19th Century writing prompt
The Maid and the Hidden Diary
In the early 1800s, a young maidservant in the bustling city of London inherits a diary from her late mistress, a woman of high society with many secrets. As she reads the diary, the servant decides to follow the maps and clues left within its pages, leading her on an adventure through the city's underbelly that challenges her perception of her own identity and her place in society.
Suggested length: A short story: 1,500 to 5,000 words, or flash fiction under 1,000
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Pick a sprint, start the clock and keep going until it stops. Momentum beats polish on a first draft.
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Three ways to take this prompt somewhere nobody else will.
- 1Write it as a letter that took weeks to arrive.
- 2End with a choice that history would never record.
- 3Let your character believe something about their world that turned out to be wrong.
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