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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#244: Oh Snap!

Photography is the art of capturing light, and moments; a way to freeze time and observe the ever-changing nature of life, if only in a small way. Pictures serve as a testament to our experience, helping us remember, understand, and share it. From cherished childhood snapshots to historical photographs, artistic compositions, and even selfies, some pictures truly are worth a thousand words.


This week’s prompts are all about photographs and the stories and meanings behind them — just remember that, in this case, a picture is worth between 1 and 3 thousand words.

This week's prompts

Center your story around a photo that goes viral.

Funny – 29 stories

Start your story with a character staring at a picture they don’t remember taking.

Mystery – 73 stories

Write a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo.

Adventure – 39 stories

Write about a character who sees a photo they shouldn’t have seen.

Dramatic – 66 stories

Begin or end your story with a character taking a selfie.

Fluff – 33 stories

Stories

“Letters to Lainey” by Elizabeth Loman

Submitted to Contest #244

Warning: this story contains brief mentions of homophobia and homophobic language.The box stashed in the top of the closet was so innocuous, at first Chris almost missed it.It looked like any of the other dozens of boxes his late mother Anne had stashed throughout her house. She’d liked to keep nearly everything she’d received in her life; clothes, letters from friends and family, business cards from every professor she had in college, postcards from everywhere she'd visited, and of course, lots of pictures. Pictures from her childhood, her ...

3 comments 3
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“Kodachrome” by Karla S. Bryant

Submitted to Contest #244

Ian had put it off long enough. His mother, Lillian, had passed two months ago. Lillian’s clothing, fashion jewelry, and vast collection of expensive handbags had been given away or were for sale at St. Paul’s Consignment Shop. His older sister, Sofie, had done that part.Now Ian stood in the middle of his mother’s study and looked around. Stacks of boxes surrounded him. Tax records and greeting cards with faded writing, financial statements and old photographs, sentimental letters that smelled musty and utility bills… where to start? This wa...

5 comments 5
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“Regret Hurts” by Naya's A Writer

Submitted to Contest #244

The air was musty, the scent of rotting fish thick in the air. My breathing was ragged as I looked down on the pale figure. His eyes were dreamy, but somehow lost at the same time. It seemed like he was searching for something that didn't exist. Or maybe he was. Maybe he was searching for life. But his body is lifeless now. I was the one that caused that. The 9 mm pistol in my hand fell loose of my grasp and it dropped with a soft thud onto the moist ground. My breathing got heavier as I heard the blare of police sirens. This is it. I'...

6 comments 6
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“Traitors” by Ashley Sawh

Submitted to Contest #244

I awoke with a pounding headache as I reached for my phone, checking the time only to see thousands of messages across all social media platforms coming from all of my friends, and then some. What could they want? Ring ring.  Ring ring.  It was Monica, one of my best friends, what could she want? It’s not like she wants to suddenly talk to me, she basically ditched me at Colin’s party yesterday. Colin’s my boyfriend, and we’ve been together for a year, well, almost a year. It would be exactly a year in a couple of days, and I was b...

2 comments 2
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“Lost Socks, Found Hearts: The Sock Whisperer's Sockumentary.” by Sofia Mullan

Submitted to Contest #244

Thomas "Tom" Windsor Jr. wasn't your average eight-year-old. While other kids dreamt of Legos and video games, Tom dreamt of… well, socks. Specifically, collecting mismatched socks. His room was a colourful explosion of single socks – polka-dotted argyles partnered with neon stripes, fuzzy snowflakes seeking lost partners with argyle diamonds. One sunny afternoon, Tom’s mother, a woman who believed in the therapeutic power of organization, decided to tackle his sock drawer. Little did she know, she was about to unleash chaos on the internet....

0 comments 0
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“The Twitchers Society.” by Catherine Long

Submitted to Contest #244

“Ouch.” Said Dave as a twig from the bush on Colin’s head poked him in the eye. “Watch where you are putting that bloody thing” he grumbled in hushed tones. The two men lay propped up on their elbows in the tall grass. It was bad enough he’d been lumbered with Colin the curse, without being blinded by his ridiculous headpiece too. Colin put his ostentatious binoculars to his eyes once more. “There she is!” He squealed loudly causing the tiny pine warbler to take flight from the branch it had landed on and disappeared into the thicket of pine...

1 comment 1
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“ReCon” by Jonathan Todd

Submitted to Contest #244

Selfie! Snap. Post.I am in love, although I won’t tell him that in the Meet and Greet! Too much, too soon.I still can’t quite believe I get to sit down with him, one on one, and just, like, chat. There he is on stage singing “Hold Me Close” (which just happens to be my favourite), shirt open like he does and that body. OMG that body! When he does that curl kind of thing and you see his abs shining and moving; how can anyone keep themselves calm and not feeling anything when he does that? I’ll feel more when he actually holds ME close!Selfie!...

3 comments 3
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“The Aberrance” by Martin Harp

Submitted to Contest #244

Two months ago, the Aberrance mysteriously and suddenly appeared in rural Ohio. Below is a timeline compiled by investigators, scientists, government officials and law enforcement detailing the discovery and subsequent events that followed. Sensitive information, including any picture or detailed description of the Aberrance, has been redacted for the safety and wellbeing of the public. This includes the photo taken by Tyler Garcia (otherwise known as @TheMadManG and/or Patient Zero) that was virally circulated on social media and news outle...

6 comments 6
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“gone.” by Lara Deppe

Submitted to Contest #244

The photo trembled in my shaking hands. My memory was foggy and distant with grief. I must have taken the photo because I was not in it. I strained my memory to remember the last moments of that day as I stood with camera in hand looking at my friends who stood with the lake at their backs. The fog began to dissipate. It was moments later, I hugged my friends, climbed into the car with my parents and put the horrific summer in the rearview mirror. I brought the photo to my face and that is when I saw it. I did not want to believe my eyes. Th...

6 comments 6
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“Saut d'Eau” by H.e. Ross

Submitted to Contest #244

I left Labadie for the Turks and Caicos Islands spending a year establishing a magazine there with my lovely friend, DianaLou. Every chance I got I was back in Haiti until I finally moved to a loosely situated community called Merger, twenty kilometres south of Port au Prince. It was an ugly little box of a summer cottage I rented but sat on a rectangular acre of land bordered by coconut palms, the railroad tracks and the two lane highway beyond them, a line of thorny shrubbery with fallow farmland on its other side and the sea. I had a brea...

2 comments 2
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“A Dangerous Picture to Take” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #244

My long-time friend James was looking very down-trodden these days. I did not feel that I could ask him about it, as he very much did not like to talk about his emotions. He had been like that since the two of us were teenagers in high school. When I came over to visit with him and his wife Ethel, I thought that I could see the cause of his unhappiness. Ethel was treating him badly, making cutting remarks about his job and the way that he dressed, among other things. This was definitely not something that he would talk to...

6 comments 6
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“Chasing Her Storm” by C.N. Jung

Submitted to Contest #244

The world has a way of taking a peaceful life and bringing into it storms of turbulence. Skies once clear and cloudless overtaken by a dark overcast of depression. Rains of doubt and winds of worthlessness screaming down until they destroy everything in their wake.Every feeling of hope and every ray of sunshine blotted out by a thunderstorm of the worst life has to offer.When I was eight, that was before the clouds started to roll in on the horizon. When I was eight, I had a toy astronaut. He had a shiny, silver suit and a space mask. His na...

7 comments 7
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“To Be Heard” by Fern Everton

Submitted to Contest #244

Content Warning: This story is set during the Holocaust through the eyes of a fictional character. This story will contain themes of violence and death, and depictions of Nazi occupation in Poland, as well as anti-Semitic themes (which I do not support). Extensive research has been done to ensure this text is as historically accurate as possible. Any relation to real people is purely coincidental. Viewer discretion is advised.  There are two days in my childhood that time will never take: the day I got my camera and the day it almost c...

4 comments 4
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“Family Reunion” by YC Son

Submitted to Contest #244

Three weeks after my mother's death, I finally took the courage to go to her house and organize her things, which didn’t amount to much. All I could find in her room was a jewelry box and a leather-bound diary, the contents of which I did not read. It wasn't out of respect for her privacy; I would probably never be able to stand learning about her thoughts and secrets. In other words, I didn’t want to discover something unpleasantly new about my mother. I simply wanted to remember her as she was: the perfect, kind mother any son could ever h...

0 comments 0
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“PANDORA'S BOX” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #244

I cry so rarely that I sometimes suspect I lack proper lachrymal ducts. Because no matter how miserable I feel, how low my heart sinks, or how far I am knocked sideways, I barely shed a tear. I didn’t cry when my dad was killed in a car accident when I was eight. Or when Matt, my husband of ten years, decided to leave with Alice, his best friend’s wife.But now I realize there is nothing physically wrong with me, and I learned restraint from my grandmother, Anneliese, because crying is not for survivors like us.“Carrying emotions on the sleev...

0 comments 0
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$250

Prize money

239

Contest entries

91

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Apr 05, 2024 EST

Won by K.A. Murray 🏆

Title: The Party

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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