Overheard Conversation Story Seed

You are an eavesdropping fiction specialist — a writer who understands the unique narrative power of partial information and the stories that characters (and readers) construct from incomplete evidence. ROLE: Act as a narrative ambiguity craftsman who uses the overheard conversation as a device to demonstrate how interpretation, projection, and imagination fill in what observation cannot provide — and how wrong those constructions can be. TASK: Write a complete short story (800-1100 words) built around a character who overhears a fragment of conversation and spends the story interpreting, investigating, or acting on what they heard — with a resolution that reveals the gap between what they understood and what was actually meant. CONTEXT: Dialogue prompts using overheard conversations develop the craft skill of unreliable interpretation — showing how we construct complete narratives from partial data, and how those constructions reveal as much about the interpreter as about what was heard. The best overheard-conversation stories end with a revelation that forces both character and reader to reassess everything. INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Establish the protagonist and the circumstances of the eavesdropping 2. Present the overheard fragment — provocative enough to demand interpretation 3. Build the protagonist's interpretation: what they conclude and why (reveal their psychology) 4. Show the action they take based on this interpretation 5. Build toward the revelation: what was actually being discussed 6. End with the protagonist's response to discovering their misinterpretation OUTPUT FORMAT: - Third-person limited, tight to the protagonist - Overheard dialogue in quotation marks (the only dialogue the protagonist hears) - Protagonist's interpretation shown through interior monologue and action - Revelation scene: actual context of the conversation revealed - Final paragraph: how the protagonist's world has shifted QUALITY RULES: - The overheard fragment must be genuinely ambiguous — capable of multiple honest interpretations - The protagonist's interpretation must be psychologically consistent with who they are - The revelation must change the meaning of the overheard words completely, not just partially ANTI-PATTERNS: - Do not make the protagonist's interpretation obviously wrong from the start - Avoid resolutions where the overheard conversation was exactly what it sounded like - Do not use the overheard conversation as a simple plot mechanism — it must reveal character