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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 944835

Your brief

  • Main character: A retired bus driver who knows everybody's route but nobody's secret.
  • Setting: A small airport after the final scheduled flight has been cancelled.
  • Relationship: One is the other's former boss and still keeps giving instructions.
  • Weather must change: A thunderstorm knocks out the power for exactly seven minutes.
  • Amusing incident: Someone's ringtone perfectly answers a question asked in the room.
  • Complication: The protagonist solves the practical problem but makes the social problem worse.
  • Opening rule: Begin after the main problem has already started.
  • Structure: Make the midpoint change what the protagonist thinks the problem is.
  • Dialogue: Include a polite disagreement that becomes clearer through word choice.
  • Ending rule: End with the same object from the opening but give it a new meaning.
  • Tone: Make it feel like a rainy Sunday afternoon.
  • Wildcard: A character must eat something while trying to make an important point.

Use all five words

stickysketchflickerlopsidedumbrella

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.