Mar 18, 2013 / Topic Ideas

Creative Writing Challenge: 2AM Photo

For some of us, blogging is personal. Others are trying to educate or entertain; many more are hybrids. Yet we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges help you to push your writing boundaries, show off your blogging chops, and, hopefully, spark more post ideas.

To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge or leave a link to it in the comments. (It would also be great if you could link to this post to encourage people to take part – the more the merrier!)  Your post should be specifically written in response to this challenge. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorite posts on Freshly Pressed on Friday.

If you’ve been living in a bunker or are just the kind of person that doesn’t check The Daily Post… daily (what’s wrong with you?), you may have failed to notice that we’re smack-dab in the middle of Phoneography Month. With that in mind, today’s creative writing challenge is all about phones and photos. See what we’ve done there?

onenewmessage

Image based on You Have One New Message by bixentro, CC-BY-2.0

It’s 2AM and your phone has just buzzed you awake, filling the room in white-blue LED light. You have a message. It’s a photo. No words, no explanation. Just a photo. Tell us all about it. And what happens next.

Enough Already?

If that has your imagination racing, leave this post now. Go. To the writing cave! If not, read on, and we’ll throw out some more questions to stir your thoughts.

My Mind Is Blank But I Must Scream

Still here? Not in the writing cave? Ok, let’s think about what this photo could be. Who it could be of. What it might be the start of.

  • Is it from someone you know, someone you don’t know, or is it too mysterious to figure out?
  • Why would they have used a photo instead of just calling or texting?
  • Why are they sending it at 2am?
  • Does it feel threatening?
  • Does it feel like an invitation?
  • Does it feel like a clue or a puzzle?
  • Does it make you laugh? Or shiver?
  • Does it feel like it might have been sent to you by mistake?
  • Is the photo of a man, woman, mineral, vegetable, place?
  • Is it the first of several photos? Or the only one you get?
  • Are you going to reply? What would happen if you did? Or didn’t?

You could go as far as describing the photo, or take it up a notch and write a full-blown Scooby Doo mystery, replete with unmasking the ghoulish figure only to find out that it was Old Man Johnson all along. It’s in your hands.

Now, to the writing cave with you, and don’t come back until you’ve got a comment or trackback to share.

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  1. As I roll over to reach for my phone, I am already thinking this had better be good. Groggily Hitting the screen until the text pops up, I am still wondering who is rude enough to text me in the middle of the night, as I look not at a text, but at a picture. A picture of a man. I rub my eyes and look again. Who the hell is that, I wonder, I have never seen this man in my life. I glance at the number and it is unfamiliar. A wring number I am sure. Damn drunks, I think dropping the phone on the nightstand and rolling back over and quickly falling asleep.
    Not again, I think uttering more than a few expletives. I angrily grab my phone. You have got to be kidding me. It’s another picture of the same guy! This time I quickly type in “Check your number!”. Dropping the phone down I barely close my eyes when there is a reply. It says. ” This is the right number”. I reply, “I don’t know you”. Reply ” Are you sure?” I text back “I don’t recognize you”. I am becoming more irritated by now. “If you don’t recognize me, do you recognize anything in the photo?” Shit! I say out loud and scroll up to the picture and take a closer look. The face is unknown, but the room looks familar. Wait a minute, thats my living room. I look back at the face and struggle to place it. I text back, “When have you been to my house? I don’t remember meeting you.” “That’s because we haven’t met.” Mind realing now, I sit up in bed a strange sense of fear coming over me. I quickly text back, “Then when were you at my house?” The reply comes “Now” just as I hear a footstep on the stairs.

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  8. As I roll over to reach for my phone, I am already thinking this had better be good. Groggily Hitting the screen until the text pops up, I am still wondering who is rude enough to text me in the middle of the night, as I look not at a text, but at a picture. A picture of a man. I rub my eyes and look again. Who the hell is that, I wonder, I have never seen this man in my life. I glance at the number and it is unfamiliar. A wring number I am sure. Damn drunks, I think dropping the phone on the nightstand and rolling back over and quickly falling asleep.
    Not again, I think uttering more than a few expletives. I angrily grab my phone. You have got to be kidding me. It’s another picture of the same guy! This time I quickly type in “Check your number!”. Dropping the phone down I barely close my eyes when there is a reply. It says. ” This is the right number”. I reply, “I don’t know you”. Reply ” Are you sure?” I text back “I don’t recognize you”. I am becoming more irritated by now. “If you don’t recognize me, do you recognize anything in the photo?” Shit! I say out loud and scroll up to the picture and take a closer look. The face is unknown, but the room looks familar. Wait a minute, thats my living room. I look back at the face and struggle to place it. I text back, “When have you been to my house? I don’t remember meeting you.” “That’s because we haven’t met.” Mind realing now, I sit up in bed a strange sense of fear coming over me. I quickly text back, “Then when were you at my house?” The reply comes “Now” just as I hear a footstep on the stairs.

    #DPchallenge

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  20. Such an amazing variety of responses this week, from the skin-crawling to the sublime. Thanks to everyone that’s taken part so far, and welcome aboard to all of the first timers!

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  26. I really love weekly writing challenge,its give wings to my imagination. I like this today’s challenge a lot. Challenge are like the pressing buttons for me which press my mind to create new thing just wonderful.

    Here’s my entry

    2AM Surprise
    http://hopeoflight.wordpress.com/2013/03…

    Whoever read it hope they like it and plz leave a comment because i want to improve
    thanks 🙂

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  29. I hope I’m not too late. 😀
    Been busy exploring Bicol Philippines since Thursday.
    And…now I’m back full of travel stories…but those can wait.
    Hope you’ll like my entry…

    At 2 AM

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