Minister's Study

Ministering, writing, and wrestling in a land flowing with sweet tea and deep-fried food

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Competition is more fun...

...when you're winning!

I've always thought it funny how people play "just for the fun of it." I get it, really, I do, at least in an intellectual sense. But it's just so much more fun if you're winning. This has held true for me whether I'm playing basketball or chess, and it's especially true of wrestling (usually, if you're losing, it means something bad happened to you). And it's even true of those Liberty Hall flash challenges. Yeah, I know the purpose of the challenges isn't competition -- it's to get people writing and improve the quality of their writing. And it works on both of those levels. But for only the second time in 27 or so flashes, my story won best of the best! (It also picked up some wins in the individual categories in its group.) And again I am reminded that competition is more fun when you win, even if the win doesn't really mean anything.

The challenge this week was to write from the POV of a person you find morally reprehensible. The bonus was to see if you could still manage to make this person sympathetic. There were some terrific stories this week; I honestly didn't think mine would win, considering the competition. I ended up writing about an Inquisition torturer trying to get a pastor to give up the location of a collection of texts. Before I can sub it out anywhere, I've got to nail down a few historical details, but it seemed to come out pretty well. I've got to see if I can find some markets for historical fiction, particularly hisfic that's sympathetic to and involves Christianity.

6 Comments:

At 12:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey! That's wonderful. Congratulations!

 
At 5:41 PM, Blogger Poppasan said...

Wooohooo! BotB!

I think when you rewrite it, the thing that will make it stick is the change in the inquisitor's character. Especially if he *still* thinks he's saving souls on the rack, but he just can't bear it any more.

 
At 10:35 PM, Blogger Minister said...

Thanks, Will. That's what I didn't hit on until practically the last minute of the competition -- for the story to be effective, it needed to answer not only question of whether Johann would crack, but also what effect the events would have on Augustine.

 
At 10:36 PM, Blogger Minister said...

Oh, and thanks, MR!

 
At 3:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congrats, minister. Hey if you find a market like that let me know, will you.

 
At 12:26 PM, Blogger Minister said...

I'll try to remember. I'll definitely put it up in the markets section at the Notebored; they're developing a pretty nice little resource there. If you haven't been by, I'd encourage you to register just for the market section.

 

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