Writing Challenge
This is how I set up my first blog challenge that has prizes attached.
Below is a fictional moment in the life of Joe, the average author who is redrafting his latest novel. Yes, the average Joe. Perhaps you have writing moments like this. Maybe a I do. But I don't but maybe I do but really I don't. I'm going to ask you to help out this character for prizes so read on.
The Beginning
The alarm rings at 7 a.m. Joe lays there waiting for something but he doesn’t know what so he rolls out of bed. His ankles are stiff with a slight pain in both of them. His back is twisted from life weighing on it for the past forty plus years. His mouth tastes like iron, maybe a rusty pipe. The sun is already showing through the curtains but he’s not concerned with this.
The wood of the hallway floor is cold but when he gets to his office, the carpet is soft and warm to his bare feet. He sits in front of the computer screen, moves the mouse around to make the screen wake up. His novel is static on the monitor, waiting and incomplete. At the moment it’s lacking everything human.
His mouth tastes so bad he needs to spit.
He’s looked at this chapter so much and has never been able to get it right. It’s more of riddle than a chapter. It’s more of a word search than prose. He’s been replacing words and phrases, making things proper and smooth. Adding emotion, sounds, and visuals to this piece is the issue at hand, and really, where should he start? Joe is not an emotional guy, but he knows he has to put feelings in his novel to make it meaningful, if not saleable.
1.) He had written: The dog wept when he kicked it. He had never seen a dog weep. Then again he had never seen his dad weep either. Could it have been that his dad was reincarnated as his dog that just shit on his rug? So he kicked the mutt again.
Yep, he’d have to take another stab at it. What had his neighbor said about kicking his dog again? Jake would call him later. For now he’d make up the details. Jake needed specifics. People had to really feel this dog being kicked. If someone read this, they needed to feel like they were being kicked.
So he rewrote it…again. The black cocker spaniel wept when he kicked it. He kicked it hard enough to kill it but still it lived. He had never seen a dog weep. Then again he had never seen his dad weep. Could it have been that his drunk and bald dad was reincarnated as his dog that just shit this wet dung on his living room floor? He kicked the mutt again, this time, just in case. “Screw you, dad,” he said to the dog. “Screw you.”
No, that was all wrong. Nothing went right with that paragraph. What was he really trying to say? What was really going on? What’s the blocker here?
Then it came to him. Just to see what it would be like, he’d take the dog out of the scene and replace it with a dad character. Not his dad but to make it real maybe he could borrow some emotions he had pent up. It just so happened that his dad was a drunk and was bald and had plenty of characteristics of the dog, so…
He wrote: His dad was so sick he shit on himself in the middle of the floor. Jake could smell the feces, as if it were on Jake’s upper lip. All that his dad did nowadays was siphon money from the pockets of those who loved him, who chose to take care of him in his old age. Some people might not call sixty years of age old at all. But this man complained of pain in his back every day. His ankles hurt every morning and into the afternoon. And his memory was gone. None of these characteristics made Jake resent his dad any less. Nothing could stop the powerful impulse to kick this old man, hard. In fact, he kicked him so hard that he heard air expel through his dad’s nose, as if a tire with a hole in it coughed. His father coughed and began to cry. Jake had never seen his dad cry, just like he had never seen any animal weep.
“Stop,” Dad whispered.
“Say it louder. I can’t hear you.”
“Stop!”
“Stop? I’m just getting started.”
Joe thought it was a nice touch to use his own attributes to make the Dad character a little more real. But he couldn’t imagine actually doing this to his dad…but the paragraph seemed vaguely successful. Because of this he’d have to start the novel from scratch. He found his outline and trashed it. Now not knowing where to start, he called his dad. It was time for some research on his childhood, and on his past.
The End
How often does someone fictionalize the writing process in a 1,000 word blog post?
So here goes my first challenge. I want you guys to submit a paragraph based on the original paragraph that Joe wrote. It’s the paragraph with the #1 by it. Try not to make it too long. Just submit it to the comment section of this blog. To comment you need to register. Don’t worry. I don’t mind if you register. I’ll post up the winning paragraph, offer the winner a guest post/essay on this blog page and finally send them a Dean Koontz novel. Yep all that. The paragraphs that didn’t win will all be in the comments for this post. And remember the last date for entries is April 29th, 2011.
Have fun. Hope to hear from you all soon. As a matter of fact, tell all your friends. It’ll be more fun that way.
Here is a link to my blog http://ulharper.com/blog/category/blo...
U.L. Harper is the author of The Flesh Statue and the newly released short story book Guidelines for Rejects and the soon to be released In Blackness http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_...
Below is a fictional moment in the life of Joe, the average author who is redrafting his latest novel. Yes, the average Joe. Perhaps you have writing moments like this. Maybe a I do. But I don't but maybe I do but really I don't. I'm going to ask you to help out this character for prizes so read on.
The Beginning
The alarm rings at 7 a.m. Joe lays there waiting for something but he doesn’t know what so he rolls out of bed. His ankles are stiff with a slight pain in both of them. His back is twisted from life weighing on it for the past forty plus years. His mouth tastes like iron, maybe a rusty pipe. The sun is already showing through the curtains but he’s not concerned with this.
The wood of the hallway floor is cold but when he gets to his office, the carpet is soft and warm to his bare feet. He sits in front of the computer screen, moves the mouse around to make the screen wake up. His novel is static on the monitor, waiting and incomplete. At the moment it’s lacking everything human.
His mouth tastes so bad he needs to spit.
He’s looked at this chapter so much and has never been able to get it right. It’s more of riddle than a chapter. It’s more of a word search than prose. He’s been replacing words and phrases, making things proper and smooth. Adding emotion, sounds, and visuals to this piece is the issue at hand, and really, where should he start? Joe is not an emotional guy, but he knows he has to put feelings in his novel to make it meaningful, if not saleable.
1.) He had written: The dog wept when he kicked it. He had never seen a dog weep. Then again he had never seen his dad weep either. Could it have been that his dad was reincarnated as his dog that just shit on his rug? So he kicked the mutt again.
Yep, he’d have to take another stab at it. What had his neighbor said about kicking his dog again? Jake would call him later. For now he’d make up the details. Jake needed specifics. People had to really feel this dog being kicked. If someone read this, they needed to feel like they were being kicked.
So he rewrote it…again. The black cocker spaniel wept when he kicked it. He kicked it hard enough to kill it but still it lived. He had never seen a dog weep. Then again he had never seen his dad weep. Could it have been that his drunk and bald dad was reincarnated as his dog that just shit this wet dung on his living room floor? He kicked the mutt again, this time, just in case. “Screw you, dad,” he said to the dog. “Screw you.”
No, that was all wrong. Nothing went right with that paragraph. What was he really trying to say? What was really going on? What’s the blocker here?
Then it came to him. Just to see what it would be like, he’d take the dog out of the scene and replace it with a dad character. Not his dad but to make it real maybe he could borrow some emotions he had pent up. It just so happened that his dad was a drunk and was bald and had plenty of characteristics of the dog, so…
He wrote: His dad was so sick he shit on himself in the middle of the floor. Jake could smell the feces, as if it were on Jake’s upper lip. All that his dad did nowadays was siphon money from the pockets of those who loved him, who chose to take care of him in his old age. Some people might not call sixty years of age old at all. But this man complained of pain in his back every day. His ankles hurt every morning and into the afternoon. And his memory was gone. None of these characteristics made Jake resent his dad any less. Nothing could stop the powerful impulse to kick this old man, hard. In fact, he kicked him so hard that he heard air expel through his dad’s nose, as if a tire with a hole in it coughed. His father coughed and began to cry. Jake had never seen his dad cry, just like he had never seen any animal weep.
“Stop,” Dad whispered.
“Say it louder. I can’t hear you.”
“Stop!”
“Stop? I’m just getting started.”
Joe thought it was a nice touch to use his own attributes to make the Dad character a little more real. But he couldn’t imagine actually doing this to his dad…but the paragraph seemed vaguely successful. Because of this he’d have to start the novel from scratch. He found his outline and trashed it. Now not knowing where to start, he called his dad. It was time for some research on his childhood, and on his past.
The End
How often does someone fictionalize the writing process in a 1,000 word blog post?
So here goes my first challenge. I want you guys to submit a paragraph based on the original paragraph that Joe wrote. It’s the paragraph with the #1 by it. Try not to make it too long. Just submit it to the comment section of this blog. To comment you need to register. Don’t worry. I don’t mind if you register. I’ll post up the winning paragraph, offer the winner a guest post/essay on this blog page and finally send them a Dean Koontz novel. Yep all that. The paragraphs that didn’t win will all be in the comments for this post. And remember the last date for entries is April 29th, 2011.
Have fun. Hope to hear from you all soon. As a matter of fact, tell all your friends. It’ll be more fun that way.
Here is a link to my blog http://ulharper.com/blog/category/blo...
U.L. Harper is the author of The Flesh Statue and the newly released short story book Guidelines for Rejects and the soon to be released In Blackness http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_...
No comments have been added yet.
