Archive for the ‘Best First Sentence Contest’ Category
Best First Sentence Contest: Winner Announced [Tara, Please Contact Me]
Best first sentence for a novel about a lovely librarian who secretly burns the books she loves because she wants no one else to read them.
And the winner is — but before I announce the winner, let me say something about the selection process:
Invariably when I choose a winner for the Best First Sentence Contest (and this is number 6, I believe) I come under a certain amount of fire from some for my selection — this despite the fact that I’m the one creates the prompt, reads the entries, and pays the prize money out of my bartender wages, and am happy to do so. Honestly, I love it. I love these contests, and I’m delighted with how popular they’ve become. I plan to run them forever.
I’m not going to attempt to explain my tastes and my criteria in full. I only want readers to know this:
I’m looking at these entries as best first sentence to a book.
I mention that, though it might seem obvious, because I think it’s easy to lose sight of: I myself have lost sight of it. There are, in other words, many sentences that are excellent in and of themselves, but they just don’t quite have first-sentence power. Thus a sentence like the following, which I loved and chose as a finalist:
Lisa, the lovely librarian, looked at the pile of dying embers that used to be her favourite books and thought, ‘there, now you are where you belong, with the lovers who wanted to leave me.’ (Mark Knowles)
This one didn’t ultimately have as much first-sentence power as the following, by doc jim:
She had never thought of herself as possessive.
Or this one, by Jeanne:
“She found it at once — and almost by instinct — nestling at a coquettish angle between Mansfield Park and Doctor Zhivago as if to say, “I’ve been waiting for you to kiss me goodbye.”
Those, incidentally, were both runner-ups.
But the winner is Tara:
I imagined paperbacks would burn the fastest, but it’s actually the old threaded hardcovers that immediately turn to ash.
Please stay-tuned for the next contest.
My thanks to you all.
Best First Sentence Contest
The Journal Pulp is offering a $100.00 cash prize for the following:
Best first sentence for a novel about a lovely librarian who secretly burns the books she loves because she wants no one else to read them.
Rules and guidelines:
No outrageous run-ons. You can submit anonymously or under your real name, it doesn’t matter.
No minimum length requirement.
Submit as many separate entries as you’d like.
Leave your sentence in the comments section below.
The winner will be selected by the Journal Pulp.
The contest will be open for two weeks from today: March, 21st, 2013, through April 4th, 2013, at midnight.
If your sentence doesn’t appear in the comments after you’ve submitted, it’s almost certainly because of this aggressive SPAM filter. Please note that I check the SPAM folder carefully and regularly, and that your sentence, if it’s not SPAM, will be approved. I do not censor.
Best First Sentence Contest: Winner Announced
Best first sentence for a novel about a modern-day prophet who does not believe in God …
And the winner is C-CAT:
“Thank God for atheist cops,” she said with a wink to the cross-wearing parking attendant who had, quite reasonably, been persuaded to spare her.
I chose this sentence first for its paradoxical nature and the quality of the writing. I chose it next for its cleverness.
Stay tuned for the next contest.
My thanks to you all.
Best First Sentence Contest [UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED -- WINNER ANNOUNCED]
UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED — WINNER ANNOUNCED HERE
The Journal Pulp is offering a $100.00 cash prize for the following:
Best first sentence for a novel about a modern-day prophet who does not believe in God — who is neither left nor right, who preaches reason and the philomathic, concerning which things she’s almost psychopathic — and whose following grows, despite the terrifying enigma she presents.
Rules and guidelines:
No outrageous run-ons. You can submit anonymously or under your real name, it doesn’t matter.
No minimum length requirement.
Submit as many separate entries as you’d like.
Leave your sentence in the comments section below.
The winner will be selected by the Journal Pulp.
The contest will be open for two weeks from today: January, 10th, 2013 through January 24th, 2013, at midnight.
If your sentence doesn’t appear in the comments after you’ve submitted, it’s almost certainly because of this aggressive SPAM filter. Please note that I check the SPAM folder carefully and regularly, and that your sentence, if it’s not SPAM, will be approved. I do not censor.
Best First Sentence Contest 3: Winner Announced
Just over 300 entries (both sites combined) the vast majority of which were beautiful and brilliant.
The winner:
The sentence:
He came there every day, before and after work, but he didn’t notice the tattoo of a single hydrogen atom on the nape of her neck until today.
This elegant sentence has a hint of intrigue and a most original twist.
Happy 4th of July.
My thanks to you all.
Best First Sentence For A Novel [UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED, WINNER ANNOUNCED]
UPDATE: WINNER ANNOUNCED. READ THE WINNING ENTRY HERE:
For a novel about:
A genius waitress who discovers the secret to unlocking the power of deuterium — and the customer who loves her, but loves her discovery even more.
Rules and guidelines:
The winner receives a $100.00 cash prize.
You can submit anonymously or under your real name, it doesn’t matter.
No outrageous run-ons.
No minimum length requirement, but one sentence only please.
Submit as many separate entries as you’d like.
Leave your sentence in the comments section below.
The winner will be selected by the Journal Pulp.
The contest will run from June 12, 2012, through June 24th, 2012.
Important: If your sentence doesn’t immediately appear in the comments after you’ve submitted, it’s almost certainly because of this confoundingly aggressive ASKIMET spam filter. Please note that I check the spam folder carefully and regularly, I do not censor, and that your sentence if it’s not spam will be approved. There is no need to resend.
Best First Sentence Contest Number 2: Winner Announced
There were over 300 entries, the majority of which were very well written, and I’m a one-man outfit. I apologize for taking ten days to decide. But I gave each entry multiple and thorough readings — and the winner is:
Here is Kayla’s sentence:
When I recognized the face staring back at me with mocking familiarity, I decided by the end of this night one of us would be dead.
I chose this sentence, after much heartache and deliberation, because I found it the most provocative, the most intriguing, the most profound — the one, in short, that would most compel me to keep reading. Which is saying a lot because so many of these sentences struck me that way. For instance:
“There, there, there I unsteadily stood, under the stars that I hadn’t looked at yet tonight, but that I knew were there, boggling at the bourbon at the bottom of the glass I was barely holding, gazing at the slow-moving sad-faced visage of a God I didn’t believe in.”
“Sirius Emerson knew he was seeing stars glinting off the lukewarm ice cubes hovering in his glass, or maybe a constellation of oak barrel particulates, he wasn’t sure, but twenty-three years of research wouldn’t allow this to be anything more than that.”
“And then He disappeared, leaving my beliefs and my whiskey forever tainted.”
“Night sky full of stars, belly full of whiskey, and a glass full of something I never believed in.”
“He worshiped at the altar of atheism, only to be baptized at the bottom of a whiskey glass.”
My thanks to you all.
Contest II: Best First Sentence For A Novel About…
The Journal Pulp is offering a $200.00 cash prize for the following:
Best first sentence for a novel about a famous atheist-astronomer who one star-sprent summer evening glimpses God in the bottom of his whiskey glass.
Rules and guidelines:
No outrageous run-ons.
You can submit anonymously or under your real name, it doesn’t matter.
No minimum length requirement.
Submit as many separate entries as you’d like.
Leave your sentence here:
The winner will be carefully selected by the Journal Pulp.
The contest will run from April 18th, 2012, through May 6th, 2012.
Have fun.
Read “What is Beauty?” here.
Winner Announced: Best First Sentence Contest
Ladies and gentleman, it was not easy — there were so many good entries — but I’ve at last chosen a winner for the Best First Sentence Contest:
Melissa
Here’s Melissa’s sentence:
“The red wildflowers looked like drops of blood falling from the black truck he saw in his rear view mirror.”
I chose this sentence because it is elegant and evocative — and a little strange.
For her entry, Melissa wins the $200.00 prize.
Three others I’d like to single out:
X39 wrote:
“There was no seeing the beauty, without fear.”
And Aisha Dixon:
“The engine beneath him purred with a peaceful, almost hypnotic rhythm, lulling him toward sleep and the dangerous world of dreams.”
And Lorne:
“Seven hundred miles and exactly three days from this moment his life will slip over a blade, thick, between lobe and jaw as if pressed into an oysters hinge.”
The sheer quality of all the entries exceeded my wildest expectations, and the contest was, from my perspective, such an overwhelming success that I’ll be running another in a few days.
Please check back.
My thanks to you all.
