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Saturday 18 December 2010

Writing competition: here's the challenge! - 150 words short story 'The Vial'

Hello, bloggers!
In for a little challenge? I just started a writing competition (a really tiny one) in the Coffee Shop. To enter, go to this thread and write/post a story of 150 words containing the words remedy, subject, monopoly, report and discipline as your answer. The winner will be determined by voting in the forum (result on Saturday, you can submit till Friday). Good luck to every participant! Here’s an example:


The Vial


He carried the vial across the street like a torch. All his life he had looked for it, this remedy... Those that called him mad and left, the lonely years, the humiliation, the deceit, the betrayal, all the sacrifices he made ceased to matter, accumulating in his outstretched hand.
“A monopoly!” The CEO said, a trace of drool along his chin.
“The report was promising: every trace gone in each of the subjects.”
“Lovely.” He listened only to the coins ringing in his head, rubbing his hands. “The Holy Grail of the discipline, mine.”
He groped for the vial with eager claws. Somewhere between vigour to obtain and reluctance to let go, the vessel was flung through the air.
Frantically reaching for it, their hands continued to clash. Both men held their breath as the beautiful crystal of dreams with a jingle like heavenly music, scattered into a thousand pieces.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting indeed, I'll be sure to give this a try, thanks for the update :)

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  2. Sure, the more the merrier.

    I'll be looking forward to your submission, Diego. I also proposed to have the winner organise the next challenge, since Hannah opted to have one weekly. You can vote on that too.

    Good luck!

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  3. Nice read. Your narrative was lovely. I was absorbed almost immediately and left wanting more.The only thing I would like to say is that you could have used the word "shattered" instead of "scattered" which I think is more fitting..However that might just be me.

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  4. Hi Lionel,

    you're absolutely right, I think it should be 'shattered', but I just love the way 'scattered' sounds with regard to glass breaking.

    By keeping it, you have this image of dreams and pieces fleeing, retreating, drifting away leaving someone in the middle fleetingly groping for them.

    I might eventually change it, but I'm going to have to ponder on it a bit :)

    Thank you for the remark, I probably wouldn't even noticed there was something problematic there, I generally read over that, so thank you so much for pointing that out. :)

    ReplyDelete

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