The Annual 'Let's Liven This Place Up' Writing Contest!

Well, that's just... depressing.

Good, though. I like it. Strange how like half of these stories aren't particularly happy ones, isn't it?

That's why I didn't want to post this one. The other one is kinda sad, too, but no one dies, kind of. Oh well. This thread has inspired me to write again, and I'm working on something COMPLETELY different.

Well, you've only got three days, so get to it!

I promise I will write one about Curveball. :toast:

Darth Marsden wrote:Well, you've only got three days, so get to it!

I won't have it done by then, lol. 😛

Pineconn: You must have a death wish. 😉

Mooie: Oh noes! Tragedy!

EDIT: This edit marks the end of the contest. To see who won what, read on to my next post. Apologies for double-posting, mods!

Ok, first of all, let me state, for the record, that this was a lot harder then I thought it would be. I honestly wasn't expecting so many high-quality entries. I suspected this idea would crash and burn, but instead we've got some fantastic short stories. Every one of you should be proud of what you've written - it's all fantastic stuff, even if you haven't won an award.

I'm going with the three awards I laid out at the start of the contest (it should be four, but to be honest. nobody qualified for the 'Dead End' award, so I'm casually forgetting it).

For the 'Side Spliter' award, there was really only one choice. Archibaldo's entry was every bit as insane as we've come to expect of him, and is par far the most qualified for the award. His story, once again:

Archibaldo wrote:One day a man’s car broke down in front of this little pink house. The man walked up the pink cobble stone walk wand and up the pink stairs. He walked up to the big pink door and rang the tiny pink door bell. Ding Dong. The big pink door opened to reveal a little old lady in a pink house coat.

“Excuse me ma’am, but my car broke down, may I please use your phone?” asked the man.

“Of course!” replied the little old lady. She guided down the pink hall and into a pink sitting room. She pointed to an old fashioned pink, spin-dial phone. The man picked up the pink receiver and spun the little pink dial.

After the man hung up the pink receiver, he walked across the pink sitting room and into a pink kitchen where he saw the little pink lady mixing what could only be pink icing. “The two truck will be here in about 15 miniutes.” said the man to back of the little pink lady’s head.

She turned to him. “Well, would you like some cake while you wait?” asked the little old lady. “I have vanilla or chocolate. Which kind would you like?”

“Umm, I’ll take a piece of the vanilla then.” He replied. She cut him a piece of pink iced cake and placed it gently on a small pink dessert plate and handed him the small pink dessert plate, a pink fork and a pink knife. He graciously took the small pink plate and the pink fork and the pink knife.

By the time he had finished his piece of pink vanilla cake and had a pink glass full of pink lemonade to wash down the pink cake, the tow truck honked its horn. The man got up out of the big pink couch he was sitting in and walked down the pink hallway and through the big pink door. He went down the pink steps and the pink cobbled walkway and climbed into the tow truck. And off they went.

And the moral of the story is, pink lemonade does not wash down cake as well as milk does.

The 'WFT, man?' award was for designed for the most out-there entry. I think we can all safely agree that Pineconn's entry is, after Archibaldo's, the most bizarre story here, and it actually still makes sense, which is what wins him the award. And here, once again, is the winning entry:

Pineconn wrote:He looked like a fool, an unstoppable madman. His eyes saw nothing but fire; his mind sought nothing but to destroy. Most strangers were perceptive enough to avoid him. When Jamal becomes angry, everyone around him knows not to interact with him. Sweat lined Jamal’s crinkled brow as he stormed through a confounded crowd, attempting to search for the man who has cheated him out several dollars. Jamal scanned his frightened audience of passersby in order to single out the swindler, but he has become too livid to see clearly. Jamal’s blind anger has disabled him from continuing any farther; his mentality seized him. His hot, crimson face clearly showed his confusion as he slumped to the sidewalk, desperately attempting to regain control over his body.

Jamal returned home cooled down. His blue eyes no longer viewed fire; his calm mind no longer sought to destroy. His violet home reflected his domestic tranquility. Very rarely does Jamal even think about hatred in his home, his dojo, his temple. As he steps outside, however, he becomes a changed man; unfortunately, every woman has seen only his hateful façade, which is why he lives alone, unmarried. Not a soul can determine the reason why Jamal becomes violent outside of his home. No one except Jamal.

He was four years old when it happened. Jamal was with his father, mother, and six-year-old sister at church. Unexpectedly, several men wearing black coats, stocking caps, and pants burst into the small church. They saw fire; they sought to destroy. And they did. Nobody left the church alive except Jamal. Traumatized, he slowly learned to hate everyone. He hated his classmates, he hated his foster family. He hated everyone.

Miserable and gray, he died hating everyone. He had a drab and lackluster funeral; six people attended. Jamal's wretched corpse was placed below an uninspiring tombstone, where he was forgotten by everyone.

The final award, 'Teh Winnar!', was tough. With so many great entries, I ended up deciding to go for the stories that I was most interested in. This lead me to two choices - the entries from Jennifer and Trevelyan_06.

From this, I re-read each entry again and realised that, while impressive in its setup of a futuristic hellhole, Jennifer's entry was more of a first chapter in an ongoing story then a stand-alone story. While not disqualifying the story in any way at all, it means that, in the back of my mind, I felt that Trevelyan's short story edged it. And, since it's my contest, that's what I've gone for.

The grand winner of this contest: Trevelyan_06, with this impressive piece:

Trevelyan_06 wrote:The sergeant was cold and wet. St. Louis winters could be hell before the Holy wars broke out, and 10 years of nuclear explosions hadn’t helped the worldwide climate situation any. He was busy silently cursing up a storm about the snow that’d somehow managed to find its way pasted one of the seals on his mech, and the fact that his mech’s heater was the only battle damage he’d taken, when a light on his heads up display flashed.

He was the advanced scout for the 47th Illinois Assault Mech Unit, and that flash meant his remote drone had found something. Using the movement of his eyes, he brought up a display of what the drone saw, and the sergeant forgot all about his miserable situation and keyed up his radio.

Captain Anderson broke the connection with the scout sergeant and felt the ice in his stomach grow heavier. It wasn’t that he was scared, or even surprised. They had known that the Holy Inquisitor of St. Louis was going to be moving troops this way and a battalion was mid-range on their estimates. Problem was, his company was in reality an over strength (barely!) platoon. If this new missile warhead didn’t work, his troops were goners.

Holy Parishioner Wiess was cold and wet as well, but he didn’t mind. He had finally made it into one of the foot Hosts. He was only 18 to boot, which meant he could well climb the ranks and even get transferred to the armored Hosts he so wanted, not that he could let anyone know that least he be accused of the sin of greed, or even worse lust!

Wiess’ thoughts took up the conscience part of his mind, whilst the rest of him was on auto-pilot. He didn’t hear the first shouts as the warheads rained down on him, not that it would have mattered if he did. Horrible pain broke his thoughts as every cell in his body unnaturally aged 150 years instantly. He fell to the ground in great seizures, not dead yet but wishing he was.

Captain Anderson wanted to run away, find a dark hold to hid in, and pull it in after him. Instead, he made himself look at the destruction his warheads had brought. Every missile in every mech had been armed with a temporal warhead. It was a desperate move to find something, anything that would stop the Host of the Holy Inquisitor of St. Louis and his relentless drive to “convert” the “heretics” in the areas around him. They’d told the Captain how it worked, a localized area of the time stream was accelerated 150 years along with anything else in that area. He’d understood intellectually what that would mean, but now that it was in front of him and he was sick with disgust. It worked damn it. His scanners showed the twisted corpse before him was 168 years old and that it wore the tattered remains of the uniform of a Parishioner. A rank equivalent to Private in his army, a rank held typically by 18 years, children for lack of a better word. Anderson closed his eyes in dismay, knowing that nightmares would come for him tonight.

Once again, every story you guys posted was fantastic and it really was difficult to pick just one as an overall winner. No physical prizes, but if you won an award, you can feel free to place the following sentance (with slight modifications, obviously) in your sig:

Winner of the INSERT-AWARD-HERE award in the first Writing Contest

I'd like to thank everyone for taking part - you really made this contest a success. Thanks guys.
If you have any thoughts about further contests (apart from 'give us a bigger word count', which is a given) then drop me a line.

congrats to everyone for their respective win in the contest 😊 I enjoyed reading them all... thank you 😊

Thanks Darth. I had fun writing this and reading what everyone else had written. Perhaps the next contest could be writing to a theme? For example, everyone writes a short story taking place on a space ship or some such thing. Just a thought, but I for one would like to see more of these.

Congrats everyone.

I want to take part in another writing contest. I like Trev's theme idea. How about a story that takes place in a field of daisies?

I'm kidding, sheesh.

moocow wrote:Congrats everyone.

I want to take part in another writing contest. I like Trev's theme idea. How about a story that takes place in a field of daisies?

How about a field of daisies on a starship? How's that for a theme?:eyebrow:

Once upon a time there was a field of daisies on a Starship. It was full of cute little baby deer and bumble bees all running and buzzing happily. Until one day, BOOM! The Starship crashed and everyone died. Including Bambi.

The End.

I need a beer after that.

I demand a less vulgar prize title. 😃

Nah, (wha)'tever. Thanks Darth and congrats to all!

Ok, thanks for your thoughts. Might give it a while before I start it, but if the next contest were to, say, write a 2,000 word story based on a space ship, people'd go for that?

This was a really fun, productive idea, and I enjoyed both taking part in it and reading others' contributions. I'd definitely go for a second one.

Handily enough, if you seriously go with that theme (not so much the daisies but I could work with it XD), I could easily write the follow-up (or, at least, an obviously related story that ties in clearly) to what I was doing earlier (if that would be acceptable; it still wouldn't be a self-contained story, but if I enjoy doing it and it's theoretically interesting, would it still be okay?). A nice excuse- and opportunity- for me to be productive and to test the waters I supposedly plan to dive into eventually. Incidentally, I feel pretentious, rude, and off-topic just talking about that stuff though, so I apologize if I've been rude or BS-y in such statements. A bird in the hand is worth ten that you can describe from memory, and all that.

Also, I completely understand that a stand-alone story makes for better content for this sort of thing, so your decision makes good sense. Frankly I'm a bit surprised that what I wrote was apparently good enough for you to even consider it for that, so thank you for the compliment ^^'

One thing that I found kind of tripped up this contest- not too badly, but it made for some confusion- was what sounded like a limitation/goal for length; I see where it helps dictate and make a good guideline, but as seen here, I think it would be best if it were clearly established as a guideline up-front. Like, an "aim for 2000 words but don't worry too much as long as it's not insanely long or lamely short" kinda thing. Maybe a word limit range.

When I do the next contest (and I will do another one, as this one was pretty damn well recieved), there'll be a much higher word count, and even then it'll just be a guide to aim for, with no penalties for going over the figure. I admit 500 words was harsh, but it did make people really focus on keeping their stories sharp and to the point, so a kinda two-edged sword with that one.

If you want to continue your short story or link to it in some way Jennifer, then by all means do so. Having a higher word count will lend to a more in-depth and interesting story, and I look forward to reading it.

I tended to encourage people to focus on relatively unconnected short stories because I thought it would help them come up with a brief idea they could just work on, with no distractions as to content. While some people did this, others gave me works they'd already done, or brief passages they created in relation to something else they'd worked on. Hell, I did that twice. That's not to say it's bad... far from it. Just not what I thought people would do.

There's no definitive way of writing stories, be they short or not. It's entirely up to you.