This episode is all about community submissions! We’re showcasing the creative work of emerging writers, first-time authors, and grizzled veterans of the trade, all responding to the same epic prompt: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Featuring stories and poems from Alec Billings, J.W. Surface, KN Fitzwater, Maggie Lardie, Nick Smith, YYC Typewriter, and the mysterious Mrs. Greenleaf. From biblical terror to modern collapse, these writers interpret conquest, war, famine, and death in wildly different ways, all stemming from the same prompt.

If you love creative writing, indie fiction, writing prompts, and discovering emerging voices, this is the episode for you.

Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do.

Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.

In this episode of Radio FreeWrite, The Cru explores how writing fiction can reveal something real. From writing through family conflict to channeling rage, grief, and even imagined fears, this conversation dives into how fiction can incorporate lived experience.

We also tackle where the line sits between therapy and craft. When does a story become art? When should it stay personal? And, how much truth do you actually need to keep?

There's a difference between journaling and storytelling. We'll help you turn personal experiences into something that resonates with readers.

And, of course, we share some of our own real fiction to show how the process works in practice.

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Oxymoron. A rhetorical figure in which effect is produced by the juxtaposition of contradictory terms, such as "Make haste slowly," "Faith unfaithfully kept him falsely true." The word is Greek for 'pointedly foolish.'

Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do.

Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.

This week, the Cru dives into a strange and powerful prompt pulled from Norse mythology: Ginnungagap, the vast, primordial void of fog (that's fog, not frogs, WebEater!) that exists between worlds.

From that idea, the conversation spirals into something every writer knows too well: the "creative" void. What do you do when nothing is flowing? When every sentence feels forced? When the story just won’t come together?

We dig into:

• Writing through creative blocks and burnout
• The difference between natural flow and “forcing it”
• Channeling frustration and anger writing into something useful
• Using constraints and prompts to unlock unexpected breakthroughs

As always, we take the prompt and turn it into original flash fiction, written fast, read aloud, and shared in its raw, unpolished form. Tune in around the 13 minute mark for those.

Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do.

Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.