Competition 2013
This year’s competition is all about beginnings. We’re looking for the best opening sentence you can muster. As with all great openers, it can be as long or as short as you need it to be, but we strongly recommend you don’t go beyond 50 or 60 words. One of our favourites is the opening to Kate Atkinson’s Emotionally Weird: ‘My mother was a virgin.’ Five short, startling words, and already we’re hooked.
Need a little inspiration to get you started? We can’t find a better site than this one: http://www.shmoop.com/news/2010/07/13/best-opening-lines-literature/ Their take on Jane Austin’s now immortal opening line to Pride and Prejudice: ‘Write sarcastically during an era so prudish that future generations will actually mistake you as being serious.’ We love the way it provides a glimpse into the creative thought process at work when the opening sentence was dreamed up. Take a look and see what it inspires in you.
As with all Stylo’s competitions, this one is free to enter and carries the prize of a place on a Stylo writing week, as well as five runner-up prizes. Last year Denton Pride blew us away with his entry to our Six-word Story competition, ‘Negative: I’m landing on the Hudson.’ Our judges described it as ‘Topical and totally gripping’. Two runners-up enjoyed a 20% discount on our writing retreat in the south of France in October last year. We can’t think of a better reason for you to put fingers to keyboard and start dreaming up your own entry. Who knows where it might lead you?
Send your entry to us here. Only entries submitted via this link will be eligible, but you may enter as many times as you like (one aspiring hopeful once submitted over 3,000 entries to a similar competition). A single email may contain multiple entries. Entries must be original and previously unpublished.
Competition closes 30th June 2013.
Terms and conditions apply.
