Many, if not all of you, will have guessed by now that the earlier contest announcement was an April Fool's joke. So welcome to "
Bluffhanger!"
-- the real contest for April.
Have you ever used the expression "
it's so bad, it's good"
? Well, if you haven’t, hopefully this month you'll have that chance. We’re looking for your best worst writing. Yes, that was your “best WORST writing."
In the spirit of the
Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, which looks for the best of deliberately badly written opening lines for fiction, we want the best of your groan inducing, eye rolling, cringe causing, "
so bad it's funny"
fiction. The post following this announcement will give some examples, tips and links to get you started.
And to shoehorn this month's contest into the April "
Bluff Me"
tradition, the theme of this writing contest is
cliffhangers. (Cliff... bluff? Get it?
) From
wikipedia,
"A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation. A cliffhanger is hoped to ensure the audience will return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma."
Any of us can write badly -- I do it all the time -- but can you write so badly, so well, that all stand back to bask in your brilliance? This is your chance to flex your bad writing muscles and offer up the best of the bad cliffhangers for the forum's amusement.
Contest description
Submit two sentences, written for any genre of fiction you like, but in the style of good "
bad"
writing. The first sentence must provide a cliffhanger ending to a chapter or story, and the second sentence must resolve the cliffhanger. To heighten the suspense, all entries will be hidden in "
unhidetime"
tags until the submission deadline passes, with your resolution sentence further concealed by "
secret"
tags. (See example below.)
Rules:
1. Entries are to be posted in the
submission thread. (Everyone will be able to see posts, but the entries will be concealed by "
unhidetime"
tags.)
2. Each entry must contain two sentences. Length per sentence: 1 to 100 words.
3. Each entrant may submit up to two entries.
4. All submissions must be completely original and cannot have been previously published.
5. Submissions will be accepted up until
Local Time:04-24-2009 at 08:00 PM.
6. Entries may be edited up until the submission deadline. Any entries edited after the deadline will be disqualified.
7. Entries must be surrounded by unhidetime tags, using the date/time April 24th, 2009 7:00PM. The resolution sentence must be concealed in secret tags within the unhidetime tags.
8. Judging will commence on April 25th, 2009 and will continue until
Local Time:04-30-2009 at 08:00 AM.
Submission Format
[unhidetime=April 24, 2009 7:00PM]They were outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed, but if their favourite author, Terry Pratchett, had taught Chuck and Joe anything, it was that the million to one shot almost always succeeds.
[secret]Hopes high and guns blazing, they stormed out of the church, but surprisingly (to them at least) they were killed before they even had time to remember that, unfortunately, Mr. Pratchett was not referring to their world, and besides which, it really wasn't a million to one shot anyway.[/secret][/unhidetime]
Judging
Entries will be rated out of 10. Obviously judging will be very subjective, but entries should be judged mostly on how well the submission achieves the "
so bad, it's good"
criterion, as well as its creativity, amusement factor, how badly you wanted to know how the cliffhanger resolved and how satisfying the resolution was. Each entrant should give his or her own submission(s) a rating of 10.
Prizes
Winner: 100 rank points and a pick from the
Prize Pile
Runner-up: 50 rank points
Dishonourable Mention: 25 rank points
First time contest participants: 10 rank points
Ties will be broken in a run-off poll.
[Last edited by noma at 04-04-2009 03:05 AM]
