The WDC Olympics: a warmup contest

With apologies for the delay due to an unavoidable crisis, here are the winners of the Olympic Warmup Contest!

As with any contest, participants should remember that one person's opinion is just that, and I'm sure there would be disagreements from other judges, if there were other judges. I hope you all enjoyed playing and can take something from the judge's comments below each of the winning entries.



GOLD Medal



Navigating the uneven sidewalk along Lafayette Street, Andy glanced up from his palm-sized q-Shadow long enough to be reminded he was breaking Rule Number One, according to the bulletin stapled there to a utility pole. Never Go Anywhere Alone! it warned, followed by another ten or so recommendations that changed some each spring. Paranoia tugged at him and, as much as he didn’t want to, he looked over his shoulder. Nothing back there but a few low hanging, sparsely-budded branches and the white van that had trolled behind him for the past six blocks. Andy returned to his text message and quickened his pace.

Deer Springs Park at 4:00, need to talk. A simple enough message from Erica, but one Andy had read and reread probably a dozen times since he received it that morning on his way to school. Although barely eighteen and a newcomer to the game of love, stirring in the pit of his stomach told him to expect the worst. A click on the q-Shadow’s Find Me icon showed the park ahead and a lone blip he recognized. Erica was already there, waiting.

What I liked: In the first sentence, we have the main character lightly introduced, nice detail without distraction, and conflict. The sentence could have been shortened a touch, but still, it’s a great pull. Both paragraphs are fluid, weaving intrigue and description together, plus a burgeoning relationship. It’s enough to give us the overall feel of what to expect, a possibly futuristic time frame or at least a touch of world building, and the writing is smooth. Nice job!


SILVER Medal

George R. Lasher

Big buildups so often lead to even larger letdowns. In the summer of 2016, promoters billed the three-day Isle of Wight Music Festival as "The Festival to End All Festivals." Nobody believed or understood the hype when the psychotic manager of the headlining band, The Hounds of Hell, guaranteed that those who saw the show would never forget it, if they survived. But, as the dark of night gave way to the light of day on Monday, June the 20th, penitent sinners stood in lines that snaked along sidewalks for miles. Churches, synagogues, and mosques, less than half full during weekend services, were filled beyond capacity. The history-making performance that closed the festival left millions fearing for their souls as well as their lives.

After the final song of their set, The Hounds of Hell waved to the cheering crowd and ran to waiting limos as the stage went dark. None of the band members returned for what was planned as and proved to be an unforgettable curtain call. They never came back and, after the sequence of events that followed, neither did a portion of the six-hundred-thousand music fans who attended the festival. That Sunday night, nine thousand music lovers disappeared from the Isle of Wight, never to be seen again. Six million more vanished from around the world while viewing the live show via satellite and internet. Imagine millions watching televisions, wireless laptops, and fancy cell phones. One minute they were enjoying the broadcast. In the next instant, in less time than it took witnesses to gasp, the victims were sucked into the image they viewed. Six million documented cases, and not one trace remained for stunned families and friends to mourn, or for forensics teams to examine.

What I liked: I’m pulled in and will likely go check out more of this story, even though I don’t tend to read paranormal. That’s a nice accomplishment. I placed it second instead of first because there is a lot of info in two paragraphs and it could use some rearranging. The first line does set a tone, but it feels too much like the author telling us what is to come instead of just pulling us in and making us want to find out.


BRONZE Medal

Oldwarrior

Giovanni raised his arms in victory as the great marble slab tumbled over in a cloud of dust. This was a special piece of marble, hand picked by the famous sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti himself. It would become one of the beautiful statues to line the tomb of Pope Julius II.

The cut had been perfect and the men of Carrara were rightfully proud of their knowledge of how to properly work and remove the precious marble. The task before them now was to clear the rubble and move the new cut stone to the plain below for cleaning and shipment. To do this they used an ancient manual technique called " Lizzatura.”

What I liked: The first sentence has character intro plus action and a touch of story line all in very few words. In the first two paragraphs, we get a good feel of the story’s tone and we know there will be both action and history plus some art lessons thrown in. I would have liked just a touch more character development to let me know just who Giovanni is.


MERIT Badges for Honorable Mentions:

Arwen9

Darwin’s skin crawled. Million of tiny insects writhed and squirmed on his bare flesh. Heat seared his body, until his skin felt as if it were peeling and blistering at once.

The attacks came and went like a tide, rubbing out sane thought and pain-free moments as easily as the ocean washed away a sandcastle.

Descriptive, a touch of character intro, and a bit of contrast with the ocean and sandcastle images thrown in with the intensity. This could have been one paragraph with another added for additional pull-in strength.


Allie

Well...Hi. I guess that's how I'd start off. I'm Allie. If you are here because you think you're going to hear a good story, you're wrong. It's not a good story. It's just...part of a story, maybe a good one. You'll be the judge of that. This is my side of the story.

The day I met Austin Nelson, I liked him. I never thought I'd be friends with him. Never. But, here I am today, great friends with him and Kat Niece. I guess you could say we're BFF, yeah, Best Friends Forever. I'd always kept a secret from them both, though. They didn't know. Throughout the whole time I was with them, hanging out, having fun, they didn't know. I came from Jefferson Elementary School in Warrenville, IL. They came from Billards Elementary School in Warrenville. I guess you would say the schools were “rivals”. Each went up to the 5th grade. They each would end up in the same 6th grade classrooms at Herbert Middle School. It used to be a high school, you know. Because of this, naturally, it was bigger than an average middle school. It had three floors. The bottom two were 6th grade. Ironically enough, we were all put on the same team (that's what we called the floors, or groups of teachers you had). We didn't have the same schedule, but we were in a few of the same classes. I had almost all my classes with Kat, and science with Austin. We all had PE together. Even better, Kat and I had IRA together, or Inner Related Arts. Austin was in the other class, so by the last quarter, we would join their class to put together a musical.

Nice conversational style and the tone is well set, plus conflict hinted at that makes us wonder why being from different schools cause enough conflict to need to be a secret. The first paragraph makes us want to get to know Allie, and to do that, we need to keep reading. The second paragraph has too much info all at once but does set a scene.


J. A. Buxton

This morning I grabbed a lawn chair and sat outside near my open front door
to watch the sun come up. Bundled in a warm fuzzy robe with a mug of hot
coffee, I had a reserved front seat to the Buxton Olympics. The sky
was just lightening up, with a background of the moon and stars making for
a beautiful opening ceremony, bar none. To set the stage, I should tell you about Spock, the tall cedar tree about 12 feet from my front door entrance. This tree has many long limbs that curve down from the trunk then curve back upwards again; this provides a perfect jungle gym or parallel bars for the gymnastic portion of the agenda. There is also one extremely long branch that comes down from the tree and wraps around in front of the big living room window. Various sturdy trellises hold up the weight of this limb, and there are four bird feeders at the very end. Others have wind chimes hanging from them providing the background music for the feline Olympians.

Suddenly, an elongated shape darted out from the open door behind me to make
an awe-inspiring jump from ground to main limb. Flat out, ears back against
head and tail straight out behind for balance, the first feline entrant raced
up the limb, jumped to an adjoining limb in a graceful move that humans can
only dream about, and then disappeared into the upper reaches of the tree. For technical merit, I gave it a 9.8 and a 9.5 for artistry. At this point, the returning champion, 14-year-old Rumpus the Remarkable was in first place.

This is charming and promises humor and pleasant descriptions of nature, plus the the analogy made it impossible to resist awarding for an Olympic contest. The author might consider starting with the bundled in a robe scene first since grabbing a chair and sitting is rather passive. Animal lovers will be pulled right in to find further antics from these little Olympians.


Thank you to all participants and to our donors! We were able to send 60,000 GPS to the Olympics fund to be spread around the site.