Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Writing Contest

James Nelson, who I know from the Roving Imp but is currently living in Germany, had a writing contest on his Facebook 1.5 weeks ago and I decided to enter it since there was no lost at entering...and I did go to KU for Creative Writing (even though my Bachelors is in English...but that's besides the point). The contest involved the following paragraph:
A man called Peter took an airplane to New York to visit his sister. When he arrived at the airport, an old man asked him a question. Peter gave a short reply and the man invited him for a drink. Peter accepted, and after he had the drink, caught the airplane to New York. When he got to his sister's apartment, his sister invited him into the living room. As he entered the room, he was surprised to see the same man.

The objective was to make this paragraph more interesting by adding non-defining relative clauses. This is non-needed information that goes in to help define a noun. For example, I could say that "during the month of June, the month that I turned 27, I was reading a lot of Harry Potter." The part that is "the month that I turned 27" is the non-defining relative clause because it's not important to the rest of the sentence...hince I put it in italics.
Anyway, this is how it looked when I added mine and submitted it:
A man called Peter, who was a werewolf, took an airplane, which was missing its black box, to New York, the city as well as the state, to visit his sister, who was appearing in Les Miserables on Broadway. When he arrived at the airport, the really dirty one and not the one that was well kept, an old man, who happened to be dressed in women’s underwear, asked him a question. Peter, who was easily offended by old men wearing women's underwear who tried to ask him questions, gave a short reply and the man, who was lonely and ashamed to have insulted Peter, invited him for a drink, which was Diet Coke due to a shortage of rum at the airport. Peter, who wasn't in a huge hurry since the show didn't start for a number of hours and the moon was only going to be a quarter full that night, accepted, and after he had the drink, which had a bit too much aspertain than he cared for, caught the airplane to New York, which was running late. When he got to his sister's apartment, which looked like a pig's pen with the exception of one small spot on the counter next to a bowl of bananas, his sister invited him into the living room, which looked like an F-5 tornado had ramshacked the place. As he entered the room, moving on tip-toe so as not to crush anything scattered on his sister's floor, he was surprised to see, and smell since he did have that wolf-like ability, the same man, who was still drinking his now flat Diet Coke.


It made honorable mention! It, unfortunately, built up an expectation of werewolf carnage and the Diet Coke was left in question of what it actually meant. James said his favorite part was the use of the (apparently non-existant) word "ramshacked".

Anyway, that was my entry.

1 comment:

Chris Hurt said...

Konata says “Good Job!
Konata also says “ASOBITAI! (I want to play)