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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#55: In On a Little Secret

One of The Hobbit's most memorable scenes is when Bilbo encounters Gollum in the Misty Mountains. We know Bilbo has the ring in his pocket, and that Gollum refers to the ring as his "precious." But Gollum doesn't yet realize it's missing, and Bilbo doesn't know who the ring belongs to.

This scene utilizes dramatic irony by providing readers with key information that the characters are unaware of. It creates suspense, tension, and immediately invests readers as we anxiously await the events we know will eventually unfold.

This week's prompts all revolve around the theme of secrets. We encourage you to get creative with how and when you reveal information to characters — and readers!

This week's prompts

Write a story about a meeting of a secret society.

Mystery – 155 stories

Write a story about an old family secret surfacing generations later.

Adults – 141 stories

Write a story that either starts or ends with someone asking, “Can you keep a secret?”

Kids – 421 stories

Write a story involving a conversation that’s packed with subtext; the characters aren’t quite saying what they mean.

Dialogue – 78 stories

Write a story where the readers are in on a secret that the characters are unaware of.

Novel – 101 stories

Stories

“Thirteen. ” by Millie Hardy-Sims

Submitted to Contest #55

Thirteen has always been an unlucky number. Judas was the thirteenth at the last supper, the one who betrayed Christ. The Templars were massacred on Friday thirteenth. A year with thirteen moons means disturbance. Perhaps most importantly, psychologists say the average person at any one time is keeping thirteen secrets. Thirteen. Thirteen secrets they have never told another soul. Thirteen secrets that eat them up from the inside day after day, hour after hour. Thirteen secrets that threaten th...

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“Dear Diary” by Emily Pickett

Submitted to Contest #55

Carrie’s heart raced as she felt her iPhone vibrate in her hand for a second time as the text message came through. She already knew what it had said. She had gotten a glimpse of it as her phone’s facial recognition software confirmed her identity just a few minutes before. It was almost as if Steve Jobs himself was sending her a message from beyond the grave saying I know what you did. It felt like she had been standing in that bathroom stall for ages when a familiar voice rang out from behind the locked stall door. “Carrie?! Your moms call...

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“A Beast In Darkness” by Terri Birchfield

Submitted to Contest #55

Can you keep a secret? Any secret? What if I told you that I am a ghost in the shadows? What if I said I am a reflection of fear lost in the pale mist of moonlit fantasies? What if you knew that, like wispy tendrils of twilight smoke, I am unnoticed and on the prowl? Would I be safe? Still cloaked by superstitions and free to roam the darkness. Can you keep that secret, can you allow me to remain unhindered? Could you allow me to remain unseen… unseen by all but the night... the night and the hunger? &nb...

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“The Secrets She Keeps” by Alisa Burdick

Submitted to Contest #55

"Can you keep a secret?"This question gets me ALL the time. If I had a dollar for every time someone said this to me, I could retire from my bartending job and live on an uncharted island in the Pacific.It wasn't enough that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" but the pressure of being a bartender here too?It's not for the faint of heart. Add to this, I'm not your average woman either; makes life difficult.Most of the women I work with are actually gorgeous. Me? I'm what you call "average". I'm five feet five, brownish hair, curvy and ha...

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“A Shared Secret” by Heather Hearing

Submitted to Contest #55

On an old world that used to teem with dragons a glow lit a blue green waterfall eerily from behind. What lay behind the crashing waters to draw the two within to this old dragon's lair? Deep within the damp cave hidden behind the waterfall the walls glistened as the flames of a fire making them sparkle. A low murmur wafted toward the front, the words just barely audible. Coming to this old cave had been arduous, but it had been a place that they had both longed to see and explore. It was near impossible to get to th...

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“I Don't Remember” by MJ Cho

Submitted to Contest #55

"Can you keep a secret?" Her rich hazel eyes stared right at me, wide open. Molasses black bangs flew with the wind, and her left overall strap had fallen off her shoulder. She was pretty, the type of girl people would stop and get a second look at on the street. I was the very opposite of her. I had acne dotted all over my skin, topped with wild hair that could never be combed properly. I was a very mousy boy, so I would always carry around a 5-inch pocket knife. I don't trust strangers easily, so carrying that pocket knife gi...

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“A Mental Spiral” by Taira Wynde

Submitted to Contest #55

The stars were not dim, but they seemed so. She stared at them through the window, searching for hope. What must one do to find hope after it vanishes? She didn’t know. She stroked her arm, feeling the ridges there that were sign of the times she had truly given up hope. When all that is left is pain, what is left to look forward to. Everyone told her she was so strong, how they admired her. Yet when she began to fall apart those same people scattered. They admired strength when they didn’t have to see what caused her to become so strong. ...

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“For Sally.” by Duckie Carson

Submitted to Contest #55

“Can you keep a secret?” Sally asked, one autumn evening. We had been sat in the waiting room for the last half hour waiting for information about her father, Brian. He had left the house, for reasons unknown, but he never returned on time. Instead, her mother, Louise, received a call from the hospital. Apparently, his brakes had failed to work so he went barreling into a convenience store a couple towns away. At the time, Sally and I were sitting on kerbs waiting for the cars to cover us in the rainwater from the road’s puddles, making...

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“What Makes the gods Mad?” by Claire Lentz

Submitted to Contest #55

“Can you keep a secret?” Thump, thump, thump. It became painfully obvious that the sound of a beating heart wasn’t my own. And I knew for certain that it wasn’t his. I nodded carefully, but I didn’t say anything. Partly because my voice had suddenly failed, and partly because we were in the school library, and I didn’t want to attract attention. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a sack. And I only use the word ‘sack’ because there was no other way to describe it. It wasn’t a bag, exactly. It wasn’t small enough to be a pouch. I...

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“A Deadly Secret” by Allen Sklar

Submitted to Contest #55

“Can you keep a secret?” She asked the exhausted man who was currently leaning against the windowsill and blowing his cigarette smoke out onto the city below. He closes his eyes miserably, his muscles tensing up throughout his entire body. He knew this was coming. Maybe he should have left town like Ella suggested, even if she only meant it sarcastically. Anything to get out of this, what can only be an intensely uncomfortable situation. The old Southwest Airlines ads with the catchphrase “wanna get away?” echoed mockingly in his brain....

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“Someone Else” by Katelyn Kelly

Submitted to Contest #55

“Can you keep a secret?” Eliot had been outside, smoking a cigarette by the light post for a moment of quiet, but now he turned and looked at the person beside him, who was very obviously under the influence of...something. Eliot tried to frequent this bar as often as he could, he liked it, and it wasn’t exactly hard to convince himself to go after work. He didn’t know what he loved about it in particular, maybe it was the way the neon lights around the bar tended to hide everyone’s features, or maybe it was t...

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“Sweet Tooth” by Kimberly Hallman

Submitted to Contest #55

“Can you keep a secret?” she whispers seductively. “I really like you.” I like you too doesn’t seem like enough, so I struggle to find the right words to say in response. It’s only our third date, but I’m already standing here at the door to her apartment, and things are going very well. She’s gorgeous – way out of my league, but she genuinely seems interested in me. And I am very interested in her. “I haven’t h...

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“The Secret Keeper” by Veronica Macey

Submitted to Contest #55

Annabelle rushed off the subway and ran up the concrete stairs that led up to the street. She was going to be late for work. Her office was thankfully only one block away. She worked for a small internet based publishing house as a low level writer and wrote a weekly column called the "the Secret Keeper". People would email her secrets anonymously. As anonymously as anyone's email or Twitter account gets but she would find the juiciest secret and write about it along with a few embellishments and post it on her column. People loved it and sh...

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“Harbor of Stillness” by David H. Fox

Submitted to Contest #55

The young man was sitting on a cold bench on the harbor, his legs crossed, and his mind wandering a hundred miles away into the grey mist of the Atlantic. His bright green eyes, clear as silver, were staring into what seemed to be an infinite haze of grey and dark blue. The skies were concrete grey with blemishes of darker shades, and the wind was a light chill ever going its way through the harbor’s area. A huge flock of seagulls cursed their surroundings down at the docks, their cries all together morphing into a distorted white noise. Tin...

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“America Sucked Until It Didn't” by KB Lilley

Submitted to Contest #55

He’s ten years old when he lands in America for the first time. Years later, he’ll remember this because Hey There Delilah was on the radio of the car pulling away from Logan Airport his mother was driving to their new home. He doesn’t remember much about the circumstances surrounding their big move halfway across the world. All he can recall is the sounds of long phone calls and stressed sighs echoing off the walls of the small apartment that he and his mother shared, and then one day she’d hung up the phone and entered their living room an...

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$50

Prize money

896

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Aug 21, 2020 EST

Won by B Easton 🏆

Title: Secrets for the Living

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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