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 487115

Your brief

  • Main character: A meticulous wedding photographer who has forgotten one crucial piece of equipment.
  • Setting: A cinema lobby during the final screening of an unpopular film.
  • Relationship: One is the other's former boss and still keeps giving instructions.
  • Weather must change: Snow begins even though the morning was unusually warm.
  • Amusing incident: A pigeon enters the room and behaves as though it belongs there.
  • Complication: The protagonist solves the practical problem but makes the social problem worse.
  • Opening rule: Open with a sentence of five words or fewer.
  • Structure: Make the midpoint change what the protagonist thinks the problem is.
  • Dialogue: Include an apology without using the word sorry.
  • Ending rule: End with a character choosing not to correct a misunderstanding.
  • Tone: Keep the tone warm and gently comic.
  • Wildcard: Include an animal without making it a pet.

Use all five words

smudgebreezywhiffcrumpledmend

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.