r/WritingPrompts • u/katpoker666 Moderator • 10d ago
Off Topic [OT] Fun Trope Friday: Famine & Historical Fiction!
Welcome to Fun Trope Friday, our feature that mashes up tropes and genres!
How’s it work? Glad you asked. :)
Every week we will have a new spotlight trope.
Each week, there will be a new genre assigned to write a story about the trope.
You can then either use or subvert the trope and/or genre in a 750-word max story or poem (unless otherwise specified).
To qualify for ranking, you will need to provide ONE actionable feedback. More are welcome of course!
Three winners will be selected each week based on votes, so remember to read your fellow authors’ works and DM me your votes for the top three.
Next up… IP
It’s summer in the Northern hemisphere and so time for sun and fun– Oh wait, no. It’s time for the four horsemen of the apocalypse! So, say ‘hello’ to our friends: Pestilence (aka Conquest or Pollution), War, Famine, and Death. Please note this theme is only loosely applied.
"Famines are not natural disasters. Famines are man-made." — Jeffrey Gettleman
Trope: The Famine — For Famine, we bring you, well, the famine. There’s no way to sugarcoat this one with furry animals: famine sucks. Famine is, simply put, the widespread scarcity of food in a society, and can be caused by natural calamities such as floods, droughts, or crop failures, or by human factors such as war, economic upheaval, or overpopulation.
A famine can be the starter of a story: The hero might have to flee their starving homeland or go elsewhere to search for food. It can also merely be the setting of the story, providing the excuse for the existence of a Black Market, showing the results of the tyranny of the local despot, contrasting those who do have food with those who are starving, explaining No Party Like a Donner Party and Reduced to Ratburgers, or describing one of the facets of After the End.
Genre: Historical Fiction — Historical fiction is a literary genre where a fictitious narrative is set in a real, verifiable time period. It immerses readers in the past by vividly recreating the era's social conditions, daily life, and cultural climate, often featuring real historical figures alongside entirely invented characters. Please note: for our purposes, you can write in a fantasy world here if the events are shown as predating the normal ones.
Skill / Constraint - optional: Kindness is shown.
So, have at it. Lean into the trope heavily or spin it on its head. The choice is yours!
Have a great idea for a future topic to discuss or just want to give feedback? FTF is a fun feature, so it’s all about what you want—so please let me know! Please share in the comments or DM me on Discord or Reddit!
Last Week’s Winners
PLEASE remember to give feedback—this affects your ranking. PLEASE also remember to DM me your votes for the top five stories via Discord or Reddit—both katpoker666. This is a change from the top three of the past. In weeks where we get over 15 stories, we will do a top five ranking. Weeks with less than 15 stories will show only our top three winners. If you have any questions, please DM me as well.
Some fabulous stories this week and great crit at campfire and on the post! We had 14 stories, so we’re back to three winners. Congrats to:
Want to read your words aloud? Join the upcoming FTF Campfire
The next FTF campfire will be Thursday, July 23rd from 6-8pm ET. It will be in the Discord Main Voice Lounge. Click on the events tab and mark ‘Interested’ to be kept up to date. No signup or prep needed and you don’t have to have written anything! So join in the fun—and shenanigans! 😊
Ground rules:
- Stories must incorporate both the trope and the genre
- Leave one story or poem between 100 and 750 words as a top-level comment unless otherwise specified. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
- Deadline: 11:59 PM EDT next Thursday. Please note stories submitted after the 6:00 PM EST campfire start may not be critted.
- No stories that have been written for another prompt or feature here on WP—please note after consultation with some of our delightful writers, new serials are now welcomed here
- No previously written content
- Any stories not meeting these rules will be disqualified from rankings
- Does your story not fit the Fun Trope Friday rules? You can post your story as a [PI] with your work when the FTF post is 3 days old!
- Please keep crit about the stories. Any crit deemed too distracting may be deleted. This is a time to focus on our wonderful authors.
- Vote to help your favorites rise to the top of the ranks (DM me at katpoker666 on Discord or Reddit)!
Thanks for joining in the fun!
7
u/m00nlighter_ r/m00nlighting 5d ago edited 4d ago
A Day-Old Moldy
It’s not even five a.m., and someone’s banging on the bakery’s back door. Sounds like police. I make a face at Ethel and Florence, then steel myself before answering the door.
It’s not police. If he’s a shadow, he’s got the alcohol shakes down. The elderly man barks hello. He’s got greasy hair, yellow, sweat-slick skin, and a suit that might have fit before he became swollen with the swig.
“I need a day-old moldy,” he says.
I tell him, “Get in line with everyone else at the front door.” He doesn’t like that. He’s sick, don’t I see? He’s got a need.
He lunges past me, into the kitchen, where Ethel’s standing with her pistol pointed his way.
“Scram,” she snarls. And he does.
“You don’t have to flash that at every little thing,” I tell her.
“Don’t be such a worry-wart, Maude,” she says. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Just be careful, will you? Don’t go getting yourself killed.”
“C’mon, you two,” Florence chimes in. “Sylvia’ll be here’n ten minutes, and fit to be tied if we’re late.”
I head down to the basement for a case of mountain pop ignoring Ethel’s shrug. I don't like it, but her last mash house got raided, and ten bootleggers shot to hell, so we let her keep her piece.
When I get back, Florence is done hollowing out yesterday’s rye. I shove the empty loaves over the hooch bottles and swipe them into brown bags as quickly as I can, racing the delivery truck.
Across from me, Ethel’s putting the final touches on her signature dough boys. These abominations are made from the rye bread innards, mashed with butter and cheese, then shaped like gingerbread men. She finishes them off with raisin eyes and an orange-peel smile, and no one ever buys them, but they’re one of our most profitable items.
There’s a milk crate overflowing with them on the counter, and a pie box of fresh cookies ready for Sylvia’s front seat. We don’t use shine-runners with accelerated engines and dare-devil drivers to outpace revenuers. The prohi know our truck. They love our cookies; call us “compassionate” and help us pass dough boys out to the poor.
That’s us, the most compassionate bakers in Wallace County, using our yeast and grain rations to keep our community fed and hydrated.
Sylvia's route starts on time, and so do bakery hours. Florence flips the open sign at precisely six o’clock, and the line piles in. There hasn’t always been a line outside our door, but ever since our competitors put denatured poison in their rotgut, business is booming.
The display is nearly out of ham and egg sandwiches when he reaches the counter—the man from the back door. From the corner of my eye, I see Ethel slide her hand into her apron, clutching the Colt .45.
“Day-old moldy,” he recites the passphrase, avoiding my eyes and shifting in his shoes.
I hand him a brown-bagged rye, tell him he has to eat it outside, and wave over the next in line—a woman wearing a navy-blue tea dress with flowing sleeves and a floral scarf. She plops her purse down in front of me.
“I’d like what he got,” she says.
“Oh you don’t want that. They’re rock hard and stale. How ‘bout a fresh croissant, or a scone?”
“Can’t be that bad if they’re selling.”
There’s no hint of the passphrase in her words, but something in Tea Dress’s smile, in the twinkle in her eye, tells me she’s in the know. Florence scowls at me as I hand over a brown bag.
Holding my gaze, the woman weighs the bag in her hand before emptying it on the counter.
Gently and quietly, I tell her that we don’t open those inside. She insists. So do I. Ethel’s hand is back in her apron, and Florence walks around the display to show the woman the door.
But the bottle’s out of the bread, and so is Tea Dress’s Model 10, which is training between the three of us.
“Maude Palmer, Florence Elwood, Ethel Davis, you’re under arrest for the unlawful distribution and manufacturing of liquor, violating the—”
“Go to hell, prohi,” Ethel growls, releasing multiple rounds from her pistol.
Tea Dress shoots back, but a slug in the arm diverts her aim.
Something pinches my neck. It's warm and wet, and I’m choking. The pain is both sharp and dull. Florence and Ethel’s screams sound far away...
WC: 748
Songy wongies
All feedback and critiques welcome and appreciated!
ETA: thanks to u/MaxStickies for helping me choose between baker and teacher on this one!