Top Stories
New stories you’ll love, handpicked for you by our team and updated daily.
English Is a Weird Language – How Many of These Do You Know?
The English language has over 1 million words. However, about 171,476 words are commonly used today. Native speakers typically have a vocabulary of 20,000 to 40,000 words. It is also said that knowing 3% of the total vocabulary allows you to read 95% of what is written.
By Calvin London5 months ago in FYI
Romells' Ride
The land was still steaming from the day’s rain. The smell of sodden leaves and black loam rose about him, clinging to his clothes, insinuating itself into the flesh. Romells rode bare-headed, letting the night wind lay its cool hand along his hair. It felt good — so bloody good — to be out from under stone ceilings, to have the sweat on his skin drying under the stars.
By Aaron Richmond5 months ago in Fiction
An August Aria
The sun was dipping low, stretching its light out in a giant yawn that splashed the sky with vibrant fuchsia as it pulled the cover of the mountains over its head. The color caught my eye, stirring something in the back of my heart, a forgotten passion tugging at my cobwebbed mind. I watched the pink fade into deep purple and the gears in my brain began to speak, narrating what I was seeing with the flowery language I once used to build my now abandoned worlds. My fingers started to twitch, eager to dance across the keyboard.
By A. J. Schoenfeld5 months ago in Fiction
THEM
They knew the light kept THEM away. They did not know what THEY were, only what THEY did. Homes ransacked, belongings destroyed, and people disappearing, never to be seen again. THEY had never been seen, only heard, and mostly that was the screams of those that they dragged away.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 6 months ago in Fiction
SWS: The Summer That Wasn’t Challenge Winners
For The Summer That Wasn’t, we asked for stories about the seasons that fell apart before they began. About the summers where nothing went right, or worse, nothing ever really started. You delivered elegies and unravelings, ghost stories and quiet griefs. Stories soaked in nostalgia, shaped by absence, and sharpened by the weight of memory.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
Marianne. Honorable Mention in Everything Looks Better From Far Away Challenge.
Glinting on the railing, Marianne’s ring rivaled the sun hung midway in a cloudless cerulean sky. Oliver Swenson squinted tired eyes and swirled half melted ice cubes in his bourbon while water rippled in opalescent veins of turquoise and sapphire before a lush mound of trees and brush. A real generic paradise. Not one mile away throngs of tourists clamored for a piece of shade in the heat, but in the small lagoon, all was quiet. Surrounded by a fortress wall of jagged volcanic rock, it was unspoiled. Clandestine. A honeymooner’s dream. The same as it was all those distant years ago when they were young and in love. Young and dumb was more like it. Still, they’d given it a good go. Thirty years and three kids later the island was the only thing unchanged. Lazy puddles of surf drifted ashore, washing the most delicate shells back to the ocean. Seagulls guffawed like Marianne’s laugh overhead. No, that was then, not now. Now it was silent. Too silent. Heavy with the silence of being completely alone on his perch.
By Elizabeth Diehl5 months ago in Fiction
Hunters by Matthew Fromm - Jon and Stephen Recorded Readings Special Episode In Review
Are you on the hunt (yes, I went there!) for something fun to listen to with that spare 20 minutes you don't know what to do with? I mean, you could spend it watching Family Guy clips on the YouTube, or you could open up Spotify and enter the world of Hunters.
By Paul Stewart6 months ago in Beat
On Canon
"Wait stop! That's a load bearing 'I don't know!'" As I avoided my work today, a lonely thought came my way. It came to me as if to say, "deep thought-ed sir, might I stay?" I found could not cast it far away, so I kept it here with me today. - Vagabond Thoughts, by Alexander McEvoy
By Alexander McEvoy5 months ago in Writers
