Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write about the moment a character succeeds (or fails) from the POV of someone close to them.

Posted in Dramatic on Sep 26, 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?

✍️ 26 stories

The One Race Worth Winning

Shortlisted for Contest #322 ⭐️

My father was a runner. Every day he would wake before the sun rose, and I’d hear the front door click against the frame as he crept out to thunder around the city. He would never whisper goodbye, or kiss our sleeping foreheads. He would simply be gone when the house began to stir. My mother would make us breakfast, get us to school and reliably see us through the day. My father would go straight from his pavement pounding to his very ordinary office job. He would not return until my brother and I were safely back in warm pyjamas and ready t...

40 likes 50 comments 50
Read story

To Catch Her

Submitted to Contest #322

Everyone here is betting on victory, but I'm the only one betting on survival. My wife is running this marathon a year after chemo, lungs scarred, knees ruined, a body stitched back from the edge. And I'm standing at the finish line, praying I don't have to watch her lose the gamble she made with her own flesh. The crowd presses against me like hungry animals. Cowbells clatter. Signs wave overhead with names I don't recognize. A father hoists his daughter onto his shoulders so she can see better. The child squeals with delight. Their joy fee...

29 likes 18 comments 18
Read story

The Red Dress

Submitted to Contest #322

I once knew a woman. A woman I thought I liked. I still know that woman, but I don’t like her anymore.Thinking you like someone is a game of exigencies, particularly when they live next door. You liked them because at a particular time in your life they seemed to cut the mustard. They seemed to appeal to whatever was clamorous in your nature, like knowing you were essentially a deadbeat but this one particular person might advance you to an upbeat.That’s not clear, is it? I could try this again, but I’m not Ernest Hemingway. I am not prepare...

22 likes 25 comments 25
Read story

At the Mic

Submitted to Contest #322

Cold clung to the room, light lingered long against the silence. Parents fanned themselves with folded programs, restless hands with nowhere else to go. A throat cleared dry at the back, the air swallowing it whole.He kept both hands locked to his knees. His fingertips worried a loose seam, thread lifting against his nail. The suit had done more than its share. When he lifted his palms, they left prints.The mic squealed once, high and sudden, then cut out. It left a kind of ringing behind. She stood then. Shoulders locked straight. Glasses s...

16 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

His Last Fight

Submitted to Contest #322

The referee gives the fighters their final instructions before sending them back to their respective corners. The trainers and cutmen exit the ring, leaving only three people inside the ropes. There is always something special about this moment–the few seconds where both boxers stare each other down before the first bell rings. It’s a brief moment that seems to last forever as my heart begins to race. In all my years of being a boxing fan, I always thought the sound of the first bell was exhilarating, but it’s even more intense when one of t...

14 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

When the One-Year Chip Wasn’t Claimed

Submitted to Contest #322

I always got there early, as if being first could anchor me. The folding chairs had already been staked into the sand by the time I arrived, dug in like teeth. They wobbled when you sat in them, sinking a little deeper with each weight, like the beach wanted to claim us one by one. Tonight the circle gaped with an extra space, a hole waiting for her. I put my backpack down in the sand like a flag, like the universe needed proof I was holding it. The sky over Venice was doing its thing. Cotton-candy streaks smeared into smog, clouds dissolvin...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

His Girl

Submitted to Contest #322

He stood unwavering on the side of the road, several paces away from the rest of the family. His pose was relaxed, his gaze fixed on the street in front of him. Observing. Counting. Waiting. Checking his watch for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, he noted the hour: 8:52 am. He looked up to see a stream of athletes race past him in a rainbow of colors, all of them pushing the limits of their stamina. It was an extraordinary sight to behold. The sweat between brows, the open mouth breathing, and the grit of determination on thei...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Day the Earth Held Its Breath

Submitted to Contest #322

Announcer: Welcome to another edition of Our World, I’m Edward Farnsworth, you host. I want to take you back to April 17, 1978. At the time this was known as the day the Earth held its breath as a seventeen-year-old high school student Warren Spencer defeated Yurik Chenchenkio in a game of chess in Reykjavik, Iceland. Today, Warren Spencer has passed away peacefully at his home in Connecticut from Alzheimer’s. His wife Henny was by his side along with his two children Jason and Denice.Yurik passed away in 1983 after dropping out of sight. Ma...

9 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Turnover at Midfield

Submitted to Contest #322

CW: Mentions of substance abuse, violence, depression and trauma For half a decade my dad, Jim Pierce, had jumped from one dead end job to another. This followed his completion of a substance abuse recovery program at the Shoreline Medical Complex to which he had committed himself after climbing into and out of an endless hole of depression.He could not seem to escape the story of the high school football championship that had eluded him throughout his teen years and the fact that his pursuit of that dream had nearly cost him his life. Then...

8 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Vineyard of Lost Seasons

Submitted to Contest #322

1.I watch him as he watches the sunset, and for the first time in the long span of our life together, I feel pity for him. Here, in this place of rare beauty—where vineyards yield to shadowed woods, where the slopes of the hills unfurl in a thousand shades of green, where we had hoped to root ourselves and call it home—I see, with a clarity that admits no escape, that we have failed. There is no longer denial, nor hope, nor the solace of illusion; only the brutal arithmetic of an empty bank account and a cellar brimming with wine. His face, ...

8 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The weight of being seen

Submitted to Contest #322

I watched you the way people watch fire. Not because I was afraid, though fear lingered somewhere close to my ribs, but because there is something hypnotic about your trembling. A living flame, never still, always flickering between triumph and collapse. You stood before them, before the faceless crowd, and I thought: this is it. This is your moment. The moment when the hours of sleepless nights, the prayers whispered into stale air, the debts and the aches and the breaking—all of it—would finally mean something. And it did. And it didn’t. Y...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Soul on Fire

Submitted to Contest #322

Smoke and magic filled Ashling's lungs as she darted between foes. The warlock’s undead army had used the cover of night to descend upon their camp. Her dagger dug into an undead’s chest, his tattered cloak giving way as she ripped the pauldron off his shoulder. Aiden was out there, she felt his magic like a warm campfire. The light from his fire casting contrast to her shadows. She prayed to the old gods he would be alright. She held the piece of armor like a shield, blocking a sword before she could duck under and rekill another undead. It...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Sisterly Moment

Submitted to Contest #322

An excerpt from current WIP novel, "Confessions of a Church Girl" My phone buzzed to a message alert from Kristina, which read: Lane, I’d like to talk to you if you’re available. I have some exciting news!🤩 If I was being honest, I wasn’t in the mood for another video chat; I’d been far too exhausted all day long to have any kind of conversation either with Kristina or with Mom and Dad. But then again, they’d find it a little weird that I chose to ignore what Kristina had to say. For her, it’s always something “exciting.” Like her engagem...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Out of the ordinary

Submitted to Contest #322

I have never been very competitive. I’ve never won a single competition, but to be honest, I have never truly participated in any. My best friend Amy is another story—she is a real winner. I still remember the day she came to my school in the second grade. She was so full of energy, and her bright, infectious smile seemed to fill the whole room with warmth and joy.We became friends very quickly, mostly thanks to Amy, as she was the initiator of our friendship. I was too shy to start a conversation first, but from the moment she came up to me...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Movie Night Revenge

Submitted to Contest #322

Pranks can be fun, but they can be dangerous too. In my circle of friends, we pulled most of the usual pranks such as writing on a friend’s face if they fell asleep at a sleepover, making humorously obscene phone calls -something that would probably get me arrested now-, or the classic jump scares. My friends and I routinely did this to each other until well into our teens, and at times, our relatives were often on the receiving end of our outlet for adolescent angst, but sometimes…those relatives get a little payback. Pranks are rarely fun ...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about two characters who are competing with each other. What’s at stake?

Dramatic – 49 stories

Center your story on a character who's about to give up, or who realizes that success feels unexpectedly empty.

Angst – 59 stories

Center your story on the moment a character realizes their (or someone else’s) intentions aren’t so good or noble.

Short Story – 55 stories

Write a story inspired by the phrase, “A [wo]man’s worth is no greater than [their] ambitions.” — Marcus Aurelius

Short Story – 29 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