The Jocose January Challenge!

[Hannah Faoileán]

Happy New Year, and welcome to the first OPS challenge of 2026!

As we are all stepping out of the shadows of 2025 and into the bright lights of 2026, the challenge is to include the words "stepping out" in your one perfect sentence.

The rules are simple:

• Each entry must be ONE sentence only, as defined by the basic rules of English grammar. We will notice if you squeeze unrelated clauses together and pretend it's a sentence, so please don't do it. Your entry will be disqualified and removed.

• Don’t comment on other people's entries – this makes the thread far less readable. If you’d like to make a comment – or if you have a question – then please do so in the Café Life thread under the “One Perfect Sentence” prefix. I will keep checking the thread to answer any questions. If you have a question you don't want others to read, please private message me directly.

• You can make as many entries as you want to, but only your entry with the greatest number of votes will win a place (and litbits).

• IMPORTANT: You MUST make your entry anonymous by ticking the “Posting as Anonymous?” box. Entries that don’t do this will be removed.

Good luck and get writing!

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out of her skin, her serpent self slithered, a snapback to a sharper state.

 

[Anonymous]

So delighted he was to be stepping out into the soft-falling rain, a huge truck ran him over in the street.

 

[Anonymous]

The day she started stepping out with Sam, light spilled over the cobbled streets as Mardok’s ship fell from the starry sky.

 

[Anonymous]

‘Please,’ she said, ‘I can’t be stepping out into that.’

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out didn’t hurt anymore, not after Medea.

 

[Anonymous]

The creatures stepping out of my fevered brain would have given Kafka nightmares.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out onto the hot sand of the beach, she instantly burnt her feet and jumped back onto the cooler grass.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out of the past and into the future is a fresh new day full of unbroken promises.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out onto the boards of the stage, under the hot lights and in front of a full house, was the most nerve-wracking moment of Tessa's life.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out from under the shadows of her brother's favouritism shone a light on all of her warts.

 

[Anonymous]

Sam held his hands up, stepping out from his family and saying, "If you have to shoot anyone, shoot me."

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out onto the ledge, he confronted his fear, and stepping off the ledge, he challenged his immortality.

 

[Anonymous]

Setting her now blood-free sword on the kitchen counter, and stepping out of her undercrakers to get some air to her nether regions, a great thud at the front door sounded.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping Out, a bestseller, winner of awards, the reason she gave up her well paid job, but since waking with bloodstained hands, she hadn't written a single sentence.

 

[Anonymous]

Arms around a dreamboat on leave, stepping out in those days meant my best dress, rayon gloves pulled to my elbows, legs painted with gravy browning and a seam of eyebrow pencil, we jitterbugged and jived until Moaning Minnie sounded.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out onto the shiny waxed glittering Plaza Dance floor, our hearts begin to beat: how we dance, how we smile, how we spin our bodies in every way ‘til midnight, when our blitz of colour begins to eclipse, sending us back on to the cold wet grey streets, of our mundane lives.

 

[Anonymous]

Stepping out, red rained down on the snowy ground, my darling Celine slipping into the silence of eternal sleep.

 

[Anonymous]

Martha cut her tether, and stepping out of the airlock, marvelled at the beauty of the infinite cosmos before her, as her shipmates looked on in horror.