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Center your story around a character’s personal exploration, whether it's trying a new hobby, visiting an unfamiliar place, or learning something completely new.

Posted in Character on Apr 19, 2024

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✍️ 87 stories

Mars: A Pioneer’s log

Submitted to Contest #247

After surviving on Mars for five years, we were unrecognisable to the Agency’s search and rescue mission. It’s obvious from reading my diary, we were too busy to notice the incremental changes as they occurred. We’d cultivated the land, adapted to the harsh environment, but then to our cost discovered, ‘You are what you eat’.* * *   The day we arrived on Mars, the Space Agency’s cumbersome vessel landed with remarkable precision, despite the fierce wind that greeted us. We herded our livestock and stowed our possessions on the...

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How's Your Aspen?

Submitted to Contest #247

How's Your Aspen?Have I ever told you about the time I learned to ski? Snow ski. Down a mountain. A famous mountain. No? Well, let me tell you about the time I learned, or should I say attempted to learn, how to snow ski down a famous mountain. Stop me if you have heard it before...If you know me at all, you know I'm a rather conservative, cautious type content to live life within boundaries. Follow the rules, don't take unnecessary risks, always sensible, seldom try something unexpected. Okay, go ahead and say it...dull, boring, in all ways...

38 likes 40 comments 40
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The Man Who Walked on Water

Submitted to Contest #247

No one remembers what it was like to learn to walk. No, in the vast seas of our memory, that formative year right after we are pushed out of our mother's womb is all but submerged, lost like an ill-fated ship at the very bottom where corals dwell. And yet, somehow, in the depths of our core, our muscles recall every single process, could always perfectly stretch out and strain in order to execute the routine of us standing up, lifting a leg, and advancing with one foot in front of the other. Meanwhile, to our conscious, the entire orchestrat...

38 likes 45 comments 45
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What If?

Submitted to Contest #247

My college roommate wore a purple hat. Always. Everywhere. Innocent enough stylistic choice, you might think, but here is the thing. My roommate was an eighty-three-year-old near-sighted lady who, on most days, needed the help of her massive walking stick – and often yours truly – to get from the sofa to the kitchen table. She was bald, missing three front teeth, and bent so low she must have once been twice her height. Those qualities would have been more than enough to differentiate Liliana from the rest of the student body at our uni...

33 likes 37 comments 37
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The Howls of the Netterback

Submitted to Contest #247

Lord Balister bounded up the spiral stairs, leaving his guards in the dust. His eyes danced in the torchlight, and he could not suppress a childish smile that stretched from ear to ear. The sun said hello and blinded him for a moment as he exited out onto the battlements. A small army of men, women, and stumpers stood on the ground below. He composed himself before greeting them, his excitement barely contained."Lady Nimmo! It's been too long!" Lord Balister shouted."You know why we're here!"He exaggerated, scratching his head. "I'm sure I d...

32 likes 11 comments 11
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Wonders Calling from the Mystical Coast

Submitted to Contest #247

Something large was moving through the emerald fir trees that touched the golden hour colors of the sky.Mama Black Bear crashed through a tall shrub with plate-sized red flowers. She was growling and huffing.Eileen screeched.Rupert dropped the four-month-old, ten-pound Black Bear cub that he was cradling like a pet dog next to his chest.It was a Spring afternoon in 1898 in the green wilderness of the Mystical Coast.Baby Black Bear had looked cute and lonely hanging onto the Douglas Fir tree. Rupert did not see Mama Bear, but she was not far ...

30 likes 32 comments 32
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The Push-Up Challenge

Submitted to Contest #247

Calvert Barrows, known to friends as CB, couldn’t do 10 push-ups in a row. He actually couldn’t do 2 push-ups in a row, but it sounded better when he said 10. Like he had gotten up to 9, and fell just short on his way to 10. A real man was strong enough to do 10 push-ups right? He needed to show his boys, Ben 6, and Theo 3, how to be a man, and push-ups seemed like a good place to start. He charted his plan out, designing a multi-tab spreadsheet in Excel with progressive increases, rest days, and of course a nutrition pla...

30 likes 29 comments 29
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Five Days to Bliss

Submitted to Contest #247

The crickets chirped in unison, their lively crescendo fleeing the darkened forest, making me wonder, not for the first time this week, if this were the life I'd have chosen all along had I known this place existed. The heavy thud of a boot propping up on the cooler beside me doesn't detract from the beauty of the dark, whispering trees. Five days. It's been five days, and already I'm listening more closely, attuned to and relishing every sound, every symphony of the universe. Magpie's heavy boots, the glug glug of the wine sh...

29 likes 28 comments 28
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Knot for us

Submitted to Contest #247

I look down at the Truckers Hitch in front of me and think what have I gotten myself into? It's a Thursday night, and I'm sitting in a village hall in some arid place on the Essex coast (the least romantic of all the British coastlines), trying to placate you.For most of my adult life, it is you that has been the constant. In that time, we've grown into something; a thing that needs nurturing through Japanese cooking classes, wine tasting, and Friday night family meetings.I suppose that's what happens when you meet young and marry because th...

27 likes 19 comments 19
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The Magic of Mushrooms

Submitted to Contest #247

**SUICIDAL IDEATIONS, MAGIC MUSHROOMS**On the precipice of the rusted copper arch of the Sienna Bridge in Solstead, Virginia, Vanessa Landon's lithe legs dangled over the brink of her fate. Delicate gusts of warm air flirted with the golden-brown wisps of hair around her sallow face. She sat on the rugged wooden planks beneath her, stabilizing her vulnerability. Her slim, tanned piano fingers grasped tight, the tension palpable in the stark contrast of her pale knuckles against her olive skin. Above her, the sun cast a remarkable dulcet glow...

24 likes 13 comments 13
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A Heroes Journey

Submitted to Contest #247

The dark forces of the barbarous East were growing in strength, and the Free Villages of Elden needed to dispatch a hero to defeat its tyrannical ruler, Grothian, before his power grew too strong. That was the official line, anyway.On the outskirts of Skoevën, the smallest and least free of the Free Villages, Frandolf of Mistybrook spent the week interviewing a parade of candidates. It was not a simple task to fill the shoes of a hero. A line of hopeful peasants stood before Wyvern Tower again this morn. A hero would need to climb ...

23 likes 17 comments 17
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The Way Home

Submitted to Contest #247

She kept looking at street signs as she drove along, trying to find names that were familiar, but she often had trouble reading the signs in the rapidly descending dusk. She uttered a curse at daylight savings time, which brought the dark so early. She’d made a wrong turn somewhere and now didn’t know where she was or what to do. Frustrated, she pulled to the side of the road and stopped. She shook her head, knowing she had to focus on her current situation, not just sit on the side of the road, lost in an area she didn’t know and failing to...

21 likes 18 comments 18
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Pomposity

Submitted to Contest #247

I used to be held in high regard by humans in the past. They possessed the knowledge to stay away from fairy circles and clearly understood that mysterious entities dwelled in the shadows. Their transformation into these ignorant brutes, who live without dread of the supernatural and with contentment for existence, is beyond my understanding. They are much sturdier now and don’t fall over dead from a simple cold; they have vast amounts of entertainment, and they eat every single day. People made things even more dreadful with their inte...

21 likes 12 comments 12
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The Bittersweet Holiday of a Lifetime

Submitted to Contest #247

Tears rolled down Lara’s face as she approached her mother in the dining room. Her mother, Liz, sat on the sofa near the air conditioner outlet, her favorite place. The air conditioner kept the place warm in winter and cool in summer. The evenings had chilled down lately, making this a comfortable place to sit and do mending after dinner. “Mum, are you going to Fiji again?” Lara had overheard her parents talking about taking another trip.They seemed to do this every second year and always took Marie, the youngest, with them. This would ...

20 likes 14 comments 14
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Baking Bad

Submitted to Contest #247

The timer – a pink plastic pig you had to twist around until its eyes faced the same direction as its butt – went off.Beverley Reade jumped. The sound was rare in her tiny kitchen – a shrill, metallic, mechanical noise. The smell of something baking was also rare. But if she hoped to be Whitney’s well-remembered grandmother once she passed, Bev had better get used to it. And she better get better, too. Grandmothers are good at baking. It was a universal law. ‘Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Oh, and once a woman has a grandchild,...

19 likes 13 comments 13
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