Weekly Prompt: Jobs From Long Ago

Take a step back in time

Welcome to the first weekly challenge for May, where the theme is (Mis)representation.

As we said in the Monthly Theme announcement, the goal is to get you to focus more on the characters than would usually be the case with micro fiction and flash fiction.

Choice Of Characters

To get you started on this month’s theme, here are four jobs from days gone by. Your challenge is to choose one of them and make that person the main character in your story:

• Knocker-Upper
• Leech Collector
• Mudlark
• Resurrectionist

As you can see, there are links you can click where you can learn more about these jobs, since they are not ones you hear about these days.

Challenge Requirements — your story must:

1. Feature one of the four jobs listed above as your primary character.
2. Be exactly 300 words long, excluding the title, subtitle, and any post-story bio/links. (We use Medium’s own word count feature.)
3. Be fictional, even if it includes factual information or concerns.
4. Use “Old Jobs” as one of your five tags.

There is plenty of food for thought here, and we look forward to seeing how you feature one of these characters in your short story.

Remember to create round characters that challenge the misconceptions of who can be heroes and heroines!