Menu

Prompts
DirectoryContestsMagazineFAQ
Stories
Studio
Apps

Hire professionals for your project

Advice, insights and news

Online publishing courses

Free publishing webinars

Launch your book in style

Bestseller PodcastBook Cover ArtSuccess Stories
Tools
Book Promotion SitesBook Review BlogsBooktube Channel GuideBook Title GeneratorCharacter Name GeneratorIndependent PublishersLiterary AgentsLiterary MagazinesPen Name GeneratorPlot GeneratorPublishers DirectoryShort Story IdeasWriting ContestsWriting ExercisesWriting Scholarships
Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of adventure short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

8440+ Adventure Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From riding the high sea to climbing behemoth mountains, there isn’t any action that’s out of reach when it comes to adventure stories.

Adventure Short Stories – Page 347 of 563

Happy New Year

Submitted to Contest #87

Every day at The Compound felt like an enormous April Fool's joke. More than a year ago today I had become imprisoned in this place, a collection of garishly colored townhomes situated in the apparent middle of nowhere. The interior of each building resembled a hotel room, and in fact we had room service. Although for the most part a convenient luxury, contraband seemed to walk off on its own, and April 1st, your entire home became one large booby trap. In the morning, room service awakened me with a Super-Soaker, and after I t...

18 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Tale of Sly Hedrek

Submitted to Contest #87

Bricriu, king of the Kernow Fae, stood by as the door to the cairn was opened. He was accompanied by his wife Keary, Malvin his royal advisor, six members of the royal guard, and four torchbearers. Once the cairn was open, the group made their way down a long, winding staircase.Each measuring exactly six feet in height, the fairies all had elegantly quaffed hair that shone in the low light of the torch lit cairn. Each was anxious about the task before them, yet they moved gracefully down the steps. Serious expressions darkened their austere ...

42 likes 26 comments 26
Read story

The Great Chase

Submitted to Contest #87

Big Companies like mine are always so cocky when it comes to being able to outshine others, and when we do something bad, the rest of the world just shakes it off as if it was a minor inconvenience. Not saying that that is a good thing but it's more of a luxury than anything. It’s always funny how people who follow or enjoy buying things from our company can just dismiss the things we do. Our boss has done many things that have made a fair amount of people take a second glance at our company, but for the most part, we’ve been doing fine. Tim...

11 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

They'll Never Forget This April Fools......

Submitted to Contest #87

Em woke up to her alarm clock mimicking the twittering of hummingbirds. Her hair, still wound up in tight knots from staying up all night, was  stuck in the bed covers. Yanking them out, wincing, she checked the time on her alarm clock. “April 1st.” she smiled. “Yes.” For the past year, Em had carefully planned a big prank against her horrible foster parents for payback. The time was 5 am, and it was earlier than any of her parents’ wake time. Slipping on her thinly sewed jacket and pulling back her black, bouncing hair she snuck out of...

17 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Through Hellish Eyes

Submitted to Contest #87

There are many ways to kill a human, the fun is finding what best suits them. Yet after a thousand years of killing, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could choose the wrong victim. Yet in this land of Un there is a man by the name of Journey. To some he is the traveler, the ever wandering hero. To others he is the twice cursed one, the half-breed of war and peace. To his enemies, to me, he is judgement and the herald of death.  Not a day goes by without the retelling of this tale. I close my eyes and even now I see him. The wretched man...

10 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

My Dream Prank

Submitted to Contest #87

It was a normal day in Cattle Town. Barn Johnson was in his lab analyzing specimen he found behind the toilet, meanwhile his wife, Zina Johnson, was in the mall grocery shopping. Their kids, Gear and Astrone, were about to eat breakfast. “Hey Astrone, can you pass the milk” asked Gear while pouring cereal into his bowl. Gear pushed the milk carton to the other side of the table where Astrone stood with a grin on his face. “What are you looking at loser” shouted Gear while looking around him. He grabbed the carton, poured milk in his cup ...

12 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Sense Of Humor

Submitted to Contest #87

2011 wordsRated PG; violence, blood, unsettling imageryPrompt: Write about someone who’s spent a whole year planning a big prank, and now they’re finally ready to pull it off.Author's note: I am not dead, so apologies if you got your hopes up.Disclaimer: The conversations concerning organisms from other planets, solar systems, and existences in this story have been translated.Kamusta shakes hir heads.“Please, don’t. I don’t think I can handle you doing this again.”“You are overreacting.”Hir hand rises above hir. It’s a beacon, attracting lig...

17 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A Convincing Tale

Submitted to Contest #87

It was another glorious autumn day dawning in Glimmerfalls Dell, sunlight trickled through filigree branches in sprays of soft warmth, meadowlark and dragonfly sang dulcet tunes that rippled sweetly on the morning air... butterfly danced on the gentle breeze, sharing pollen rich flowers with golden yellow bees... but Eixip was already bored and restless.'Just another day in Boringfalls' she muttered in a tone so irritated that a nearby dragonfly stopped singing.'Eixip' the dragonfly said 'you need an adventure'.'Oh Bradfire, I do! I do ...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The pixie goddess of sea waves back.

Submitted to Contest #87

She waits for a moment of silence before she strikes. The tides are low, the sun is on an all time high and her resolve determined from under the sea. She can see the curves of the ship’s bottom making its lonely journey after intermittent sojourns, potentially to an island far away or long gone, while she gathered her sawdust before she would unleash her spell. It was a special kind of sawdust, reserved for the pixie goddesses of her tribe. She was Zaronga, the agile one, known to be extreme in tenderness and tempest when the mood and times...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Pixies At Large

Submitted to Contest #87

Flight 1107 lands very roughly at LAX giving all the passangers quite a jolt. It also jolted one of a rare set of twin pixies frm a deep sleep. Dina jabs Dixie. "What the hell was that?" Dixie slowly awakens. "Not sure but I know you are not supposed to use hat kind of language." "Give me a break, Dixie. You've heard humans talk and even worse their song lyrics." "So you trying to sound human?" Dina ignores the question. "Whatever you got us riding in seems to have come to a stop." "Me! You're the ...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

My Big Shot

Submitted to Contest #87

Beep, beep, beep, smack. I yawn as the bright morning light covers me in all of its glory. Fine, that kind of sounded cheesy. I rub my eyes and look at the time and- holy moly! Its 7:00 AM and I'm not even dressed! I quickly put some clothes on, brush my teeth and check the time one more time. Something was off. The time was still 7:00 when I clearly spent at least 20 minutes. I was still puzzled, when I heard it. That cruel, evil and sinister laughter. My little brother tumbled out of my closet laughing like a hyena. I smack my head in sham...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The pixie and the Log

Submitted to Contest #87

"Be careful." Sam led us down a moldy road after walking for over an hour. But the road was not the worst it had taken us, but in front of us, cutting the road, I found a cliff that hid a river at the bottom. The only cross, an old log. "Will we have to go that way?" - Sky asked seeing the unique connection to the other side of the cliff. An old log, wet, and almost breaking. "Come on, nothing will happen." Sam was the first to go up. Leo followed her and then Selene. I hoped Sky would continue to run away. But it didn't happen. "I will prot...

15 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Impractical Prankster

Submitted to Contest #87

Warning: an adult themed fairy tale As he stepped out of the Fey Woods and into the realms of men, Vexx examined the sword that the Pixie Council had presented to him by taking a few practice swings. In reality, the weapon was smaller than a human steak knife, but to Vexx, who stood a diminutive fourteen inches tall, it was a hefty longsword. The sun’s morning rays pierced the towering trees behind him, refracting through his gossamer wings to form a shimmering rainbow and making his shadow stretch out before him like a colossal spectral war...

16 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

365 Morning and Night

Submitted to Contest #87

I’ve got a question for you; A girl walks into a supply store asking for ten cans of red paint, six-packs of zip ties, four twelve-foot-long pieces of jute rope, two hammers, a large box of nails, duct tape, and a saw, what would you think? Would you question if you just witnessed a murderer collecting supplies for their next victim? Or maybe a sad housewife who’s ready to end her life and escape her ongoing routine? I bet the last thing you would ponder, is a young woman who is about to plan the best, most intricate, prank of the century.&n...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

An Unlikely Hero (Part 1. Beginnings)

Submitted to Contest #87

Piper was different from all the pixies, and it wasn't because she was an orphan, or that she lived alone in the Moon-drop woods; it was because she was a prankster. Once a week the other pixies, living in local village, would be pranked by her in different ways, but it would be on a different day every week, so they didn't know when to expect the weekly trick. It would be hard to believe that this little prankster would be the one to save all the pixies in her village. To discover about her transition from prankster to savior, a deeper loo...

20 likes 0 comments 0
Read story