By now you’ve heard that Copyblogger’s Twitter Writing Contest is over, if you were following it. Of the dozens of prizes handed out, the best prize was unexpected: the winners scored a mention in the LA Times. Talk about instant exposure.

Instead of wasting time wondering how close I came, I’m following a tip from screenwriter John August (via Daring Fireball): take a good piece and reverse engineer it. “Think of yourself as an ordinary mechanic given the task of reverse-engineering a spaceship,” he says. “Figure out what the pieces do, and why they were put together in that way.”

First Place

“Time travel works!” the note read. “However you can only travel to the past and one-way.” I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill. (Ron Gould)

This one has a perfect three-act structure. The first three words are a killer hook. The second sentence sets up the conflict, the third brings it home. It makes me wonder where the narrator found the note, and what happened to him or her — in the future, in the past, whenever. First through third place all made great use of the last-sentence twist.

Second Place

Tony was a snitch, so I wasn’t surprised when his torso turned up in the river. What did surprise me, though, was where they found his head. (Anthony Juliano)

“Tony was a snitch” — again with the hook. You know exactly what’s coming when you read those four words. But you want to know who had Tony whacked and, of course, where they found that head. Also, what’s the narrator’s relationship to Tony? I believe someone commented that this one would make a great novel opener.

Third Place

When Gibson hit that homerun in the fall of eighty-eight, my old man had never been so happy. He hugged me for the first time. I was eleven. (Thelonius Monk)

This one is my favorite. It packs so much tone and character into a small space — you can almost see the sepia photograph. You get everything you need to know about the relationship between the narrator and his father. It’s economical and understated. Contrast the laconic bittersweetness of this one with the emotional tempest in the next one…

Honorable Mention 1

Happily sobbing she held the boy, her memory of his violent conception falling away. She had learned to love him, this would be her revenge. (Melissa Pierce)

This one hits pretty hard and never lets up. “Happily sobbing”, “violent conception” and “revenge” are tempered by “she had learned to love him” — a triumph of will over emotion. I have to take a couple of points off for a missing comma after “sobbing” and a misplaced one in the last sentence (it should be a semicolon or a dash).

Honorable Mention 2

The priest at the funeral home asked if she had been a loving mother. The children all stared at each other. The silence spoke volumes. (Derek)

My second favorite. Death and mommy issues are always good material. At first it seemed to me that “at the funeral home” could be cut without taking anything away from the story, but I think the word “funeral” in the first sentence is necessary to set the mood.

Congratulations to all the winners! I’ll be stalking you all on Twitter soon.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.