Start your story with a character looking through an old family photo album.

Posted in Fluff on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 44 stories

“The Book of Memories” by Sophie Smith

Submitted to Contest #120

My parents had always taken photographs of me, my brother and my sisters when we were growing up. But not just normal holographic photographs that we have now. Old photographs from an ancient camera on their even older phones. They even went to the painstaking effort of printing off every single photo on this shiny photograph paper and sticking them into countless photo albums. And that is what I have found myself sorting out in the eerily quiet and empty house. It just isn’t the same without them here. Without them l...

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“Darling, I'm Coming” by Kaden Vargo

Submitted to Contest #120

***This story deals with sensitive subject matter such as depression, mental health, and suicidal thoughts or actions. Read at your own risk. Thank you and enjoy*** -Kaden Vargo “Oh, darling…” The old man whispered as he stare at a picture from his wedding day in an old dusty photo book. One of him and his wife from years ago, back when the old man still had reasons to get out of bed each day. A deep, lonely sigh begun a new era of the old mans life as he sat the photo album on a small wooden table next to him. Wally sat slouched in his...

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“Living My Best Life” by Mary Fitzgerald

Submitted to Contest #120

When my dad passed away, I inherited the family photo albums. I was looking through some of the older family photos when I came across a picture of a gorgeous young man. I turned the photo over and prayed there was at least a name, if not a date. I was thrilled to see that it had both, but it was written in an unfamiliar hand. The writing on the back of the photo identified the young man as a childhood friend of my great, great grandfather’s. It was dated 1850. His name was Rory Fitzpatrick. It was one o...

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“FriendChips” by Elias Nader

Submitted to Contest #120

Sometimes events happen life, in which we have limited or even no input at all, but the output is pretty much colossal for us. These things could occur before we were born, when we were young, or maybe recently. Heroes of the story could be anybody other than us. The important thing is that the results made a major influence throughout our lives. Some day in February: It was 1998. I was six years old and my brother just turned nine. There was an event happening for the first time in our humble establishment: “First Communion”. Well, ...

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“Lineage of Secrets ” by Mariah Loiselle

Submitted to Contest #120

I sat next to the fireplace, escaping the cold of winter, and flipped through my grandma’s photo album, pawing at old photos of my dad as a baby and my favorite, the one of my uncle throwing his stretch Armstrong into this very same fireplace. Our families always seem so much simpler when were younger don’t they? The aunt that acts goofy, the cousin who always smells a little bit like a skunk at thanksgiving, and grandma and grandpa whispering to each other in the corner. It all seems so innocent and normal until you realize that your aunt i...

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“The next door neighbour” by Bruce Thomas

Submitted to Contest #120

"So wanna fuck?" He asked."Ummmm, nah, I'm okay, thanks", she replied, "well actually … it depends, with who? With you?""Me? Oh god, no. With the neighbour," he replied."The neighbour?""Yup. He's got a really big dick. Bigger than mine.""The dog's dick is bigger than yours.""So is that a yes? He's actually in the bedroom now.""Oh really, the neighbour is in our bedroom? So, what's his name?""Whose name? The dog, the neighbour or his dick? Well, oddly enough, they are all called Bob, so yeah, just come with me, it's not far, just down the pas...

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“The Lie Behind the Shutter Click” by Bri Meng Sauls

Submitted to Contest #120

CW: Suicide, Drugs, Mental Health. Summer camps with my girl scout troop, trips to theme parks and birthday parties. Man, I haven’t seen these photos for years. All of these faces, once so familiar- now total strangers. Everyone looks so happy. Are they? The old adage “a photo is worth a thousand words” is up for debate, I believe. Does a photo really replace a thousand words, and if so, who’s story are they telling? Every photo attempts to depict this perfect little life, wrapped in a pretty box with a stupid fucking bow. They say that h...

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“The Realization in the Shark Tooth Necklace” by Blueberry Elf

Submitted to Contest #120

“Wind is fickle and free. It is there one minute and gone the next; its presence does not define the ocean. The ocean does not depend on wind to create waves on its surface to be beautiful. It is the ocean on its own. I want to be like the ocean.”. . . “We’ll be friends forever, right?” Marcel asked me. “Of course we will,” I answered.The remnants of the memory pulled my face into a childish grin. It was the type of grin that stays in one’s eyes even once their lips stop smiling. It had bee...

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“A Look Into The Past” by Melinda Madrigal

Submitted to Contest #120

Photo albums, a journey into the past through pictures, for Ember looking through her families photo albums is a way to connect and to learn about where her family comes from. Ember doesn't know much about where her family is from, the only thing she knows is that the beginning of her family begins at Ellis Island. Ember has tried everything to know more about her family, looking through records at the library, documents from Ellis Island, even ancestry.com, nothing has worked, now Ember is at her grandmother's house looking trough the f...

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“My Brother's Care” by Brittany Lieteau

Submitted to Contest #120

While cleaning out my upstairs closet, I came across my personal photo album from back in the day which held some pictures from high school. Thumbing through some of the pages made me laugh. Life was so much simpler. All I had to worry about was doing my homework and making sure I was in the house before the street lights came on. Reflecting on the past, I can see how much I have changed since then. I came across a picture of me and my brother which instantly teleported me back to my first day of high school. Thinking back on that day, made ...

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“The Green Man” by Erica Hampton

Submitted to Contest #120

Light filtered through the window to reveal me, sitting in a chair with the photo album’s slick back stuck to my bare thigh in the summer heat. Scared of the sound it might make if I moved it around too much, I tried to keep it steady and ever so quietly turned each page. Even this was timed to each beep of the heart monitor. The photo albums were my mom’s, and I was pretty tired of looking at them. It was all that was left in the room to do, though, so I tried to imprint memories I had been to...

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“All The Difference” by Richard Hartmann

Submitted to Contest #120

Sara closed the tattered album and set it aside along with the hopes that the faded pictures would transport her and her brothers back to a time where they were together long enough for a family picture. Their faces were so young and innocent and their father smiling and strong, the patriarch of the family, and it felt too long ago to be them. She wanted them to remember their father that way, not like the last year – those were his last wishes, or maybe his final fear. Their father chose this p...

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“A Tricky Gift of Memory” by Patricia Robinson

Submitted to Contest #120

A Tricky Gift of Memory The person and the pages both brittle and yellow with age, she worries to reminisce through the photos inside for fear of forever losing the proof of her existence: there is no one left, only her and her photos. Without those, even her memory, more often than not, deceive her. The binding cracks as her aged and wrinkled hands slowly open the album. A single tear drops from her chin onto a faded black and white photo of her lost love: the one that got away. The man she could not commit too, the man who would not wait u...

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“A Truth Unmasked” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #120

There she is again – that face becoming familiar now from three pictures in the old family album. The face told him that the two of them must be related. There was that odd diagonal dark marking on the chin that he had never seen in anyone living – just the grandmother that he had never met, but saw in the pictures in the album, and this girl of about five who was holding him as a baby in her arms. Her chin was a match for his. Here was a reverse of the saying from the Joni Mitchell song, “You don’t know what you’ve got till ...

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“The Album” by Esther Andrews

Submitted to Contest #120

Kneeling on my bedroom floor, surrounded by a sprawling disarray of packing boxes, I reach for the heavy, oversized, and very dusty books on the bottom shelf of my bookcase and begin pulling them out to organize them into boxes. I hum as I pack, then start ad-libbing a little song to amuse myself: “Yearbooks go in this box…Picasso over there…travel books way over there...” I stand up to perform a little twirl followed by a leap to the box I’d already started filling with travel books in order to drop in Spain and Italy. I hop back over s...

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Start your story with a character looking through an old family photo album.

Submissions are closed

✍️ 44 stories

“The Book of Memories” by Sophie Smith

“Darling, I'm Coming” by Kaden Vargo

“Living My Best Life” by Mary Fitzgerald

“FriendChips” by Elias Nader

“Lineage of Secrets ” by Mariah Loiselle

“The next door neighbour” by Bruce Thomas

“The Lie Behind the Shutter Click” by Bri Meng Sauls

“The Realization in the Shark Tooth Necklace” by Blueberry Elf

“A Look Into The Past” by Melinda Madrigal

“My Brother's Care” by Brittany Lieteau

“The Green Man” by Erica Hampton

“All The Difference” by Richard Hartmann

“A Tricky Gift of Memory” by Patricia Robinson

“A Truth Unmasked” by John Steckley

“The Album” by Esther Andrews

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about a character who yearns for something they lost, or never had.

Start your story with the line ‘Back in my day…’

Write about two characters’ different perspectives of the same past event.

Your character has always viewed the past with rose tinted glasses. Write about what happens when they’re finally confronted with the truth.

Contest #120

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

244

Contest entries

163

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

Explore more writing prompt ideas: