Under 100 words

[TheEarl]

I've recently been working on one of my idle fantasies. No, not the one with the syncronised swimmers and the strawberry yoghurt. This is one where I finally decide what I'm gonna do and end up becoming a sports journalist.

So have been writing articles for small websites and then saw an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph about a competition for young sports writers. Trick is the entry is to write a report about your most memorable sporting moment that is less than 100 words. My first draft was 1300.

I have got it down to 100 now (after writing a second, very terse first draft thta was only 384!), but I think that's ridiculous. I can write 100 good words without trying, in fact, I can write 300 good words without trying. It's bloody hard to condense one emotion into 100 words, let alone all the emotions I experience in a good game of rugby. If 100 words is a challenge to anyone, then they should not be entering a competition to win a place in the Telegraph sports team.

More than that, I'm not sure what anyone can tell from 100 words. They can see I have a command of the English language and that I've managed to convey my points across, but they don't know anything about my descriptive language or my encyclopedic knowledge of English rugby.

And what really bites is that I had a really, really good version that was only 109 words. And I had to reduce the quality to get it down to 100. That just sucks.

/vent

The Earl

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Add your nine words back. Then go over the entire thing and look to remove adjectives and adverbs that are two or three words where a word already exists that describes it in one. Ask Harold, or raphy or Doc M or one of the really good authors here who use a terse style.

Part of a 100 word limit is to test your vocabulary and your ability to keep a report small enough to fit in the sports section when a blow by blow would be too paper consuming.

"Joe smashed into the ball carier with his shuolder and slammed him to the turf" tells us what happened.

"Joe tackled him" does to, but it's so plain.

"They collided and crashed to the ground" says the same thing.

It's less desciptive than the first, but more informative than the second and for the loss of descriptiveness you shave eight words.

Approach it as a puzzle, wher eyou have to find the right words for every thing and it canbe more fun than work.

-Colly

 

[Black Tulip]

Hey Earl,

I've nothing in the way of wise words, but I do wish you luck.

 

[NoJo]

I've had to learn a lot of condensation techniques in screenwriting: The simplest, almost a cheat, is to get rid of "ands", replacing them by commas in the decriptive passages.

If you want, you can PM me the stuff. I guarantee I can shave ten words off your 109.

Josh.

 

[Black Tulip]

What do you know. I found this surfing the net:

http://www.katyterrega.com/flashfiction.html

Maybe it helps.

 

[Ravishing]

I'll wish you luck too, and that someone here can help you get it completed.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

100 words is plenty. Your approach is just not the right one. Instead of cutting cutting from a previous draft (which obviously will lose quality), you have to make sure every word counts from the start. Write up to the 100th word, not the other way around. Focus. Write only one sentence that defines your moment. When you have that, you can build around it.

Has anyone ever read this book? Delicious stuff.
The World's Shortest Stories: Murder, Love, Horror, Suspense

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Hey, Earl,

What about this as an opening?

Outlined against the blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend Cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below. *

It only leaves me 23 words to sum things up, but when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Rumple Foreskin

* I confess, that quote is the famous lead paragraph of American sportwriter Grantland Rice in his article on the 1924 Army-Notre Dame football game held in New York City.

 

[TheEarl]

Add your nine words back. Then go over the entire thing and look to remove adjectives and adverbs that are two or three words where a word already exists that describes it in one. Ask Harold, or raphy or Doc M or one of the really good authors here who use a terse style.

Done that. That's how I got it down to 109 in the first place. The 100 word version says exactly the same thing as the 109, but it's not as pretty. I've got a very nice turn of phrase in the first para of the 109 which sets up the scene, which I've had to cut back to a couple of words. The words say the same thing, but they're not as fun to read.

Ho hum. Thanks all.

The Earl

 

[wishfulthinking]

I think Lauren has the right idea!

Keep it simple. Think of your audience. Definitely don't go over the 100 word mark, because that shows you can't follow directions. Describe what made the moment great, rather than trying to recap the whole event.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don’t want to throw cold water, Earl, but this sounds more like a contest gimmick than it does like a search for a good journalist. You know, the kind of things where your’re supposed to say why you like Butz beer in 25 words or less.

I don’t know much about sports journalism, even less about British sports journalism, but in a hundred words you have no room for context or interpretation of an event, you just have room for the event itself. If I were entering, I think I’d concentrate on one very specific, instantaneous event: a winning goal, a brilliant play, and I would write the hell out of it.

The way you pack a lot of meaning into a few words is with metaphor. In that Grantland Rice piece that Rumple posted, he could have talked about how good the players were as a group and written a nice solid piece of sports prose, but instead he came up with that brilliant metaphor of the four horseman of the apocalypse, which is rife with meaning and very visual. I think I would go after something like that. Something really, really grabby and almost over the top.

Good luck with it, Earl.

(I wonder, is Og going to enter this contest too? )

---dr.M.

 

[TheEarl]

DrM - Ogg is too old. It's a comp for 18-25 y/o. I agree that the 100 words does seem a little gimmicky, but my submission has actually turned out bloody good. If it gets me onto a shortlist, then I get to go to a major sporting event and write a proper report. Apart from getting an article and my byline in a national newspaper, it'd be bloody good experience as well as a nice monetary prize.

The Earl

 

[raphy]

Earl mate, I'd be more than happy to have a peek at your 109 word version and see if there isn't another way to trim those offending 9 words out... PM me if ya want.

 

[MathGirl]

Famous short sports stories:
1. Spahn and Sain, then pray for rain.
2. The score was 2-1 when I kiked down the dor and cammed in her fase.
MG
Ps. Dr M: Since when did you hate to throw cold water on something?

 

[oggbashan]

DrM - Ogg is too old. It's a comp for 18-25 y/o. I agree that the 100 words does seem a little gimmicky, but my submission has actually turned out bloody good. If it gets me onto a shortlist, then I get to go to a major sporting event and write a proper report. Apart from getting an article and my byline in a national newspaper, it'd be bloody good experience as well as a nice monetary prize.

The Earl

My daughter is too old. And ineligible because she is a Chief Reporter after getting a First in Journalism & Psychology. She won a competition to be a reporter for a day when she was 14.

Og

 

[TheEarl]

Thanks for the offers to edit, and I'd almost certainly take you up on them, but it's already gone off to the great competition bin.

The Earl

 

[Guest]

So if it's only 100 words, won't you post it here? Please.

Pear

 

[pop_54]

Hmmmmmm

I don’t want to throw cold water, Earl, but this sounds more like a contest gimmick than it does like a search for a good journalist. You know, the kind of things where your’re supposed to say why you like Butz beer in 25 words or less.

I don’t know much about sports journalism, even less about British sports journalism, but in a hundred words you have no room for context or interpretation of an event, you just have room for the event itself. If I were entering, I think I’d concentrate on one very specific, instantaneous event: a winning goal, a brilliant play, and I would write the hell out of it.

The way you pack a lot of meaning into a few words is with metaphor. In that Grantland Rice piece that Rumple posted, he could have talked about how good the players were as a group and written a nice solid piece of sports prose, but instead he came up with that brilliant metaphor of the four horseman of the apocalypse, which is rife with meaning and very visual. I think I would go after something like that. Something really, really grabby and almost over the top.

Good luck with it, Earl.

(I wonder, is Og going to enter this contest too? )

---dr.M.

Like you mean:

Butz Beer reminds me of sex on the river bank, it's like 'fucking near water'.

Hmm I've got 10 words left unused, let's see now......................


Good luck with the Comp Earl, how's Uni going by the way??

 

[oggbashan]

Go for it Earl. You can only win a competition if you enter it.

Og

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Og,

Very belated congratulations on your daughter's success. Knowing you, it's obvious there must be some damn strong genes for smarts and talent on her mother's side. We can only hope the same applies for looks.

Rumple Foreskin