This month's writing challenge is inspired by all of the great photos that members uploaded for the Photo Contest. For challenge #20 we are going to use the photo entries to inspire short stories!

Every story should have:

1) a main character
2) a setting
3) a conflict
4) a resolution


Your Task:
1) Choose 3 images from the contest entries. Your photos must include a person or animal (or two), a place (setting for your story), and a thing (an object from one of the pictures). *Choose all 3 before you start writing!

2) Write a story using these 3 images for inspiration. Your story should have:
a. a beginning
b. a middle (with conflict)
c. an end (most readers like happy endings!)

3) Try to include a few lines of dialogue in your story. Format your dialogue like this:
"I want to go home," said the cat.
"Not until the sun goes down," said John.
"But I'm hungry," said the cat.
"I'm afraid you'll have to wait!"

4) Give the story a Title: "Writing Challenge #20: YOUR TITLE"

5) Share the images and credit the photographers with a link to their page. (You should also contact the photographers to say that you used their photos in a story.)

My Example: "Writing Challenge #20: Mookie Needs a Book"

Once there was a dog named Mookie that loved to read. Mookie read books all day long. He liked picture books and novels and fashion magazines. His favourite book was "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

One day Mookie ran out of books to read. The dog library wasn't open yet, so he pretended to be in his own secret garden. Mookie jumped around happily from plant to plant, trying to pass the time. Just when the clock struck 9, Mookie's snout got caught in a cabbage leaf.

"Help," Mookie shouted, but Mookie did not have any dog friends. All of the other dogs in the neighbourhood called him a bookworm. They didn't know how to play games like Quidditch and they had never heard of places like Neverland.

Mookie sat down and thought for a minute. Who will help me? he wondered. Then he remembered the person who always answered his questions! "The librarian, will help me," Mookie shouted to the flowers in the garden.

Mookie ran to the library, but when he got there he was not allowed in.
"No plants allowed," said the dog guard at the Dog Library door.
"But I'm a dog," said Mookie.
The dog guard did not believe him. He shook his head and closed the door.

Mookie wondered how he would ever get any new books. He couldn't imagine a life without Ramona Quinby, or Winnie the Pooh, or Harry Potter.

The sad dog started for home without any books. He couldn't stop crying. He howled so hard that a garbage man on the street told him to put a sock in it. That just made Mookie cry harder. It also made the garbage man angrier. "I can't hear my music!" said the garbage man. Instead of helping Mookie remove the leaf from his face, the garbage man pulled a dirty sock from the back of the truck and stuck it over the dog's nose. "That will keep you quiet!" he laughed.

But the dirty sock didn't keep Mookie quiet. Mookie howled louder than ever as he tried to find his way home in his strange disguise.

"Shh!" Mookie heard a small voice say as he crossed the road near his house. "The children are reading."

"Did you say reading?" Mookie said from inside his sock. He looked up and saw a large red truck full of books. Mookie thought he must be in doggie heaven.
Just then a kind child put her book down and came over to Mookie. "Would you like to borrow a book from the mobile library?" she asked. "Everyone is welcome. Even monsters and aliens and unicorns and.."
"Dogs?" Mookie asked.
"Dogs! Of course! The mobile library doesn't turn anyone away!" said one of the other children. "A garbage man just came here and borrowed a poetry book. He said he was too smelly for the real library."

The children helped Mookie out of his sock and cabbage leaf and he offered to read them a story. Do you have "The Secret Garden?" Mookie asked. "It's my favourite."


Image Credits:
Mookie: by Natali
Sock by Ben Nixon
Mobile Library by Nadiyah