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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#28: Narratively Takeover

This week is a special edition of the Reedsy Prompts contest because our friends at Narratively are taking it over with their own theme and prompts! We'll let them take it from here...

Narratively is a media platform that celebrates the diversity of humanity through authentic storytelling. At Narratively, we know that truth is sometimes stranger (and more interesting!) than fiction, so we’re switching things up this week and asking for your TRUE stories. For this week’s prompts, we’re looking for your very best creative nonfiction — the fascinating true story that only you can tell, the one incredible tale you just have to share with the world.

We like stories that surprise and delight us, and that are full of dramatic, active scenes with lots of colorful moments.

To that end, each of our prompts for this week takes on an issue that never goes out of style… love.

The winning story will be considered for publication on Narratively.

This week's prompts

Write about someone (or something) you loved that you shouldn’t have.

Nonfiction – 90 stories

Write about a date that was so terrible you’ll never forget it.

Nonfiction – 46 stories

Write about your most unique experience at, or in, a wedding.

Nonfiction – 34 stories

Write about a time when a broken heart led to something you’d never have expected.

Nonfiction – 58 stories

Write about a secret that you’ve never told to the person you love.

Nonfiction – 41 stories

Stories

“Kissing a Hobo?” by Alexis Campos

Submitted to Contest #28

I was stupid and 20 years old and was having the time of my life. I didn’t have to start paying my student debt and was being paid $13 an hour for 25 hours weekly. My weekends and even my class schedule were flexible enough so I could cruise for casual sex on Grindr. I had just broken up with my boyfriend, but we were trying to have that weird “Let’s date and fuck other people but let’s be best friends and screw each other when we’re lonely” relationship because he couldn’t accept that I wouldn’t want to keep talking to him.&nbsp...

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“Paradise...Not” by Rudy Uribe

Submitted to Contest #28

From twenty-seven-thousand-feet, the shadows from the mountains looked like they were stretching and yawning. Lakes dotted the landscape. The sun was settling in under a blanket of clouds rewarding me with the respite of night. I closed my eyes and hoped for a few minutes of sleep. My nap was interrupted by a nightmare, which, as it turned out, would be nothing compared to what lay ahead of me in Portland.My wife’s best girlfriend and her husband moved to Oregon twenty-two years ago. My wife, Cathy, and I have often talked about moving up th...

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“Sally's Wedding” by Judith Pratt

Submitted to Contest #28

Going from Massachusetts to Montana for my childhood friend Sally’s wedding overwhelmed me—a sheltered twenty-year-old—in all directions. First, I stayed with the groom’s family, on their sofa, where a puppy and kitten triggered my asthma by playing tag over my face all night. No one worried about that. (Much later, I lived in the Midwest, and realized that people who busted the sod and crossed the mountains are not worriers. Unlike my longtime Eastern family.) Then I stayed with Sally in her apartment, sharing the only bed, causing Bob-the-...

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“My Father Married His Three Children” by Sarah Butland

Submitted to Contest #28

My own romance started with a date who was late and introduced me to a friend. When meeting someone you met only online was a faux pas, I rebelled and decided to jump in with both feet but with stipulation – we go to a movie so we’d be in public. Only at 16 I didn’t think about what could happen on the drive to the theatre, I just knew I wanted adventure and so I said yes to meeting the much older man for a movie. And then he drove in 10 minute after the movie started. I should have known he was bad news but still decided I’d be safe an...

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“The Most Beautiful Person” by Cheza Vidal

Submitted to Contest #28

"You're the most beautiful person I've ever met," they said. Not in unison, but in different timelines. The first person said this to me in high school. The teacher had arranged a seating plan for the whole class and we ended up seating next to each other. He sat on my left, and him being on my left put me in an advantage of drawing art over his notebooks and papers because I was a lefty and our armchairs accommodated right-handed people. The first one was a genius in class, a Salutatorian. I had to rely on him to pass a certain subject duri...

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“Puppy Love” by Corey Anderson

Submitted to Contest #28

Not too many people ever think seeing a stray animal outside of a parking lot will be the moment to usually change your life, nor your outlook on it. Normally, one would simply look for any proof of ownership. Maybe the stray could be taken home until a suitable owner is found. Such a situation happened to me one year, on a warm summer day in 2011. I was simply a senior in high school, spending his evening at work, contemplating how to tackle the homewo...

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“The person you want to be” by Kristin DeLong

Submitted to Contest #28

I stared at the picture yesterday, Eagles Super Bowl parade day, February 8th, 2018. It popped up on Facebook as my memory from two years ago. I can feel my happiness leap off of the computer screen and attack my current state of existence. The day to day seems to pale in comparison. Well, to be honest, I think everyone would think the same thing. It isn’t every day that you meet a man online who is your best friend and your deepest love. It isn’t every day that you move across the country to live close to him. It isn’t every day that your n...

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“Silver lining” by Yvonne Albers

Submitted to Contest #28

By Yvonne Albers – South Africa I sat there with my mouth partly open. The shock of the words that were coming from his mouth stung like nothing I had ever felt. Was this happening to me here in front of all these people? The scene he laid at my feet made the breath disappear from my lungs and the tears burning down my cheeks. I was numb and speechless to what I was experiencing at that second in life. All I could do was reach for my bag between my legs and slowly remove myself from the restaurant. Only for him to lean over and tell me ...

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“The Secret Left Unshared” by Rosaline Hope

Submitted to Contest #28

I was told that this week's prompt was about real life. My real life. I know that as a writer I shouldn't talk to the readers about writing this story, but I can't help it. After all, this weakness in my writing is part of the secret left unshared. I am, in a way, a prodigy. In a bad way, if that makes sense. But only to myself. This secret, it takes a million words to express. There is never a way to put it all in one sentence. What do I mean by all that? I'm a rare soul, as people may say. I ca...

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“Too Afraid” by Samantha Kensley

Submitted to Contest #28

I wish i had the nerves. I wish i was confident enough to tell him this. For years i have struggled to make conversations fun, interesting and intriguing, but it was a real struggle, for every single thing i had said was made up. I was afraid to open up to him. I wad afraid to show myself. Afraid that he would not like me for it. Afraid that he would judge me because i was vulnerable. I felt like i was the only one responsible for everthing that happened. This story goes all the way to 7th grade. There was this boy in class. I had kn...

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“I'll Send You A Lot of Letters, But Not This One” by Sami Mrj

Submitted to Contest #28

I loved you from the first moment I saw you.I would never tell you this. There’s a power balance in relationships, and I’m already so much in your debt that more ammunition is quite unnecessary.Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t loved you every moment since then, and there were many moments, days even, when I gave up on us. There were moments where I doubted that I even loved you, or if you were simply the getaway car from the wreck of my last relationship (although it wasn’t so much a wreck as it was a barren desert where nothing ever happened a...

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“I wanted to marry my college girlfriend” by David Palumbo

Submitted to Contest #28

The title says it all. There was a point in my life when I wanted to marry my college girlfriend, and a point she probably wanted to marry me. My current girlfriend and hopefully soon to be fiance believes I didn't see a future with her; and it's a secret I'll take to my grave. It started my senior year. My girlfriend at the time, Christina and I had been dating for about 3 years. I met her my freshman year at a dorm party and after 6 months of occasional hook ups, I worked up the nerve to ask her out. In the beginning it was wonderful. She ...

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“Different” by Melissa Landers

Submitted to Contest #28

The day started out rainy -- and promptly got worse with the arrival of the sun. It was one of those do-nothing days that led to little grunts of dismay. First, there was the problem of the cloud cover -- and then of course the emergence of the sun. "We can't go do anything," she says, and stamps her foot impatiently before the window. Dreams of tennis and heading out to somewhere beyond the four walls are vanishing with every drop of rainfall. "We could sleep," the husband says, except it's not in those words. It's more -- snarfle, snarfle,...

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“Another Day ” by Maria Nunez

Submitted to Contest #28

“Be ready in 10” he said. I liked him from the beginning. He was a loudmouth. You always knew where he was because he was the loudest, sometimes the most obnoxious, one in the room.He was also charming, in a weird, chaotic way but he was. My quietness went well with his loudness, my jokes made his over the top ones even funnier and through differences, we found compatibility and eventually love. It’s funny how a stranger becomes family. At this point, I know his scent just as well as I know my mothers. It is great to love someone, but it is ...

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“spinning ” by ROSALYN BELFORD

Submitted to Contest #28

Dorian was the first guy I slept with. We had been dating for 4 months (and 12 days), we were watching a movie at his place and as the credits rolled on the screen I ask him if wanted to have sex. He said yes. Jonah was the first guy I kissed. We had been friends for 7 years, he had fallen over while we were racing down our street and I wanted to cheer him up, it lasted for half a second. We got up and raced again. Dorian and I have now been dating for a year, currently I am thirty minuets into a run, my lungs are thumping against my chest, ...

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$50

Prize money

269

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Feb 14, 2020 EST

A winner will be announced soon.

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!

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