Modestly I must admit the best story won complete acclaim from all my fellow writers. Following, my masterpeice.
The formula
Once again I felt disappointment at not winning the creative writing competition after making such an effort to produce a story that was lively, full of colour and with a robust main character. I of course never showed my disappointment to my fellow writers but surely the story of the three legged cat by Hannah was hardly in the same class as mine.
I was thinking this when on my way back home I picked up the Guardian as I noticed that its supplement was on the subject of writing a short novel. Not normally my kind of politics but in this case.
After arriving home at my opulent top floor flat overlooking the Thames I soon hungrily started to read the Guardian supplement. I opened up the laptop and settling back into the richly decorated divan I started what I hoped would be a far better structured story that they would find impossible not to award top marks. I felt a warm glow of pleasure at having found such a well written helpful guide. I read that all good stories follow the formula. It advised that you should have a character completely different from your self and then to build the likes and dislikes. Right, my character would be a woman not young but again not too old. Attractive and very sexual. Dressed in a tight fitting light blue two piece suit she looked competent and beautiful. I could see her face shining and alive. A successful business woman sitting at her desk, a modern polished workmanlike affair with the laptop open its screen filled with a large spread sheet of the companies current account.
Evelyn, I thought, that is her name. She was studying a small parcel well wrapped and tied with a pink ribbon. Her secretary had brought it in and said Happy Birthday. It was a complete shock to her she had forgotten she was 40 years old.
The formula said broaden the picture to show where the action is. I could see it was a modern office block and Evelyn rented a whole unfurnished floor on the third storey. She had devoted time and money bringing in the best designers to bring that air of competence and culture necessary to woo the clients when demonstrating the latest company brand marketing strategy. The office block was in the smart part of the city where only the richest could afford the high rents and taxes.
Relationships had to be sketched in. Not too many to be confusing and not so well described to take away the thrust of the main theme and the main character. I saw that Evelyn would have several lovers but only two vying for her affection Jim Henderson a rich mysterious part Arab with no visible means of support but not lacking in funds and Paul Wynberg a financier from the city. Both men were in their thirties both divorced. She thought she loved them both and neither were aware of the other but seeing the unwrapped birthday present it suddenly came home to her that this double life had to end.
I came back into focus, this imagery was intoxicating but it had to end for me too as I have now run over the prescribed 500 words.
