Up for a writing challenge?
We want to see Your Story. … Or at least the first line of it.
In our Your Story contest, we give our readers a chance to get published in Writer’s Digest magazine by responding to a prompt with either a full story, or, in this case, a single-sentence story opener.
In our July/August 2012 issue, we invite you to write the opening line to a piece based on this photo prompt:
Your Story #43
Want in? Post your entry in the Comments section of this post, and it’ll automatically be entered in the competition.
The rules:
- Your sentence (just one!) must be 25 words or fewer. Entries of 26 words will be DQ’d (even though it’s my lucky number).
- The deadline is Aug. 10, 2012.
- One entry per person, please.
- How it all works: We’ll select the top 10 entries and post them here. In mid-August, readers will vote for their favorites to help rank the winners.
- This is a free writing competition. The prize is publication in WD.
- You can also submit your sentence via the form here.
- Finally, as we say about this publication contest in the magazine: “You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc. It is, after all, your story.”
Good luck!
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Zachary Petit is an award-winning journalist, the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine, and the co-author of A Year of Writing Prompts: 366 Story Ideas for Honing Your Craft and Eliminating Writer’s Block.
Like what you read from WD online? Check us out in print—click here for our low subscription rates.
The ugly old man shoved another Ben Franklin in my pocket and said, “This time, find a good body for me.”
Dawn arrives once again to dim my light I hope last night they saw the light hope is all I have until tonight unless they did see the my light.
And as the sun melted away, the man picked me up and I was alive once again.
The traveller walked all night to reach the ash fields.
From out of the chaotic caverns
The Sentinel and his guardians returns
To lead humanity and save the Earth
I steal a lantern from the distracted lovers on the beach, the glow spills on my beaten boots-a reminder of how I got here.
Arriving where you desire is rarely an end: what I can perceive from here is that it actually is a whole new and terrifying beginning.
As morning breaks, all I see is sand in every direction and my final destination is no where in sight.
Emerging from the eternal darkness of the Hollows alive and with Lantern, I faced a rising desert sun and three days walk through treacherous Barrens.
I emerged from the manhole to discover my hometown had become unrecognizable.
Kevin had laughed at O’Connor’s warnings of saboteurs but, the dawn before VegFest, a mass of foam obliterated every zucchini in town.
With chicken feathers all over his ranch and a dead woman in his bed, Ethan put the lantern down and pondered what to do next.
A star, even one compressed into a travel-sized cosmological carry-all, is too heavy for any one man.
Loneliness smoothed down his spine. The soft glow of the gas lamp had kept them away but now the small flame was beginning to sputter.
Dead men did not dream, they say. But, I was holding a light to look at my own dismembered body lying on the fresh snow.
Crisp snow crunches softly beneath his feet as the first rays of light signal the dawning of a new day shimmering elusively on the horizon.
As dusk fell the starlighter set out with his solitary lantern of eternal light – another worknight began.
He sighed as he set the lantern down, knowing full well that the sunrise would offer him as little hope as the lantern had.
The silence of the purple, petrified ocean was getting on his nerves; this cowboy needed home, a horse and some kerosene for his lantern, pronto.
The kids at camp teased me because my right arm is longer than my left, but as they nurse bad backs, I continue my quest.
The temperature didn’t even matter – he knew he had to find her and now.
I miss the tickle of cold on my neck, as the Sun rose to dance its rays on snow that falls through my hands .
For the first time in recent memory Vincent wanted to greet the dawn and looked forward to what this day would bring.
Tom promised me a night to remember and when I saw him on that secluded beach, I shivered in the lamp light.
‘Where has he left us now?’ The first asked.
‘It matters not.’ The second replied, pressing his nose against the convex glass, ‘we’ll find him again.’
Setting forth on life’s challenging road ahead of us, we’re never really alone when we carry God’s guiding light within.
Buck knew it was only a matter of time before a noose was around his neck.