How Did It Come To This?
Write a story that works its way up to the following paragraph/scene. You can either use this as the end of your story, open with it (then tell the story that goes before), or even stick it in the middle of your story.
Think about those TV episodes that start with a dramatic scene, then cut to '2 days earlier', or a Tarantino film, told in non-chronological order to extract maximum impact from each scene.
I've tried to leave it as open to interpretation as possible, so characterisation, setting, plot etc are all up to you. Be creative! Make it sci-fi or fantasy if you wish. The ONLY requirement is that you use this paragraph, and it must not be the very beginning of your tale (although the words can appear physically at the beginning, as long as you later cut to earlier in the timeline).
In terms of the provided paragraph, you may make the protagonist female (by changing the 'he's to 'her's), and you may put it in dialogue, to bed its narrator in the story (thereby freeing you to use any perspective or tense you desire). However, NO OTHER CHANGES may be made to the text.
Try to come up with a really bizarre or fascinating way in which the character finds themselves in the situation described.
The required paragraph is:
It was too late. No hope remained of a reprieve; only a long, painful path that stretched ahead like a gauntlet of fear. Was there light at the end? He didn't know, and now it was unlikely anybody would find out before it was too late. Some battles, he reflected, are lost before the first rasp of an unsheathed sword. Sighing in resignation, he steeled his jaw, and put one foot forward into the future.
And no, it doesn't have to be in bold in your story - I just did that to emphasize it for these rules!
Minimum length 500 words. No maximum Length. Recommended length 1,000 - 3,000 words.
The contest winner will win half of the prize pool of 60.00 member dollars. In this contest at least 2 submissions must be made for the vote to begin.
Deadline: Contest is closed. Deadline was Monday, March 12, 2012.
