Welcome!
You have found your way to The Fourth Floor.
This special part of Bedford High School is a space for students to share creative work and experience the pride of publishing. Be sure to check out our current issue and our archive of alumni work. If you’d like to submit work for our next issue, our submission form is almost always open! We also share creative prompts and activities from time to time.
We’re glad you’re here!
Randomly select a character and/or conflict from the links below to inspire your next piece!
When the going gets hard, get inspired
In times of crisis, people have different ways of responding. Here are some prompts so you can take advantage of our unique situation in human history and express yourself. Who knows, maybe your writing will be featured in a textbook 50 years from now!
- Imagine you find a time machine and you go into the future. When would you go? What would you find and what will you do about it?
- Write about the situation in the world a year from now, as you imagine it.
- Which attitude, optimism or pessimism, is best suited for this situation? Which one are you?
- Write about the positive effects of this on nature– for example, the point of view of an animal seeing that all the roads are clear.
- What do you miss most from your life before the pandemic? What did you take for granted?
- Quarantine has finally been lifted and school is back. You go back to school for the first time in a long time. Write about the day and how weird, scary, or happy it is.
- Imagine that a number appears on everybody’s wrist at 10 years old that tells them how many people they’re going to be responsible for killing in their life. One person gets a very high number and thinks it’s a glitch. But when the pandemic hits, they disregard social distancing and end up “killing” the number of people on their wrist by spreading the virus.
- You’re a medical worker who learns of a hidden origin/purpose of the coronavirus one day when someone who is very close to dying from the virus whispers something shocking in your ear.
- How has staying at home affected your relationships?
- Imagine that people suddenly start developing powers after recovering from the virus.
- Is humor okay as a coping mechanism in times like this? When is it taken too far? Is there a line?
Here’s a list of prompts that will get your writing gears turning. Go ahead and turn in what you write in the “submit your work for next issue” section of this website!
- “I picked up the envelope, and inside was a letter that said I had won the Powerball lottery for 2 billion dollars.”
- Write a story told entirely through voicemails left on someone’s phone (or multiple people’s phones.)
- “Adrenaline rushed through me as I saw the thick smoke filling the library.”
- A story that begins and ends with an object (i.e. a bicycle, a toaster, a piece of jewelry).
- The story of how your parents met (or any couple you love, fictional or real) as if it happened in a different time period. (i.e. Victorian, ancient Greece, futuristic)
- Someone returns home from college (or any journey) to find that their parent/sibling/lover knows everything detail of their life while they were gone.
- A story about how someone’s obsession with something (ideas: marmalade, cats, pencils) leads to their demise/happiness.
- You find out that you are the best in the world at something (ideas: writing, singing, comedy).
- “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while,” the stranger said, delighted. I froze. I’ve never seen this person in my life.
- Someone who has never seen snow before tries to move to and live in New Hampshire.
- Every night, you dream awful, vivid nightmares. One day, you wake up and realize that your dream world and the people/creatures from it are becoming part of the real world.
- **My favorite one*** (from Pinterest) In a superhero-supervillian story, you’re the hero’s love interest, and as such, in classic “use-their-loved-ones-against-them” fashion, the villian keeps kidnapping you as leverage against the hero. However, an unfortunate complication has arisen; having spent so much time with the villain, you begin to realize that you’re falling in love with them.
In order to be considered for our Winter 2019 issue, all work must be submitted by December 15th.
