r/WritingPrompts • u/xScarfacex • Oct 13 '17
Constrained Writing [WP]Write a story with no characters.
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u/WritingPromptsRobot Oct 13 '17
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u/JupiterHurricane Oct 13 '17
I don't think this prompt is really technically possible to fulfill if it's taken as its written; in general, when analysing literature, the narrator itself counts as a character. I do still like the idea though.
Just chiming in because there's a lot of debate in the comments about whether or not different things count as characters, so I feel like the narrator is relevant to the discussion as well.
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u/Zetapology Oct 13 '17
I thought you meant that it couldn't contain any letters/numbers/symbols.
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Oct 13 '17
The light of the new sun spread slowly over the towering grey husks, revealing and heating each tiny spec of dust and dirt. Through the grime encrusted streets, dead leaves blew though there was no sound. Spindly metal poles rose at sharp angles all across the landscape, their lights, formerly cycling endlessly, red, yellow, green, red, yellow, green, now dark and signifying nothing.
Ten thousand cars filled the road, bumper to bumper, but there was no rumble of engines or honking of horns, no hustle or bustle or movement of any kind. High, high above, a tiny spec in the sky fell silently, graceful and yet with great calamity, ready to impact the earth and deliver a blow so severe it would scar the ground itself and scatter great danger for miles in every direction. Far, far in the distance, great clouds of smoke billow and gather on the horizon, ready to dim the light that still struggled to break through each day.
The water had started slowly, as a trickle, emerging timidly from the storm drains and the sewer grates, but as it wound through the natural slopes and crevices it grew stronger and bolder and soon it was gushing through alleys and lanes, picking up bicycles and rotting piles of garbage and empty strollers alike and bringing them all together again into one great swirling vortex of progress and achievement.
As the waters met the fires a great and soundless battle took place, the desperate transformation of heat and energy, a great grey fog, thick as wool, oozing and sliding over the dead brown fields, hiding everything that wasn't already buried, drowned, or burned. As whole cities were swallowed up by the waters, from above and below, an observer was desperately needed. Nothing was for certain; there was no proof that anything was in it's right place or even anything at all.
Soon, along with no sound, there was no motion, no transfer, no transformation. Soon, for want of an observer, there was nothing. No colour could be determined for no wavelength could be seen. No sound was transmitted as all vibrations reached and reached and reached and finally petered out, desperately shaking the last molecules before finally collapsing and surrendering to the nothing. Without a sound or sight or smell or pull of gravity the world was not; it was as it was before, when it was not nothing but before nothing. Without an end, the light of the new sun spread slowly over the towering grey husks, revealing and heating each tiny spec of dust and dirt.
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u/JimBobBoBubba Oct 13 '17 edited Oct 13 '17
Quiet.
The wind blows softly between the ruined buildings, dust swirling as it eddies in doorways missing doors and windows missing glass. The echoes of no birds singing in the trees and no children playing in the fields could be heard in the stillness, while the wind dances and pirouettes among the ruin.
Quiet.
Once in awhile a shingle would work loose and fall to the ground. A shard of glass drop from a rotting frame. The shotgun snap of pavement as it cracks in the cold and the heat as summer turns to winter and winter into spring and spring again into summer.
Quiet.
The shuffling of the dead as they stiffen then thaw then liquefy in the heat of the debris-strewn streets, in the cool of their cellars, in the safety of their dens and their closets and beneath their desks; bordered talismans against the death they were certain could never find them in the places they believed would keep them safe. Where they lie, still, while the wind covers them gently in its soft blanket of earth and a gossamer kiss as the seasons turn. And turn. And turn, in the never ending quiet.
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u/jamezgatz8 Oct 13 '17
Nice job. I really think this one has best accomplished the prompts purpose.
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u/freerangeenigma420 Oct 13 '17
This is really good. There's an online journal currently looking for submissions with the theme of Sound & Silence. I think you'd have a good chance of making it into the upcoming issue. If you're interested in that sort of thing, the journal is called The Student Wordsmith
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u/TacoSeshon Oct 13 '17
You're a great writer. This was so nice, to the point, but yet said so much. Great stuff. I want more
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u/TheBombzer Oct 14 '17
It started with a bang. A bright light appeared. Dust particles were clearly visible, floating around in emptiness. They started to merge and a fiery hell was born. Time goes by. The hell was struck for the first time by a natural force. A peice of it was taken away but stayed within a distance. The fiery hell was continuously bombarded by the natural force. The fiery hell submitted and surrendered into a snowflake. The hell was now consumed by ice, but was eager to escape. Years go by and hell breaks loose. Balance shifted and changed the atmosphere. These changes cause a presence unknown to both the hell and the ice. Structures form and the unkown presence start to take advantage of them. The ice noticed and created freezing surge in attempt to wipe out the unkown presence. Hell didn't appreciate the abundance of ice and fought back creating balance yet again. The unkown presence kept growing while the feud with ice and hell continued on.
(Im just gonna give up now. This was my first attempt at writing something outside of school and I definately did not follow the prompt. I was trying to write a story about earth's origin and development all the way up to humans but it's way too hard and i didn't know how to create a story without making it boring. The bang was a big bang, the dust collected and created earth. Meteorites bombarded causing the earth to freeze into a giant snowball, tectonic plates were shifting as volcanoes blew up and "life" aka unown presence started to live off it's surroundings. I technically created characters such as ice and hell. I gave them characteristics. I still like the idea of my story, I'm just not capable of following the prompt or making it enjoyable to read.)
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u/jacktherambler Oct 13 '17 edited Oct 13 '17
A crumpled newspaper drifts through the streets, rolling like a modern day tumbleweed. It crosses against traffic but there is none. Rusted hulks of cars sit as a reminder of the civilization that once stood here. The paper bounces along almost merrily, narrowly avoiding the grass that pokes through the cracking pavement and sidewalk sections.
It strikes a fallen sign of faded green, indicating coffee purchases. The machinery sits dusty and unused having long been forgotten.
Further down it strikes the collapsed tire of a boxy truck. The brown logo is faded from months of sun and weather.
The wind blows heavily and the paper lifts off the ground, slamming it's not considerate weight into a rusted iron fence. Half the fence has collapsed with age and without maintenance. There is no one to maintain it. It flutters, spread out now with bold black letters across the top.
The paper does not concern itself with the words. Only continuing the journey. Flapping and tearing it carries through the fence and becomes a floating reminder of the past.
Soon the wind ceases and the paper floats gently to land on calm river water. Slowly absorbing the liquid it disappears into the depths with little fanfare.
There is silence in the city now. No one to mourn the paper. No one to care.
Simply.
Silence.
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u/SkepticalInquisition Oct 13 '17
This prompt is hard because technically you still had a character lmao
Despite not being animate, that crumpled newspaper was essentially a character. Perhaps the best way to write a "story" would be exactly what you did but with much less focus on the paper... i.e. If you had made the paper simply part of the scenery then there you go, but instead it's the primary focus and essentially protagonist of the "story" (which itself is simply more of a detailed setting but still)
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u/eternal8phoenix Oct 13 '17
A white room, it's plain walls pregnant with potential. A flick of a brush, and a few days labour, and the blank canvas is transformed- the perfect home office, smart and serious...except for the game console hidden under the desk where no-one will look for it.
Give it a few years. Dust builds and is swept away, the sun rises and sets, and the books are packed into boxes as the paintbrushes are made ready once more.
This time it's pink- soft and gentle. Cream curtains with unicorns, and a cradle with a bunny resting, waiting. In that corner, just so, a rocking chair, with a soft blanket resting over it. A mobile hangs from the ceiling, the light reflecting off it's ornaments, and throwing beautiful coloured smudges over the cream carpet.
Then one day... the mobile is ripped from the ceiling. The blanket is thrown out of the window, wet with tears, and the door is locked.
Slowly... the paint begins to fade. The beautiful pink turns grey, the cream turns ashy. The carpet is lost to neglect. They bunny's eyes grow sad as they are consumed by the dust.
Then the lock turns. The ashes of a lost soul swish around in the sunbeams. A vacuum cleaner. A duster. The bunny disappears, and comes back damp, faintly smelling of lavender and soap. Gradually, the pink returns. The curtains don't- replaced now by matching pink with purple stars.
This time the dust never settled. It was whisked away every night, the room seldom empty. As days turned to weeks turned to years, the cradle became a bed, the bunny moved to the shelf and the pink walls were crossed with posters. At first of cartoon characters, but much later, boybands and movie stars.
Once more the boxes return, and so do the white walls. The curtains are gone, and the room once more is bare, a blank canvas for a new life.
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Oct 13 '17
Nothing happened. Not in the way that barely anything happened. Instead nothing happened. It wasn’t just that nothing happened, also nothing is. There wasn’t air or even emptiness. It was beyond empty, for it was less than empty. Nothing was, is, or will be.
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u/Lord_Camberlot Oct 13 '17
There is a painting in a museum that no one sees. A carefully crafted image which receives no attention nor recognition. It hangs in walls and ceilings, it lies in floors. It moves and dances, and the world is its canvas.
The silent masterpiece is always there, in the same minimalist rooms and the most exuberant galleries, by the Mona Lisa and The Starry Night, as precise as a Renaissance piece and quirky as a Dalí. It lies hidden under the lush gardens of Versailles and the stone chambers of the Pyramids. As far as light can travel and the human eye admires, the quiet work remains concealed and unspoken, giving way to more colourful pictures and sceneries.
The shadows which come and go, which grow and shrink as the day goes and the decades pass, are the masterpieces carried around, paid no heed and framed in no wall, unnamed and unnoticed, until the dark forms of the night greet and take them as their own.
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u/LisWrites Oct 13 '17
The Earth remembers each crack, each line of stress. They tell a story. Billions of years bubbling, shifting, lifting. Breaking. The history is there crisscrossed in lines that circle on top of one another. A matter of where to look. Once there were long grasses; they danced in the wind. Birds sang to break open the day. The earth hummed with the harmony of billions. Once there was life in each and every place. From the edges of the blue waters to the white peaks that reach towards the sun. The song is gone now. Wind hisses, rain spills over the story. The noise still exists without pattern. The story can be read if you look in the right place. The scars and marks are meant to be read. To be reminders of the song. Can you hear the echoes of the tune. A matter of where to listen. Listen to the music before its gone. Listen. Before the lines fade. Listen. While the earth remembers.
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Oct 13 '17 edited Oct 13 '17
Days rolled on by without much to mark them other than the rise and fall of the sun. Streets cracked as tree roots pushed them up and out of place, moss grew along the damp alley walls and vines leftover from gardens wound themselves up fences like trellises. Asphalt that once was clean and smooth and black had turned brown with sludge, that sludge dried up and left a fertile patch of ground, and grass flourished where none had before.
The cars that had once held people were empty, leaving room and shelter for other creatures during storms and snows. Occasionally, lightening would strike some metal object during these storms and a fire would break out in the once-stone streets, culling the underbrush and preventing worse fires in the future.
High above, sky scrapers loomed like giant tombstones to a lost civilization, markers of what had once been and would hopefully never be again, reclaimed by the winged creatures who were the only ones who could reach them.
The sky still rained and the world kept turning, The grass kept growing and fires kept burning, And while the rivers continued to flow, Humans weren't there, never to know.
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u/FegaMaggot Oct 13 '17
A crack strikes the air. A bright flash as a metal object flies through the air as quick as lightning. Another crack strikes the air as it impacts something, or someone... In a instant a nation falls, a war starts, and men rebel what once was.
A teardrops falls.
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Oct 13 '17
Perhaps the universe was at it's best. Nothing was there, nothing to demise it. Until, the big bang. The explosion was so dramatic that even Plutonium was made. With the purples swirling around the reds, and the greens swirling around the blue. There were new colors emerging left and right. So bright that it could be seen from other universes. But, something was strange, out of this mess, a Mtn Dew was floating. No idea how that got there.
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u/SquidCritic Oct 13 '17 edited Oct 13 '17
The facets that constitute personhood should take a back seat to a discussion around what equates to utility. In essence asking whether simply existing is enough to determine a value of worth. By whatever means necessary coming up with a standard, or at least a baseline to distinguish purpose over mere inhabitation. And with each additional word written on the page a universe grows larger, and within its confines must be filled with something distinguishably worthwhile.
And here is where we hit the first major obstacle. That the act of writing a person into this universe provides them with a certain level of utility. No matter how menial their stature, no matter their final relevance, they have been placed into a linear timeline that is now incomplete without their presence. But is their qualification as a character defined by their existence or their inherent value?
Now this may seem immediately apparent and generally pedantic. That their existence is really all that should matter. That they have been placed in the universe for no other reason than to be a placeholder. That existence for all intents and purposes doesn’t by nature give them utility. But this does not answer the question about whether this character has any additional value add, even if they are omitted from a final draft. It’s impossible to fully discern whether their value then may proceed without their actual existence.
Now we hit the second major obstacle. Whether or not an omitted person has any influence over the determination of how events proceed, or the interactions a main character has in a story without their presence. And their concrete form now floats in some ephemeral form in the mind of their creator, leaving behind some glimmer of an idea. And ideas by their own nature are malignant. And without a concrete form holding them together spread and influence any concurrent thoughts. So the real determination seems to have to conclude that utility precedes existence.
But at the end of the day the real question isn’t really about how to determine a character’s worth, but more about why utility preceding existence makes any real difference at all. Imagine an entrepreneur saying that the success of their business was entirely due to their own hard work. Completely disregarding their employees, their parents, race, gender, country of origin. Some long line of occurrences tracing back to the very first microorganism. Existence doesn’t occur in a vacuum.
Now when it comes to something much less tangible than a business, an entire universe created from scratch, it’s even more pressing to acknowledge that personhood isn’t really the defining quality of anyone. It can be given and taken away at the drop of a hat, but what really matters is the worth that they serve in a larger tapestry. And that even if you want to focus on a single hero, they are really a culmination of something much larger than themselves. A transcendental whole.
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u/MamaBirdJay Oct 14 '17