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
**note – i didn’t have time to edit this, apologies for the sloppiness. Enjoy! 🙂
Breached
By Madi Kanagy
“If you know something bad is going to happen, do you have to try and stop it?” the intercom droned.
“I just got here,” Reese whined, plopping her bag on the concrete floor and slumping into the chair. It was an abominable chair. The metal seat and back conjoined at an exact, dead straight ninety-degree angle. It felt like the kind of chair only given to criminals or something.
“If you know something bad is going to happen,” the voice over the intercom repeated, “do you have to try and stop it?”
Reese blew a strand of hair out of her face and whipped out a notepad and pen. It wasn’t her fault she was late for the Questioning. The operators could have given her at least a minute to get adjusted before jumping the first question on her.
Reese had been doing this her entire life. Ever since she could write a sentence, she’d been brought into a room and interrogated by a voice floating through speakers. The questions were usually philosophical, a test of morality or prudence. She’d be asked a question, and then would write an essay response. Later, she’d receive a grade and feedback depending on how correct, well thought out, and explanatory her response was.
Why all the wacky testing? Basically, she was being trained to be the wisest person on the planet. One of the wisest, anyway. Her mother, Lucy, was the founder of an organization who had decided to experiment on children, testing how fast they could gain as much wisdom as possible. They called it the Wise Experiment. Ten children had been gathered and trained to answer difficult questions as wisely as possible. Eventually, according to Lucy and her organization, the kids would become ultra-wise super-people, as Reese saw it. Because Reese was the founder’s daughter, naturally she was one of the ten chosen for this experiment.
This wretched, idiotic experiment.
“If you know something bad is going to happen,” Reese mumbled, mooring over the idea, “do you have to try and stop it?”
This was an obnoxious question. “Bad” was an underwhelming word. Did it mean immoral? Wicked? Or simply unfortunate?
Reese started scribbling on her notepad.
The door to the Questioning room slammed open and Reese’s mother appeared, stilettos clicking on the tile like a retractable pen. She yanked Reese from the unnaturally angular chair.
“Ouch,” Reese protested, jerking away. “Woah, what’s going on?” From out in the hall she heard alarms wailing, shrieking at top volume.
Her mother gave a curd jerk of the head, signaling for Reese to follow her out of the room. Reese obeyed, stumbling pathetically behind her rigid mother.
“We’re being breached,” Lucy shouted over the blaring alarms, her posture and expression equally tight. Her steel gray eyes remained locked ahead.
Breached. The word sounded scary. Its influence on Reese’s mother made it sound scary. In reality, a breath of relief shivered through Reese. Breached. Finally.
The government had been after Lucy’s organization for years. Not only was the experiment illegally funded, but the enforcement of it itself had been rejected by the senate decades ago. When Lucy had presented the idea to the government, they’d turned it down, prohibiting further action. Reese’s mother didn’t listen.
Now, after years of hiding and proceeding with the Questioning, the officials had found them.
“What are you gonna do?” Reese panted, feigning worry. If she was anxious about anything, it was that the officials would make it in and shut the whole place down.
“Play my last card,” her mother declared. Reese saw the fear lodged deep in her eyes.
Before Reese knew it, they were approaching the tech room. Upon entering, they found the entire department in pandemonium. Shouts and orders mixed with the cacophonous alarms as people rushed about, panicking to prevent the officials from entering.
Reese cut a glance to her mother. What was Lucy going to do? Reese had loathed the Wise Experiment ever since she had sneaked out of headquarters one night and discovered that the world was different than her mother had said. Reese had discovered that people became wise in the real world through failure and experience, not experimental tests locked in a cold room. People laughed and loved each other. They lived.
Ever since then, Reese had loathed the experiment. The Questionings. Everything. And she could do nothing about it. Not with her mother watching her every move.
Now they were being breached. The government was going to shut them down. And Reese was ready for it.
Lucy advanced toward the head of the tech department and commanded, “Wipe out. Do it.”
A shiver shot through Reese’s bones. She knew the “wipe out” order. Her mother had just told the technician to release poisonous gas throughout the entire outer layer of headquarters. Exactly where the officials were breaking in.
They would all die. Reese had always known of this weapon. She never imagined her mother would use it. Every one of the officials would die.
The question from half an hour ago flashed to the front of Reese’s mind. If you know something bad is going to happen, do you have to try and stop it?
She took off bolting out of the tech department. Blood pounded hot and loud in her ears. She raced down the corridors, past frantic workers, all the way to the front doors. Around fifty heavily uniformed and armed men were trying to break down the doors.
Without hesitation, Reese lunged for the control panel beside the doors and punched in the code. A flash of green. The doors slid open. The men poured inside, guns cocked and ready, streaming down the hallways. Reese watched, breathless. The second they were all inside, she closed the doors.
The Wise Experiment was breached.
The officials were alive.
She had done it.
Reese slumped to the ground from exhaustion, watching a faint, sickly sweet fog billowed outside the doors.
She had done it.
Team 1!
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.