Academic Dictionary
Home / Writing tools / Story practice
Constraint creates invention

Write the story you would not have invented by yourself.

Every challenge combines unrelated ingredients on purpose. Your job is not to mention them mechanically—it is to make them feel as though they always belonged in the same story.

New challenge
Challenge 463683

Your brief

  • Main character: A chef who cannot taste anything for one afternoon.
  • Setting: A remote bus stop whose electronic sign shows an impossible destination.
  • Relationship: One is the other's former boss and still keeps giving instructions.
  • Weather must change: Fine drizzle follows the protagonist everywhere despite a dry forecast.
  • Amusing incident: A formal meeting is interrupted by an ice-cream van tune outside.
  • Complication: The protagonist solves the practical problem but makes the social problem worse.
  • Opening rule: Start with an object changing hands.
  • Structure: Make a minor detail from the opening become the final practical solution.
  • Dialogue: Include an apology without using the word sorry.
  • Ending rule: End with someone finally asking the question the reader expected at the beginning.
  • Tone: Make ordinary events feel faintly mysterious.
  • Wildcard: Include an animal without making it a pet.

Use all five words

grubbywhistleaftertastewobblepocket

Maximum length: 1,000 characters, including spaces.

Write here

Draft

0 / 1000 characters

Useful test: if a required word feels pasted in, change the story so the word causes something. The constraint should alter the plot, not decorate it.