Welcome to the first week of the Spring Writing Challenge!
We’re so excited to get started on these stories. It’s time to roll up your sleeves, set your fingers on your keyboard, and get writing. Will your story contain aliens? A prince in disguise? Maybe even a sweet summer romance? Whatever happens, we can’t wait to see what you come up with!
So, without further ado, here’s your very first prompt!
Week One Prompt – The Dialogue Prompt
“If you know something bad is going to happen, do you have to try and stop it?”
“I just got here.”
Wait…what’s a dialogue prompt?
A dialogue prompt is a conversation between two characters. It doesn’t matter who says it, or if it takes place in the beginning, middle, or end of your story. However, one character must say the first sentence, and the second character must respond with the second sentence.
Before you start writing, there are some important rules to follow.
Writing Rules
1. Please keep the content of the stories you post to a PG rating. Please avoid real curse words. Violence/fighting should be limited and purposeful. Please do not include any spice. Moderators may remove stories and comments for any reason at any time. Moderators may remove any member from the challenge at any time.
2. Your story must be 1,000 words or less, and must contain the prompt to be counted for the challenge. You’re not required to post it in order to “win” the challenge, but if you want it to count for your team, your story must be posted by Sunday at 11:59 PM ET, and you must include your team name.
It’s time to post your story as a comment down below! We can’t wait to see all the fun directions you guys take this dialogue prompt. If you have any questions, feel free to email us at info@writers.company!
Happy Writing!
Ava,
Your story was very well written! I enjoyed reading it! 👏
Melissa
Ooh, what a fun story, girl! Fantastic job!
Wow, this is beautifully written!
I love your writing style!
Wow, I’m very impressed. The worldbuilding here feels grounded and real, the characters fleshed out, and the prompt just flows so smoothly with the rest of the narrative. Great story here!
I hope this part of something larger. I was totally sucked in.
Thanks for sharing your work. 🙂 Enjoyable read.
great opening line!
Beautiful story! Great job!
Absolutely loved it
i NEED the rest of this asap! i would love this as a book series. its excellent! The world-building is so good. you did a great job. i especially love how the characters are already full of the knowledge of the world and there is no need for any one character to outright explain things. again, have i expressed how i literally want this in my life so much!
Great details! I was brought right into the world you built!
Such a fun story! Loved the comical banter between characters
Job #13 by April Lee Hammond, Team A
Job hunting was the worst. Caleb clutched his backpack, containing everything he owned, and surveyed the crowded waiting room. Could there really be this many looking for a job on this tiny ship? If so, he was out of luck.
His morning alarm hadn’t gone off despite having checked it several times before sleep. Traffic jams forced him to switch cabs three times. He missed the notification that the interviews had moved. All that meant he was late.
The man beside him didn’t look much better. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, his head down. Caleb couldn’t help but ask if he was okay.
The man turned to him with dark eyes and said, “If you know something bad is going to happen, do you have to try and stop it?”
“I just got here,” Caleb replied.
Someone called Caleb’s name.
“May you have eyes to see,” the man said. “One three dot one three.” He got up and walked out.
Rattled, Caleb hurried to the interview room. One man, his eyes on his tablet, motioned for Caleb to sit. Another watched, expressionless.
“I’m Mr. Smith,” the guy with the tablet said. “This is Mr. Williams.” He looked up. “And your interview was twenty minutes ago.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry. Traffic.”
“Twelve jobs in the last five years?”
“Yes, sir.” This was the moment they would make their decision. Though people claimed they weren’t superstitious, they were reluctant to hire a man for his thirteenth job.
Mr. Smith seemed to expect excuses, but all the reasons were on his tablet. Budget cutbacks, corporate restructuring, and decommissioned ships meant no job lasted longer than six months, but Caleb was never at fault when leaving.
“There’s a period of eight months you didn’t work at all. What happened there?”
“I was taking care of my father. I did odd jobs when I could.”
“And where is your father now?”
“Dead.”
“Hmm.”
Mr. Williams kept staring. Caleb fought not to shift in his seat.
Someone rushed in. Caleb stiffened as his former friend, Jace, dropped into the seat next to Mr. Smith. They hadn’t talked to each other since the incident at school.
“Sorry,” Jace said. “Miller is finally on the right track. Where are we?” He looked up and froze. “Caleb.”
Jace glanced at the tablet. “Level One Maintenance? I thought you’d be at least level five by now. What happened?”
Caleb motioned toward the tablet. He hadn’t missed the officer’s patch on Jace’s chest. How did he go from mediocre student to first officer of a transport ship in four years? The same four years in which Caleb had gotten absolutely nowhere.
The so-far silent Mr. Williams sat forward and began a barrage of questions about various systems. Caleb answered the best he could. Some were about systems he’d never seen, but he had spent a lot of time studying while sitting at his father’s bedside.
Finally, Mr. Williams sat back and gave Mr. Smith a nod. Mr. Smith turned to Jace, who also nodded.
“We ship out in twenty-six hours,” Mr. Smith said. “Can you be ready?”
Twenty-six hours later, Caleb was rushing through post-flight checks. He’d gone straight to the ship, gotten a brief tour, then started working. He’d barely slept. This ship wasn’t just one system. It was a mish-mash of so many systems that Caleb lost count, and whoever had been doing maintenance before hadn’t been doing his job. Mr. Williams, his new supervisor, left him to it, busy with his own tasks.
They were thirty minutes from the jump when Caleb finished the last item on his checklist. Satisfied, he headed for the engine room to find Mr. Williams. The room was empty. Caleb looked around. Diagnostics said everything was in good condition.
He stopped in front of a fan. The first thing he was going to do after the jump was take a nice, cold shower. Cleaning filters and hot vents left him covered in grime.
He wiped sweat off his forehead. What did it say the temperature was in here? Caleb was studying the readings when a Level 6 tech, entered. He ignored Caleb’s concerns.
“Go back to your grunt-work.”
Caleb slipped off to another console, calculations running in his head. A Knight cooling system and a Perkins engine. The Hoffman software they were using was the only one that could read both. Thankfully, the Knight and Perkins software were also installed.
He was flipping screens when Mr. Williams stopped in front of him, arms crossed and a stern look on his face.
“Something’s not right,” Caleb told him.
“You just got here, Caleb,” Mr. Williams said. “Leave the engine diagnostics to us.”
“But—”
“Out, Caleb.”
The numbers clicked. Thirteen point one three. If you know something bad is going to happen…. Caleb ran.
A large security guard grabbed him just outside the bridge.
“Jace!” Caleb yelled.
The guard tried to push him away.
“Caleb?” Jace appeared. “What’s wrong?”
“Incompatibilities in the coolant system. Diagnostics are showing the engines thirteen points cooler than they are.”
“Take it up with Williams.”
“He’s not listening, Jace.”
“We’re ten minutes from jump. We don’t have time for this.”
“Like you didn’t have time for Riley?”
Jace glared at him. “That was not my fault.”
“She lost a leg because we overlooked a seven point deviation. This is a thirteen points. If I’m right, there’s an eighty percent chance we’ll explode on jump.”
Jace paused. “Your calculations aren’t usually wrong. Show me.”
An hour later, they were on the ground with engineers crawling the ship.
“He’s right,” an engineer told the captain. “If you had jumped, you wouldn’t have made it.” He clapped Jace on the back. “You have a good first officer here.”
Jace glanced at Caleb, but Caleb shook his head. Mr. Williams watched him with that expressionless face. Was his thirteenth job over already? Oh, well, the crew was still alive. Maybe his eclectic background was good for something.
Nice to see some sci-fi here. I like this kind of sci-fi, with relatable situations in fantastic settings – like job hunting, so you can be on a starship…
The world building was good – in only 1000 words you created a subtle picture of what kind of world we were in – although if I had one critique it would be to make it known sooner.
The 13 was interesting – it comes up a couple times, even in the “26 hours later” – although he might have been able to bypass the hesitancy of the number 13 by including the odd jobs while caring for his father. 🙂
I was glad to see you made him work for his victory – saving the ship wasn’t just a realization that the “prophecy” was right, he had to overcome his own doubt and then had to work through the doubts of his superior officers.
Also. Nice work making the technical issues accessible. That couid have resulted in technobabble, but you explained it quickly and succinctly in a way that made sense.
Overall, nice story!
To Change the World, by Ava Murbarger
P.S.- sorry I missed the meeting, we were out of town. I hope to be at the next one!!
The sky was bleeding again.
Rust-colored clouds hung over the City like bruises, pulsing faintly. Rael kept her eyes fixed on them, one hand on the rail of the Watchers’ Tower. Her gloves were too thin. The steel was cold enough to bite.
Behind her, a door creaked open.
“You’re late,” she said without turning.
Boots scraped against the stone. A new recruit, probably. They sent one every week now. Fresh eyes, fresh loyalty.
“I got lost,” the boy said. He sounded too young to carry the badge. Too soft to hold a blade. “Sorry.”
She turned and looked at him.
Dust-colored coat, too long in the sleeves. Wide eyes. Not from the City, then. One of the Outer Rings. Maybe even farther. She sighed.
“If you know something bad is going to happen,” she said, “do you have to try and stop it?”
The boy blinked. “I just got here.”
“Well, obviously.” She crossed her arms.
He shifted nervously on his feet.
Rael turned back to the cityscape. “The answer is yes, by the way. At least, if you’re cursed with a conscience.”
He joined her at the rail. Together they watched the distant flicker of drones weaving patterns in the smog. A red warning rune glowed briefly on the horizon, then faded. Rael knew what it meant. The Reclamation Agents were moving again. Soon, another neighborhood would vanish.
“Why do you do this?” the boy asked.
She laughed without humor. “Because no one else will. Because the High Council stopped caring two winters ago. Because someone has to.”
A long pause. Then, “Is it true the Watchers can see the future?”
“We read the signs,” she said. “Patterns in weather. Seismic anomalies. Political shifts. The Council says it’s superstition.” She paused. “But when the streets burn exactly seven hours after the rats vanish, over and over again, you stop calling it chance.”
He was silent. Good. Maybe he was listening.
“You said you got lost. But you still came up here. Why?”
“I heard the bells.” He hesitated. “They said you can’t hear them unless you’re meant to.”
Rael glanced at him. The brass bell on the tower hadn’t rung in years. She narrowed her eyes.
“Name?”
“Wren.”
“That’s not your real name.”
“It is now.”
She smirked. “Fine, Wren. Welcome to Watcher’s Hill. Welcome to the losing side.”
Another alarm rune lit the smog. Closer this time.
Rael pulled her scope from her belt and scanned the eastern edge of the city. “Sector Four. They’re burning the food lines again.”
“That’s the second time this week,” Wren said quietly.
She lowered the scope. “Third.”
He didn’t speak for a long time. Then he said, “My sister was there.”
Rael’s fingers tightened around the rail. She didn’t ask if the girl had survived. That wasn’t the kind of world they lived in anymore.
Instead, she reached into her coat and handed Wren a folded map, inked with lines and red X’s.
“There’s a storm tunnel under the old trainyard,” she said. “It’s not on any schematics, and it’ll get you to Sector Four faster than any street. But it’s dark. And crawling.”
Wren took the map with trembling fingers. “Why are you helping me?”
Rael looked at him, really looked. The wide eyes weren’t wide with fear, not completely. It was fire. Just hidden under the ash.
“Because sometimes the only thing worse than seeing the future,” she said softly, “is doing nothing to change it.”
Wren nodded. His jaw set. “Then I’ll go.”
Rael watched as he turned, vanishing back into the tower’s dark. When the door slammed shut behind him, the bell gave a soft chime. Just once.
And far below, the wind began to shift.