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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#130: What's in a Name?

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about names: our names, and the names we give to stories, and the way they shape people’s expectations. So I’ve decided to try something new: as you’ll see, two of this week’s prompts let you play around with our Title Generator and Character Name Generator to spark ideas — and the rest explore what the implications of titles and names can be. Have fun!

This week's prompts

Create a title with our Title Generator, then write a story inspired by it.

Teens – 97 stories

Write about a character whose name you got from our Character Name Generator.

Character – 46 stories

Start your story with someone finding an object labeled with their name.

Horror – 37 stories

Set your story in a nameless world.

Kids – 27 stories

Write a story titled ‘The Locked Door.’

Dark – 77 stories

Stories

“Crime of the Quiet Librarian” by Bob Faszczewski

Submitted to Contest #130

                                           Crime of the Quiet Librarian             On one quiet Friday evening, not unlike most others at the Berlin, Md Public Library, all the patrons had departed and librarian Jan Newsome had put everything in its place and prepared ...

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“Out of Time” by Alex Con Foo

Submitted to Contest #130

Out of Time  When the island shrunk to only the size of a penny, I knew that we were out of time. How can the two of us possibly survive this predicament? The truth, harsh and honest, is that we can’t.  But a little optimism never hurt anybody. So I tell her that we will be okay, that we will get through this in the end. I think she wants to believe me; hell, I want to believe me. Yet, our burden as workers means that we see things for how they are. And how they are in this instance - well, it’s not particularly inspiring.&...

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“Whisper of Lies” by Holland Wells

Submitted to Contest #130

  The morning began like a normal Saturday, the smell of bacon had filled the house as Gloria Sorensen made her family breakfast. It was eight thirty when Steve Sorensen would come down the stairs in his pajamas sniffing the fresh smell of cooked bacon. The couple had been married for fifteen years and had a son and a daughter age’s fourteen and fifteen. Susan Sorensen, a fifteen-year-old teenager had long blond hair with a petit figure and a smile that all the boys at school could not resist. Susan was a quiet type that made the h...

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“ SEVENTY AND FRISKY ” by Brian Hastie

Submitted to Contest #130

                                     The telephone rings. “Hello Sharon just letting you know I’m no longer with Troy these past few months he’s been very difficult to be with as he’s looking for a spring chicken to have sex with and perhaps a baby at seventy.I don’t know how he will go since I kicked him out and blocked him on Facebook,” Melanie said. “So, he...

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“Forty and Horny” by Jessica Buford

Submitted to Contest #130

The smell of french fry grease permeated my car as soon as I rolled the window down. I felt my body shudder; the aroma was so good it gave me the same euphoria sex had back in my college days. “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?” The blown speaker spewed out the familiar sentence. “Hi, um, yes.” I paused, trying to collect my thoughts. It had been a long time since I’d been to any fast food restaurant. “Can I please get a large fry and a Whopper?” “Sir, this is McDonald’s. Do you mean a Big Mac?” The speaker let out an angry hi...

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“Behind my eyes” by Tomisin O.

Submitted to Contest #130

“She was so vibrant, wasn’t she?” I find myself lost in my mind as Dr. J speaks. He knows how to stop me from hating myself. Always so patient – a perfect therapist. A perfect friend. His living room is like home at this point. “Yeah. Really depended on the day, whether she was gonna scream at you till’ you cried, or hug you till’ you couldn’t breathe. Cancer’s cancer, I guess.” I reply with a broken smile. He sits opposite me in his long dark trench coat. A blue and white ceramic tea set, which seems like a relic, sat on the coffee table ...

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“Electric Touch” by Janet Change Balda

Submitted to Contest #130

Content warning: physical violence, suicide Ed’s wife had made him a paper bag lunch and left it next to his keys. He never expected her to, but she always did. He could hear her soft breathing coming from the bedroom. It had been five years now of peaceful, unmedicated sleep. Six years since they’d had to listen to the doctor’s euphemisms of “routine” and “standard procedure” before each surgery. Gradually, it had become “complete remission,” “cured,” and “very lucky.” He picked up his keys, quietly so they didn’t jingle, and his lunch,...

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“Voltaic Son” by Daniel Golden

Submitted to Contest #130

FROM: DR. T. WENTWORTH (SHING LIGHT AUTOMATION LEAD) To: SHINING LIGHT ALLSTAFF, SHINING LIGHT BOARDOFDIRECTORS CC: AP NEWS, REUTERS BCC: cjreilly@wisconsincatholic.com So good news first. I’m pretty sure my team is the first to create artificial intelligence. I mean, the real deal. The company has been fiddling with it for decades, with a lot of impressive algorithms that mimic thought and are wildly helpful in the world today. Voice recognition is so close to perfect and programmed responses near-instantaneous now, a lot of people think ...

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“North of Titania” by Rachel Bennett

Submitted to Contest #130

Many talk about fairies and magical creatures but nobody had ever really seen one. Titania was a made up place, there are so many of them when you are a child. It was a place of make believe, of genies too, and lands with mystical trees, multi coloured flowers and unnaturally perfect skies, it was a place where dreams came true. I was an imaginative child, I had very few friends and my family life was quite Hellish. I loved worlds and places of make believe, places to let my mind escape to. Often escaping to them for hours at a time. Althoug...

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“The City of Mercury” by Lennox Ducksworth

Submitted to Contest #130

Khalon Arhaman gazed out into the lilac sky. Glittery diamond spires flirted at clouds, sparkling with lustful promises. The City of Mercury. The airship, the Enfant Pretentieux glided closer to the most famous city on the planet, and Khalon’s stomach lurched at distant sounds of glass clicking and people cheering to their safe arrival. I’m safe from them, for now at least. Maybe that’s why they kept their distance, deciding to whisper among their peers and giggle to themselves. Smooth-handed men and women in fine furs and fabrics whose step...

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“Eye of Broken Things” by Scott Christenson

Submitted to Contest #130

In Hong Kong last Friday night, Li Ying saw flashing police lights below her window. She thought it odd that she didn’t hear any sirens, that felt worse, so she nudged the curtain with her little finger.  In the busy nighttime street below, illuminated by neon signs, a line of white vans with government insignia had parked. In the front and bank were police cruisers. Workers in High Vis vests were already out and stretching yellow police cordon lines. In one van, people were zipping up into the white bunny suits, the ones she saw oft...

3 comments 3
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“The Reaper and the Moon ” by Mia Marie

Submitted to Contest #130

“Bringer of Death,” they call me. Wrapped in a cape of black that drags through the mud, darkness shadowing my sullen eyes and grim face. I wield a long scythe that measures time and by night I silence those weary souls and tie the loose ends of eternal judgment. Or at least that’s what I hear. My back aches once again from my unmoved position on my favorite rock. Every night, I ascend this cliff that just overlooks the ocean and crane my head upward to behold the greatest light I've ever seen. The moon sits in a warm glow, hung pr...

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“Daniel Anguilar” by Hunter Bright

Submitted to Contest #130

The crickets sang in harmony on a humid Thursday night outside of Glendale Apartment Complex’s apartment C9. The television flickered out of the open blinds as Daniel studied from across the street. His target was a man named Edmond, a car salesman who pissed off the wrong wife’s husband. Daniel took no pleasure it what was to come but he was paid for a job, a job he intended on completing. He climbed up the stairs to the third floor of the C building until he reached apartment 9, this was not a problem for Daniel. H...

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“Change of Heart” by Cydney Rose

Submitted to Contest #130

CW: Domestic Abuse Running water echoes through the washroom as Astrid waits for her hot bath to fill up. Each item of clothing she peels off reveals a bruise, some freshly black and blue, others yellow from weeks of healing. The girl in the mirror stares back at her in a body she hardly recognizes. Scars mingle with her generous curves; splotches pepper the pale skin of her abdomen. The most unrecognizable feature is the light that remains in her eyes, anything but a reflection of how she feels on the inside. Verin was arrested four days ag...

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“The Bonsai and the Dock at the End of the Universe” by CJ Rodgers

Submitted to Contest #130

Eleri Lloyd was not someone you'd expect to be a colonist. She was on the shorter side, with dirt brown hair, casually blue eyes, and a frame that had once been described as "kindly", in an unkind way. On Earth, she had been a housekeeper. Not even to a rich family. She had worked around her village in Wales, going from house to house to do whatever it was people needed. Cooking, cleaning, babysitting, etc. But here she sat, billions of light years from home, and a few hundred years older for it, without a single wrinkle to show for it. Cr...

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$250

Prize money

284

Contest entries

179

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jan 28, 2022 EST

Won by Allie Erickson 🏆

Title: A Man's Man

Submissions must be between 1,000 - 3,000 words and will be approved and published on Reedsy Prompts within 7 days of the contest closing.

Read the full terms & conditions or check out the FAQ if you have any questions!

Prompts | Big Blue Hand | 2024-11

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Prompts | Big Blue Hand | 2024-11

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