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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#194: Idiomatic

If you’ve read a couple of these newsletters, you may have noticed that I’m a great fan of an idiom; they've provided the inspiration for countless contests, and I use them (or perhaps overuse them) often in everyday life. After all, nothing is more satisfying than discovering a snappy turn of phrase that can express exactly what you’re trying to convey.


With that in mind, this week’s prompts are a celebration of idioms, and the entire scenes they can conjure with just a handful of words. Pick out your favorite from the bunch, and let your imagination run wild.

This week's prompts

Write a story inspired by the phrase “It’s hardly brain surgery.”

Funny – 34 stories

Write a story inspired by the phrase “I’ll eat my hat.”

Dialogue – 18 stories

Write a story inspired by the phrase “The short end of the stick.”

Character – 27 stories

Write a story inspired by the phrase “The plot thickens.”

Dramatic – 52 stories

Write a story inspired by the phrase “Back to square one.”

Narrative – 81 stories

Stories

“A Gracious Indictment ” by A. L. V.

Submitted to Contest #194

Author’s Note: I addressed the prompt metaphorically, I hope this aids in the interpretation of this piece. You may also refer to a video made by Quinn’s Ideas on YouTube talking about the book Echopraxia to further understand the concepts. Please understand that this piece is meant to explore philosophical concepts, and not to insult or target any group. The Creed stood tall and sound - but I couldn’t deny the Gorta that loomed outside it’s front door.The Creed was a cathedral that towered above everything else in the City – ...

2 comments 2
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“Favors for Juniper - A Mike Russler Mini-Mystery” by Russell Mickler

Submitted to Contest #194

A Homage to Martin Ross on Reedsy.If You Ain’t Readin’ His Stuff, You Should Be!CW: Language “Nah, it’s New York style, eat it like this,” I said, curling the slice over, tilting it, and shoving a choking hazard of saucy, cheesy heaven into my mouth. Velma scowled at me like I was a nickel shy of a dime. “Wow, er, I can’t eat like that.” Velma ate her pizza tip-first, parallel to the table like it rolled on a chugging Wile E. Coyote ACME conveyor belt into her incisors. Real pedestrian, and I mean South Dakota living, bought frozen from Safe...

11 comments 11
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“Seed Crystal” by John K Adams

Submitted to Contest #194

Ian needed an entry point for his story. No portal, no story.The sun shone through his window, creating a bright trapezoid on his floor. Dust drifted through the beam. The house was quiet.All he needed was a simple dust mote on which his story’s beautiful snow flake could form. He could pick any one.‘Always to the dust returning.’Ian never called it ‘writer’s block.’ ‘That’s a faulty understanding of the problem.’ Ian felt he needed to find this story’s crystalizing agent. With enough research and life experience he could conjure a story on ...

8 comments 8
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“His Saké Breath” by L.M. Huntwork

Submitted to Contest #194

"Thanks for coming in!" My voice rings out with disturbing precision. Retail life has ingrained very particular habits in me that are nearly unbreakable. I quickly grab my grocery bag and scurry out of the store before the cashier can acknowledge my words. "Thanks for shopping with us, sir!" A small voice echoes behind me. My hands tremble with embarrassment as I reposition the paper bag in my arms. I hate my life. I get to my vehicle in seconds, my humiliation driving my feet. Suddenly, a blur jots across my vision. I stare across the way...

0 comments 0
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“THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL” by Tim Frater

Submitted to Contest #194

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNELI entered the room, greeting my factory supervisor, sales manager, office clerk come secretary, and my accountant, Callum Bridges. They returned the greeting as I sat at the end of the table.“Right off the bat I want to say that it’s time for us to bite the bullet and face the facts,” I said. “We can pretend that things will improve if we keep our heads in the clouds but, at the end of the day, we need to call a spade a spade and face the music. It’s hardly brain surgery. Our backs are against the wall. Pric...

21 comments 21
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“The Witch's Hat” by Indigo Wolfe

Submitted to Contest #194

Standing motionless in the shadows, the thief silently questioned every single one of his life choices that led to this moment. This was a very stupid contract to accept: to steal the hat of the witch of the forest. But the reward might just actually outweigh the risk, if he survived, that is. He had heard stories told around campfires for ages about the small cottage in the woods, and of the witch that was rumored to live within. No one who came too close to the cottage survived, the only sign of them were the screams from within. Well, ...

3 comments 3
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“The Glorious Gift” by Shahzad Ahmad

Submitted to Contest #194

You must have read about at least a few heart breaking stories of individuals who had to start afresh after having lost sight of their goals on the point of making the all-important grab! But the response to your effort is often immeasurable and unpredictable. It is beyond the realm of human anticipation. It is a territory of divine calculations and defies any human extrapolation. The cue is to get your act together and try to make another attempt with greater drive, leaving the past to sulk in the shadow of its own doom. The protagonist of ...

6 comments 6
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“Back to Square One” by Kay Reed

Submitted to Contest #194

Today I did the thing I was never supposed to have done: I quit writing.Written a million ways, in a million advice columns, said by a million authors to aspiring writers: Whatever you do, KEEP WRITING.That’s what I have been doing, mind you, for nearly twenty years, since I first decided I wanted to be a writer in the prepubescent halls of middle school. My dad taught me the meaning of hard work and dedication to the cause, a loyal employee at his company for nearly thirty years. The work is hard and tedious at times – he prepared me for th...

7 comments 7
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“White Crocodile” by Sonny Red

Submitted to Contest #194

Mark Fitzgerald was the captain of a small icebreaker ship in the Canadian Arctic Ocean. He and six others of his members on the 65-footer, were headed back to Hudson Bay via the Hudson Strait. This trip in particular was shorter and was expected to be a fairly easy one, but Fitzgerald underestimated the thickness of the sea ice during this trip. Fitzgerald was not the type of man who worried easily. He had sailed over a hundred times throughout the arctic ocean in his life, through the empty, desolate, cold no-man's land. He had no friends ...

17 comments 17
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“The Chocolate Caper” by Keira Dyer

Submitted to Contest #194

It was supposed to be an easy mission. Get the goods, return to base. It should've been as simple as that. It was hardly brain surgery. Unfortunately, nine-year-olds aren't exactly super-elite agents. It was my ninth birthday party. I'd decided to have a sleepover, and my mom had allowed me to invite four people, so I'd chosen my two best friends and two of my cousins. We were quite the motley crew. First, there was Emma, my best friend. We'd known each other since kindergarten and did everything together. She had black curly hair th...

3 comments 3
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“Eat my hat” by Nigel Dougill

Submitted to Contest #194

I will eat my hat Robbie loved his. Apples, pears, bananas, strawberries, anything; he loved the lot. He always took a fruit salad to school and waited with anticipation for lunch time. You could keep crisps, chocolate and pies as far as he was concerned. But even he was blown away by what he inherited from his grandfather. In fact if he could make it work he would eat his trademark bobble hat. The one condition his grandfather set out was that the 16 year-old Robbie had to use the caravan purely to introduce people to the same wonders and...

1 comment 1
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“Born to Live” by Jakob Roy

Submitted to Contest #194

There were times Thomas found himself forgetting. His father, his mother, their faces and voices, the home they had lived in. All of it was distant in his mind, faded and blurred. It had gotten worse since he caught the sickness, even yesterday's events felt more like a dream than reality. Maybe they were. But for all his forgetting, his grandfather's memory remained firmly set in stone. His parents had died at some point. Maybe at the same time, maybe years apart. A war might have played a role, or gangsters. Could have been a bootlegger wi...

4 comments 4
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“Poetry for a Murder of Crows.” by Emanuel Diaz

Submitted to Contest #194

In honor and respect for Edgar Allan Poe Content Warning: Suicide and Murder --------------------------------------------------------------- It was a dark and stormy night in Baltimore when the murder occurred. A woman had been brutally stabbed 18 times in her own home, and the police were at a loss as to who could have done such a terrible thing. The streets were quiet, except for the occasional cry of a mourning relative, and the eerie cawing of a raven in the distance. The crows had been a constant presence in the city ever since th...

4 comments 4
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“The Dream Trap” by Anne Reed

Submitted to Contest #194

Tianna Bradley had arrived once more in the same dream that she had had for several days. Everything was exactly the same as the past several times she had visited the dream.  She stood in the hallway of an apartment, a single yellow bulb shining on a dark green carpet. There were no pictures on the wall, no decorations, but there were three doors. The two doors on the right were open, showing a small guest bedroom and a bathroom respectively. The door on the left, however, was shut, and as usual, she could not open it.  The cl...

5 comments 5
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“In the Hardest Class Ever Taught, Flags Get Stuck” by Éan Bird

Submitted to Contest #194

In the hardest class ever taught, we return to square one over and over, go back, top of the page, redo checkboxes, fill in the same blanks again. Communication deduces into physical gestures and emotive symbols, culminates in idiomatic explosions. In the hardest class ever taught, learning struggles.I taught the hardest class tough lessons about the life cycle of a chrysalis. After instructing students to highlight where they found proof butterflies come from cocoons, I read the text aloud, modeled the activity, but looked up to a student d...

8 comments 8
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$250

Prize money

212

Contest entries

118

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Apr 21, 2023 EST

Won by RJ Holmquist 🏆

Title: The Idiom Archipelago

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 | Many Hands | 2024-09

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Prompts | Many Hands | 2024-09

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