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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#63: Autumnal

It’s finally fall in the Northern Hemisphere. While the leaves are being slow to change out my window this year, the air is crisp and the pumpkin spice products are out in full force. Time to break out the sweaters!

Beyond all the colorful trappings, though, fall is by definition a season of change. So as you craft your stories this week, try to think about how the events you’re writing will change your characters' lives, whether fundamentally or just a little. After all, even a seemingly mundane afternoon can be the turning point of your entire life…

And if you want to drink some apple cider or a pumpkin spice latte while you write, more power to you!

This week's prompts

Set your story in a coffee shop that’s just introduced a new line of autumnal drinks.

Fall – 161 stories

Start your story with the line, “By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire.” (Whether this is a literal fire is up to you.)

Teens – 324 stories

Write about a character making fall decorations out of construction paper.

Kids – 45 stories

Write a story from the perspective of a bird migrating for the winter.

Winter – 128 stories

Write about two characters going apple picking.

Fall – 249 stories

Stories

“The decorations ” by Gaurav Nair

Submitted to Contest #63

The decoration “Where are the rakes?” Alex’s mother asked him. Alex, who was playing with Opaque, their dog, replied. “With dad, he’s stacking them in the yard. “What about the fall decorations??” Mother reiterated. “Probably with him ”Alex cogitated. It was the fall season in Queenston , and there was an aura of excitement for everyone, but Alex, for his usual trip to Nonna had been cancelled due to the Mayor. The Mayor had announced, that this year, mainly for re-election, he would visit all the houses in his constituency, which...

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“PASSIONS PICK PERMANENCE” by Dawood Abbasi

Submitted to Contest #63

Nasser was a young trader of apples in the Valley of Kashmir. He had made an advance purchase of a large apple garden in the premises of the capital city of Srinagar. To buy the apple crop two or three months earlier was a general customary trend there. The traders used to procure the fruit garden much before the ripening season. Though apples were collected from the trees by the last days of September yet the gross transactions by the traders were usually made in July. All the fruit dealers followed the traditional purchasing pa...

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“Maple” by Emmett Wrighter

Submitted to Contest #63

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. But the tingle of smoke in my throat and lungs had nothing to do with the autumn orange and yellow spattered across the neighborhood. The simple leafy fires of October nature couldn’t compete with the vivid flames of my memory painted into the scars trailing up my arms and across my body. The twist of my mouth and ugliness of my face I knew everyone was too nice to point out, had been born from true fire. Damaging fire. I stood on my porch with the hood of my jacket far over my face...

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“Believe it or not!” by Tithi Banerjee

Submitted to Contest #63

“By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire.’’ What if the leaves were really on fire? Cut to day one, from where it all began, if it was anything it was a tale of mediocrity. A set life of the usual monotonous routine of heading to college and coming back and to take care of her younger brother, since her mom was suffering from over-dosage of drugs and happened to have been spending her time in some rehabilitation camp on the outskirts of the metropolis of Mumbai. Aisha had always wished how her life would be if she eve...

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“Paper Heart” by Kathleen March

Submitted to Contest #63

There is a child making construction paper decorations for the fall. She has long, medium brown hair. Her hair is caught back high on her head, carefully, neatly. It is gathered in a pony tail held with a barrette held in place with plastic teeth above and a rubber band below. There are perfect, even braids on each side of her head that are gathered skillfully in with the pony tail. Because the girl is barely eight years old, if that, the hair style must be the work of a mother. Perhaps a mother with old-fashioned ideas about how to do ...

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“Abernathy’s Orchard” by PK Spice

Submitted to Contest #63

Twelve-year-old Mark Reynolds was getting a head start on teenage angst. He was beyond annoyed his mother was forcing him to go apple picking on a Saturday he could have spent playing video games, eating junk food, and texting his friends.Mark hadn’t been out to Wentworth Acres since he was ten.Admittedly, he’d loved going there when he was a kid. Picking apples, riding the hay wagon out to the field beyond the orchard to choose the perfect pumpkin to carve and put on the front step, running around the haybale castle, whooshing down the slid...

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“Orchard Conversations ” by Aveena Bordeaux

Submitted to Contest #63

I watched his eyes twinkle like gems in the sunlight while staring at something as mediocre as apples and how he handled them like they were fragile newborns. I'd come to notice that it was his thing - touching things like they'd crumble into dust at the slightest amount of pressure, feeling everything as if he'd just acquired the sense. He gently plucked one from a low hanging tree branch and set it down in his basket where several other cherished apples were settled.Never once had I seen him stop smiling. He grinned, a wide happy thing, no...

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“Pick Your Own Apple Pie,” by P. Jean

Submitted to Contest #63

(Write about two characters going apple picking.) Last night I went out on my porch roof, a folded blanket under me and a fleece throw to keep off the night air. I layed on my back, the night sky dark and full of stars. I tried to imagine far away galaxies, seeing things never before seen by human eyes, maybe even creatures vastly different from us. The problem was, as exciting and fantastic as far away stars and planets might seem, Gina could not keep her mind on the sky. She felt like she had been drawn up and d...

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“How I met your father ” by S C

Submitted to Contest #63

I always get sick during autumn, no matter how great the effort I make to remain healthy, from eating five veggies and five fruits per day to working out vigorously six times a week. I still catch cold with a speed that can only equals that of Usain Bolt and it sticks ferociously like lice to hair shafts. And let me tell you about those famous home remedies, they are a huge waste of time and ingredients. One autumn day I got tired of staying home waiting to be cured- more by my slow immunity system than by the massive amount of medication of...

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“Fire and Identity” by Marian Reiley

Submitted to Contest #63

By the time I stepped outside the leaves were on fire. Great, I thought to myself, this dream again. I sigh and walk down the now blazing street in my neighborhood. I know who I'm looking for and where they'll be. This time I ignore the flaming trees, I know they wont hurt me. She's standing in the middle of the park, long silvery hair dancing in the updrafts from the inferno that surrounds her. The heat smoke and fire don't seem to bother her or char her body. If that isn't weird enough, she's floating six inches ...

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“The Renovated Disposition” by Khagesh Mahanta

Submitted to Contest #63

“Wow! See Jose, so lovely these ruddy shelducks and greater flamingos are!!” Sandra just could not resist, out of joy. “Yes Sandra, great that today we are lucky enough to see so many amazingly beautiful migratory birds, at this lake. Tom rightly suggested me to visit Majuli.” “Do you know Jose, this Majuli is the biggest fresh river water island of the World.” “Yes, I know Sandra. Now, let’s take some photos and videos, of the beautiful moments.” They got married last year, after dating for some years. India is their first overseas ...

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“Thousands of Miles from Home” by C Britt

Submitted to Contest #63

The leaves have begun to paint the treetops like wildfire. A chill lingers in the air a little bit longer each morning. The days are getting shorter. I need to go. It's time for me to move on. It's not just the changing of the seasons or the scarcity of food, though. I can feel something calling me. Some instinct, some overwhelming urge is pulling me toward a place I've never been. I need to go. As I sit in the bright morning sunshine, I stretch out the vivid blue feathers of my wings, the long forked feathers of my tail. Then, I preen a...

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“THE JOURNEY WITHOUT LUCY. ” by Loud Paper

Submitted to Contest #63

Lucy woke up to the sound of birds early morning, stretching and smiling through the brighter sun. she pull up the curtains and saw numerous birds feeding on the grass not far from her backyard farm. Lucy walked up to the birds and tried getting one as a pet, unfortunately she slipped and fell. Her neighbour's children giggle and chuckled at her. One of the children walked up to Lucy and said, would you love to keep one? She nodded and said yes, would like to keep one as a pet, I wouldn't mind if you offer a help.maybe your friends...

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“Candy Corn Latte” by Sam W

Submitted to Contest #63

“Discontinued?” What do you mean, discontinued?” She shrieks.Laura has waited all year, as she does every year, for autumn to come. She’s waited all year to come to the local coffee shop, Lus Córdoba, and drink the Candy Corn Latte every Saturday, for as long as autumn lasts.For the rest of the year, it’s too painful for eighty-year-old Laura to come to Lus Córdoba. Ever since her husband, Beckett, died of a heart attack coming out of the shop twenty years ago, Laura can’t stand the sight of it. She can’t stand entering the coffee shop that ...

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“When the Weather Turns” by Karen McDermott

Submitted to Contest #63

“Harvest Mooncha? I mean, surely even you must admit that’s a bit of a stretch?” I laughed, nervously. It’s my knee-jerk response. Only involving my mouth, not my knees. Ferry and I were browsing the menu in Bean and Gone. As soon as the first leaves began to fall, they’d wheeled out the chalkboard list of seasonal drinks. The coffee shop was one of five branches the independent had grown in Brainton. People came in droves to photograph themselves and their friends sipping lattes in the reclaimed furniture or against wallpaper bearing f...

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$50

Prize money

907

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Oct 16, 2020 EST

Won by Masha Kurbatova 🏆

Title: come to atlanta!

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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