Mini-Contest
#4
The
fourth mini-contest was held in December 2007. It
challenged contestants to write two sentences: a bad one
featuring a horrible writing cliché, and a good one that
replaced the cliché with strong, evocative writing.
We received 37 entries from 20 contestants (contestants
were allowed to submit two entries apiece). Two reading
judges selected 10 contenders from all the entries
received. Six prize judges labeled one entry as their
“favorite” and rated the rest as either “yes,” “maybe,” or
“no.”
(That’s right, six judges. Our guest judge this time
was
Sean Tierney, an
experienced writer and professor of communications teaching
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. We have
global
connections, people!
Aren’t you impressed? You’re not? Drat.)
No entry for any contest has scored as well as this
mini-contest’s winner. Five of the six judges considered it
their favorite. Nothing we have ever received before this
was the favorite of more than two
judges.
Third Place ($5) by Darren Blair:
CLICHE:
She couldn’t
carry a tune in a bucket.
REWRITE: Whenever she sang, her notes pitched upward with
such sharpness that they would frequently impale innocent
starlings as they passed on by.
Second
Place ($10) by Laura Loomis
CLICHE: She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
REWRITE: She looked like she’d unwrapped a birthday present
to find a severed head.
First Place ($15) by Melody Ringo
CLICHE: They stared at him like he was from another planet.
REWRITE: They stared at him like a cow stares at a new
gate.
Honorable Mentions (no money, just fame)
Two other entries scored highly enough to earn an honorable
mention. They are listed below in descending order by
overall score.
CLICHE: The house looked like a tornado hit it.
REWRITE: The rooms were
strewn with weeks-old mail, grocery bags, and newspapers,
as if a giant had turned the house over and shaken it
before setting it down again.
(by
Laura Loomis)
(This entry would have tied for third, but our policy is
one cash prize per author.)
CLICHE: Blue sky thinking.
REWRITE: Brain-tickling,
attention-zipping, expectation-ripping, neuron-firing
twinklings of inklings.
(by
Kat Dawes)
(Technically, you could say this one isn’t a sentence, but
we’ve all seen sentence fragments used as sentences in
fiction. Plus it was one judge’s favorite, so it gets
in.)
It
Was His Idea
This contest
premise came from newsletter reader Michael Van Ornum. As a
reward, he automatically gets an entry published (but no
money).
CLICHE: I was busier than a beaver.
REWRITE: I was busier than a single parent with four
hyperactive kids in a toy store.
(by Michael
Van Ornum)
Now It’s Our Turn
As is often the
case, at least some of the judges wanted to try this
exercise too.
CLICHE: His argument was weak as water.
REWRITE: His argument collapsed faster than the first
little pig’s house of straw.
(by Tarl
Roger Kudrick)
CLICHE: His speech was dull as dishwater.
REWRITE: His speech wasn’t just colorless, it sucked the
color out of everything in the room, leaving us sitting in
endless gray monotone.
(by Bethany
Granger)
Congratulations to the winners and our sincere thanks to
everyone who entered the mini-contest.