Enter The Contest Read & Rate Entries View Past Winners Free Typing Test Writing Resources Home | Contest | Write A Book | Write Ebooks For Cash | Be A Travel Writer | Write Children's Books Write For Newspapers | Write An Ezine | Write A Blog | Writing Skills & Tips | Novel Writing Software Please take a moment to bookmark this site and join our free hot tips list. Read & Rate Our Writing Contest Entries! See what other people have written, and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5. This is an opportunity to view a wide variety of short stories and see what kind of original material is being submitted to us on a daily basis. After you rate an entry, you will be randomly redirected to another entry to rate. You may read and rate as many entries as you wish! The user-rating system is simply a fun way for writers to receive a public opinion of their work, and does not affect the judging for the cash prizes. If you wish to enter the contest, you may enter for free here. Rate This Contest Entry: Contest: June 30th, 2005 Author: Joe Class “With musket loaded in hand, my father stood on our rooftop, sighted in on the pesky squirrel, and fired! As the smoke cleared he saw a big hole where the squirrel had been, the peanut butter sandwich still intact in the squirrel’s paws. His face bright red, cussing and screaming at the squirrel, my father hand-loaded the musket once more.” How many of us have heard a story like this one? The strangest things in life are the things we want to forget. Those stories remind us that everyone is a little crazy. All crazy, zany thoughts have the inane ability to want to be retold. Each of us can retell a crazy, funny, zany story that has personally happened to us. Mine is a little different from most. Mine concerns my brother Jon and his experience with a sliding glass door. This particular Saturday I, James and Jon were doing our daily chores. Naturally we waited until the weekend to do the really nasty things, like dishes, vacuuming, dusting, and of course cleaning the windows, which included the sliding glass door. James and Jon had traded chores which upset James because Jon finished first. James should’ve thought twice about trading with Jon. My chores weren’t easy, but I finished quickly because I hated doing them. As you would expect, being the oldest I had more to do than my younger siblings, and that meant I had to clean the sliding glass door. Cleaning the glass was an easy job, especially considering I enjoyed it. When I started cleaning it the door was open and Jon was playing outside with his friend David. Not thinking about it I closed the solid glass door. Lying down on the floor in the sunshine, I petted our white cat, Contessa. Then I heard it. Jon. Running from the side yard. He came barreling down patio and turned. Unfortunately he hit the closed sliding glass door at full speed. Bouncing off the door, Jon hit the ground. Off like a shot went Contessa. Firmly in its grip laughter held me. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was point outside when my Dad came downstairs to see what happened. I’ll never forget those words coming out of my Dad’s mouth, “Are you okay?” he said between laughs. Everyone has told or has been told a story, whether it is the story of Hansel and Gretel, the birth of Jesus, the crazy Thanksgiving you had when Mom and Dad and Uncle Jim danced on the dining room table, or the death of a houseplant you named Myrtle. The subject matter is not as important as the telling and the retelling of the story. How often have you heard someone tell a story and you wish you could retell the same way? A storyteller uses gestures, tonal inflections, eye movements and body language to stress the important segments of the story. Actors and storytellers are similar in creating believable characters yet the storyteller is much busier than the actor because the actor need worry about one character, whereas the storyteller needs to worry about all characters, settings, action, and so on. Which is better, the actor performing a single role, or the storyteller, who creates an entire world based on his or her words alone? Who is more creative? None of these things matter as much as the story itself. A story is art, in the same way that the Mona Lisa is. For example, the Da Vinci starts with a brush, a few paints, and a blank canvas. Stories start with imagination, creativity, and a natural sounding voice. Monet begins tracing a design across the canvas, waiting to see what will take shape. Stories begin with an opening sentence, preparing the listeners. With brush in hand, sometimes using feather-light strokes, other times gouging the canvas, Picasso paints a beautiful scene. Streams of words flow into the story, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, all parts of sentence structure connected together, joined by the unity of metaphors, carried on the wind by similes, and the listener is astounded and amazed, and at a loss for words. Spoken language is beautiful and stories teem and abound all around us. We should take a cue from storytellers and remember how the teller made us feel sitting around the campfire hearing ghost stories. We should remember the quirky little details of the Napoleon Dynamite’s in our lives. We should remember what it was like to listen. We should be the storytellers, taking pieces of the stories we hear and creating our own paintings. We should preserve stories for our children. Stories are us and we are the story. Rate This Entry! Warning: fopen(/home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3r_data/.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3_rating.php on line 69 Error opening file. Use browser's back button and try again people have rated it so far. Warning: fopen(/home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3r_data/.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3_rating.php on line 69 Error opening file. Use browser's back button and try again is the current average. Warning: fopen(/home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3r_data/.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3_rating.php on line 69 Error opening file. Use browser's back button and try again Warning: fopen(/home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3r_data/.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/writingc/public_html/entries/b3_rating/b3_rating.php on line 69 Error opening file. Use browser's back button and try again Skip to another entry

Join Our Free Tips Club The internet and new technology are continuing to change the face of the publishing industry. Will you ride the wave or get pummelled by it? Let us help you make money as a writer by giving you hot tips when new trends arrive. We will never sell, rent, or give away your email address. Join today and get 5 FREE EBOOKS! These ebooks are written by some of the hottest online gurus, and uncover many secrets about how you can make money right now by writing from home. Learn how to turn your computer into a cash machine by implementing the online writing techniques revealed by these masters! A $475.00 Value for FREE when you join today!   HotJobs.com | Job.com | 100kJob.com | Monster.com | JobsInSports.com | CareerBuilder.com Home | Contest | Write A Book | Write Ebooks For Cash | Be A Travel Writer | Write Children's Books Write For Newspapers | Write An Ezine | Write A Blog | Writing Skills & Tips | Novel Writing Software © Copyright 2005 WritingCash.com All Rights Reserved | Terms of Use | Privacy | Web Links