Where Ladybugs Roar

Confessions and Passions of a Compulsive Writer

Monday, October 12, 2009

Contest! Contest! Contest!

Nathan Bransford is hosting the Third Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge.

I submitted my first "paragraph" from my WIP, Versus the Bounty. I combined the first three sections into one paragraph, but I like the way they look separate. (I'm all about white space when reading. My eyes hurt when things are all shoved together in long paragraphs.)

Here is the first section for those interested:

Las Vegas, Nevada, the Controlled Union of States
February 16, 2042

I knew. I knew the moment I killed him what would happen but, at the same time, it was worth it.

The second the bullet hit his skull, an image was snapped. As the bullet passed through his frontal lobe, the data was processed and the probability of his survival was calculated. In his parietal lobe, the likelihood was resolved as low and, as it exited through his occipital lobe, a document was developed. The chip in my head was scanned for my identity. His was scanned too. By the time the metal cracked through the back of his skull, a message was sent out to two recipients.

My name fell onto a screen as if the characters were nothing more than letters strung together. Behind my name were the words “attempted murder” and then, he fell to the ground, his heart stopped beating, blood and brain matter spattered the ground behind him and beneath him. The screen added the word, “confirmed.”

I stood above him… as the video of me ran on a live feed. I couldn’t bring myself to regret my actions. If ever a man deserved to be dead….

Then, I was running for my life because, the chances were, I was already dead.




Speaking of contests, the Shelley contest finishes this week.

Also... my brother sent me a link to this contest... which is open to everyone.

9 comments:

  1. Again, I'll say I loved your entry. I merged a few of my first short paragraphs into one as well. I, too, like white spaces.

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  2. Great entry - gory, but intelligent. I'd keep reading.

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  3. Holy smokes, Wendy. That's outstanding.

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  4. I'm totally with you on the white space thing. I had to run three paras together just to get anything looking like a conventional paragraph.

    Awesome beginning you've got here. Interesting how many of us begin with death. What do you suppose that means?

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  5. Anne, I think it means we need therapy, but who can afford that kind of crap? So in lieu of that, I'll just keep killing people fictionally.

    The guy was bad... that makes it okay, right?

    Also, I've never killed anyone in real life, or tortured small animals... well... I've smashed cockroaches. They had it coming, though.

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  6. I saw your entry at Nathan's blog. it is quite interesting. And smashing roaches is always valid. They started it anyway...

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  7. Wow. I just checked and Nathan's post has nearly 750 posts. Poor guy. Some of them were really good too. I read about twenty that really impressed me and made me wonder why they didn't have contracts already.

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  8. Thanks, Jm. Roaches always start it. I lived in Vegas for a while and that place had the worst roach problem I've ever seen. I'd come home from dates and kill like twenty before going to bed. Around the time it started to get monotonous, I felt like a real sicko. Shudder. It was like a moving floor.... Yick.

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  9. By the way, this is my dystopian Sci-fi that I'm working on. Posting this rekindled my excitement for that story, so I'll probably get back to working on it now that I finished editing one of the Sarah series. Well, after I get my other contest entry ready to go. It needs to be postmarked by the fifteenth.

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