Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Center your story around a character who breaks the rules for someone they love.

Posted in Dramatic on May 16, 2025

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 49 stories

The Song Beneath the Waves

Submitted to Contest #303

Many wonders and curiosities fill the deep and expansive ocean. Within the corals, nestled with the fishes and kelp, is the enchanting Kingdom of Sirenia. This Kingdom is the heart of the sea and the home of many lustrous and beautiful sirens. Their primary duty? To take souls from lost sailors above water and give them to the Sea Elders, the guardians of the ocean’s balance. One Sea Elder in particular, named Marisela, has a daughter named Mira who has just reached the age of eighteen. Mira sits in front of her vanity mirror. Her purple ha...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Desert Gravesite

Submitted to Contest #303

Tony scuttled around the boulder, desperate for the shade on the eastern side. He breathed a lungful of hot desert air that he convinced himself was slightly cooler than the air on the western side. He slumped against the rock and scooched under it like a scorpion with its tail curled around its delicately armored body.He heard the shouts of the man pursuing him, far, then closer. As his heartbeat slowed from a bass drum beat to a tom-tom, he heard what he was saying, “It was you who dunnit, it was you Tony…it was YOU!” The words were spoken...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

SORRY

Submitted to Contest #303

Jake and Haley huddled together at the rear of the bus. Neither one of them glanced out the window at the passing sights. “What are we going to do?” asked Haley tearfully. “I don't know! I can hardly think now. I never expected this,” sighed Jake. “What did they say I have again? After a while, my brain just shut down while the doctor was talking. My mind just went blank. I think I was in shock.” “He said you had COPD, there was a longer name.” Jake pulled a crumpled pamphlet out of his jacket pocket. “Ok, it's Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary ...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Beneath the Surface

Submitted to Contest #303

It all started on a rainy Thursday afternoon. Amy Grey stood under the overhang outside Maple Hill Elementary, the final bell ringing in the background as small feet thundered toward the parent pick-up zone. She adjusted her cardigan—cream-colored, like most of her wardrobe—and smiled warmly at the kids as they disappeared into cars and buses. “Ms. Grey?” one of the secretaries called from the front office. “Lucas DiAngelo’s uncle is here for pickup!” Amy tilted her head. That was new. Lucas was usually picked up by a nanny who rarely spoke....

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Righting the Wrong

Submitted to Contest #303

The farmer’s market was far from small, but it was nowhere near large enough to conceal a private conversation. Allona shook her head. This was ridiculous. Why was this the meeting spot? “To mock you,” Morrissey, her companion rat, whispered from his spot nestled against her neck. He was hidden in the high collar of her shirt, which had them both sweltering in the scorching sun, but he’d insisted on coming along. He couldn’t help directly if trouble started, but he could run into the nearby meadow and get reinforcements. Yes, Allona agreed...

7 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Just Like Always

Submitted to Contest #303

Just Like Always "Hi, I'm Audrey. Can I sit with you?" The question came from the new girl. With her hoop earrings which almost touched her shoulders, and short dyed hair, she looked like a teenager, not a sixth grader. Why she chose to sit with me, I don't know. Nodding awkwardly, I moved my lunch sack to make room for her tray. Me, the least popular girl in class. Me, Dee, whose Mom can't ever hold down a job. Why not Joyce or one of the other popular girls?As we ate, she jabbered about her family, how awful moving was, how she was glad to...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Oracle & The Knight

Submitted to Contest #303

Seeing the future was not the gift that people thought it was. In fact, oftentimes, people would straight up reject the fortunes that they were told - even when that was forced. My name is Cassandra, and I am an initiate at the Delphi Temple. I am considered “touched by the sun god Apollo” and potentially sacred. Potentially being the key word.Cassandra looked back at what she wrote in the intricate leather journal that she was meant to write her everyday musing within. She pushed back the very strong urge to go back and remove the saucy quo...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Illicit Enchantment

Submitted to Contest #303

She couldn’t explain it, but Veeran Baurchand had always felt at home smelling the must of parchment, the resinous licorice of inkwells, candles long-burning, and the earthy scent of wet stone. As unnerving as it was to most, Veeran was entranced by the collection of all four scents in the records room of the Cheroux Cemetery. She was at peace despite a nagging inclination, the need to know and the sheer joy of discovery drove her ever-forward on every project, this one in particular.Veeran pulled her glasses from her face and carefully wipe...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Ivory and Shadows

Submitted to Contest #303

Lungi had always been the rule follower.As a junior wildlife ranger at The Kruger National Game Park in Mpumalanga, she kept to schedules, tracked rhino movements with religious precision, and recorded every finding in her green field journal with neat handwriting and tidy margins. Her late father, a ranger before her, had once told her: “Love the land, but never lose your head in it.” She had taken those words to heart—until her brother Thabiso disappeared.Thabiso, the boy with stargazer dreams, had always pushed the boundaries. He wanted t...

6 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Kingdom of things forgotten

Submitted to Contest #303

The kingdom of things forgottenSophie snatched the key to the portal, her jaw set. “Come on,” she urged her sisters, “you’re really going to let fear win?” They shook their heads, backing away like she’d just suggested jumping into a pit of snakes. “Suit yourselves,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.The portal wasn’t like the others, this one was a black spinning wheel etched with strange symbols, framed by twisted black branches. It pulsed with a cold, eerie light, like a mirror reflecting nothing but darkness. Without hesitation, Sophie step...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Goddess Fight

Submitted to Contest #303

Her mother named her Athena. How presumptuous could you be about your kid? Being named after a goddess, what a legacy to live up to. At least, that's how this seventeen-year-old felt about it. Graduation was about three months away, and she was still fiddling with her senior project, but not putting too much effort into it. She was more focused on her plan of changing her name as soon as she became an adult in late June, then she'd move to Philly with her boyfriend.She had it all figured out, except for one important thing: She had never men...

6 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Last Ride Of Xim And Zen

Submitted to Contest #303

Zeno walked around the black and gold custom chopper. Heat from the sun crushed from above. More rose from the cracked blacktop of the road, suffocating. He wiped road dust from it though more surrounded them for miles in every direction, looking everywhere but behind him. Where she was doubled over. “Fuck em,” Ximena hissed, then vomited into the ratty bushes. He squinted at the buttes and mesas of the desert. “You need anything?” “Just have the water ready,” she growled Grinning, Zeno unlatched the canteen from the saddlebag. A red banda...

6 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Chosen of Earth Mother

Submitted to Contest #303

Wandering. That is all she did. She didn’t remember when she started. Or when she would stop. She walked. Sometimes she ran. The soil was warm under her feet. It was almost like she could feel the hum of Earth Mother through it. The pine needles picked and prodded at her. Leaving scratches on her deep brown skin. They reminded her that she was real. A breathing, walking human. Not a spirit or a phantom of the forest.The forest stretched for miles- or it seemed, because no matter how far she walked, she never reached the other side. She was o...

5 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Forget

Submitted to Contest #303

“I’ll miss you.” “I know.” “I just want to make sure you do.” “You’ve said that like thirty times in the last hour.” “I know.” Lenore sat on her floor, folding another skirt, the green one with the gray stripes. I was cross legged on her bed. I had offered to help her pack, but she insisted she could do it herself, that she would have to while she was away. “I’ll write,” she promised, again. The conversation of the past hour had cycled through many times and I was getting tired of it. “Every day, if you want. I’ll write you silly letters...

5 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Father Forgive Me, for I Have Sinned

Submitted to Contest #303

Cancer is the cruelest ending to a life. All you can do is sit and watch the person you love be consumed in an everlasting cloud of misery. Everlasting until the person breaths their last breath. That describes the hell I have lived through this past year. The sunrise is bursting through the window shedding light on all that was once holy. I can hear the birds chirping merrily in the trees as I sit here in this room. This room of death watching my wife Emily struggle to take another breath. Her breathing has become raspy and shallow. ...

5 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about someone who chooses revenge — even though forgiveness is an option.

Angst – 67 stories

Write about a character who becomes the villain in another character’s story.

Short Story – 43 stories

Center your story around someone who makes an irreversible decision — knowing it will haunt them forever.

Dramatic – 77 stories

Write a story with the line “I didn’t have a choice.”

Short Story – 90 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel