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Peyton Ellas

Peyton Ellas lives in rural California. When not writing, they are farming, running a micro farm animal sanctuary and creating native plant gardens as a landscape contractor. They are the author of Gardening with California Native Plants: Inland, Foothill and Central Valley Gardens. Their work has appeared or will appear in Milk House, Pilgrimage Press, streetcake magazine, Copperfield Review Quarterly and elsewhere. They write the (not) obsolete newsletter on substack and can be reached at peytonellas.com.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: I don’t recommend posting 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.