Welcome to Week Three! Can you believe we’re at the halfway mark for the challenge?
You all did so well with your stories last week! There were so many interesting and unique ways you interpreted the prompt. It’s now the third week, so it’s time to do it again! Will your story have aliens? Zombies? Maybe it’ll have a dragon in it! Whatever you decide, we can’t wait to see what you come up with.
So, without further ado, here’s your next prompt!
Week Three Prompt – The Starting Sentence Prompt
Write a story that starts with the
following sentence: So this is what drowning feels like.
Wait…what’s a “Starting Sentence” prompt?
A sentence prompt is a prompt that uses a particular sentence. It doesn’t matter where your story takes place, who’s in it, or what’s said. The only thing that matters is that your story must start with this sentence: So this is what drowning feels like.
Before you start writing, we have some important rules for you 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.
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.
Remember to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and post your story as an “answer” to this question, not a “comment”. 🙂 You’re all doing such a great job! I’m so proud of all the stories you’ve posted.
Happy Writing!
Will you notice if someone is like 1-25 words over the 1000 word limit (asking for a friend hahaha)
what if i accidently posted my story as a comment last week lol? does it still count?
Hey Izzy and Ava,
If you accidentally post your story as a comment instead of an answer, you should get an email to alert you! It will still count for points for your team, but no one will be able to vote for it.
And, to answer your question for your friend 😉 As far as word count, for your story to count for the challenge, it does need to be 1,000 words or under. Great questions!
Team 1
So this is what drowning feels like.
To the outside observer, should they board a submarine and descend all the way down to the seabed where you’ve been sent to work, they wouldn’t think that you’re drowning. Your lungs aren’t filling with water. You’re not gasping for help or fighting to reach an air pocket. They would see the glowing armor melded to your skin like the scales of a fish and assume that you’re perfectly safe.
But you are drowning. It’s only a matter of time.
You’re supposed to be collecting algae. Rare and energy efficient, it’s the same glowing algae that powers your armor along with the entire underwater lab with all its research and medical facilities. Retrieving it is, in fact, what you and your kind were created to do. But instead, you drift above the rocks and collections of corals, tendrils of hair floating around your head, a sense of heaviness sitting in your chest that contrasts the weightless sensation of floating.
Your eyes skip past the rainbow reef, peering down the inky bottom of a canyon where a dozen of your siblings have perished before you. Their bodies aren’t there anymore. Your creators have already removed them and stripped off the high-tech plating that now clamps around your forearms, torso, and calves. The armor is equipped with oxygen and energy reserves, retractable claws for collecting samples, fins that slice through the water as well as any marine creature’s, and a tracker to ensure you stay within bounds.
To ensure you don’t escape your fate.
There’s enough power for you to complete your job—just not enough to return to the lab. You could if you were given more fuel, but you’ve learned that your creators would rather conserve the algae. Once the energy reserves reach one percent, the tracking device will alert them that you are dead, and they will collect your body and repurpose the tech for the next worker.
The next victim. A spark in your stomach kindles into a smolder. That slimy gunk you scrape off those rocks is considered more valuable than your life. More than the lives of all who came before you and all who will come after.
Tilting your head back, you see the faintest rays of light streaming down from the surface. It’s so far away, or so you’ve been told. How do you know whether your creators aren’t telling you the truth to keep you compliant with your death sentence?
You can’t go back and save the ones who’ve drowned, and you don’t know how to save those coming after you. You don’t even know if you can save yourself.
But someone has to try.
The tracking device is connected to the chest piece that supplies your oxygen. Removing it is the equivalent of cutting off your life support, but you’re drowning, anyway. You take one deep breath, and with your retractable claws, you rip off the tech plating. Your tracker sinks into the darkness below as you kick up and away as fast as you can, racing for the light of the sun.
Pressure builds in your chest as you rocket upwards. You ignore the feeling and focus on what you’ve always dreamed of seeing. The sky. Clouds. Blossoms. Land creatures like birds and marsupials.
The water lightens to a turquoise blue. Colorful fish scatter and dart out of your way. With your heart pounding and your limbs growing heavy and your lungs begging for release, you clench your teeth and tell yourself to keep going. To keep fighting. But you’re getting lightheaded. Nauseous. You release your breath slowly.
It’s pointless. You’re too far away. A different kind of pressure builds behind your eyes.
Then you see the kelp forest. Giant stalks of seaweed sway gently in the current, refilling you with hope. The water is shallow. You’re almost there. Slippery kelp whips you as you reach for the surface. You can practically feel the sun, taste the air.
Your lungs spasm and expand. Water comes flooding in, and the edges of your vision darken.
Then you break the surface. For the very first time in your life, warm wind touches your face. Dizzy, disoriented, and hacking out the fluid that nearly claimed you, you catch glimpses of this new world. Flat rocks. Dirt. Bushes. Trees that remind you of the kelp forest below, but sturdier. Solid instead of wavering.
With your last bit of strength, you wade towards the shore, fingers grasping at rocks before finding thick roots that you use to pull yourself up. You flop over, exhausted. Once the last drop of water is out of your lungs, you rip off the rest of your armor and just breathe.
Will anyone try to come after you? None of your creators were ever brave enough to venture far beyond the boundary line themselves. Not even the security team. So you allow yourself to relax—just the slightest bit—and soak in the warm rays of the sun that glint off the jeweled surface of the water.
Something shuffles in the foliage, and out pops a little animal with tiny, clawed forelimbs, tapered ears, and beady eyes. But its most prominent feature is the long snout it uses to root in the dirt for invertebrates. A bandicoot? Odd; if you recall correctly, they live in grasslands and thickets, and they’re nocturnal, too. Regardless, it digs in one spot for a while, and then it moves on to another.
Only after the bandicoot bounds away on its hind feet do you consider your armor. Perhaps you should bury it. But now that you’ve tasted fresh air and felt the sun on your skin, you know you can’t forget those you’ve left behind. Someday, you promise yourself, you will return down below, and you will save the rest of your people.
Someday, they will all be as free as that little bandicoot.
Writing in the second person is always a challenge and I feel you made it work. I am curious why you chose to write in the second person.
The sci-fi-ness of the story worked well. The story created a world that allowed me to step in for 1000 words and I didn’t feel lost. You used the short form well.
Nice work!
Thank you so much! I don’t really have much of a reason for going with second person; I just didn’t feel like using either third or first this time around, haha.
Wait so if we like accidentally post our stories as a comment here, will it count or be ignored?