Fishing for the Judge’s Eye
by Ace Baker
Editor’s note: Baker was the grand prize winner of the Blank Spaces 2021 Fiction Anthology Contest. The story he refers to in this article is published in The Things We Leave Behind, released by Chicken House Press on April 30, 2022.
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
—Margaret Atwood, Power Politics: Poems* (House of Anansi Press)
Memorable, yes? And if you’re casting your lines into a contest, you want your entry to hook the judges in much the same way. Make sure they can’t forget your work. Here are a few approaches I sometimes take to do just that:
RELATIONSHITS
Generally, people aren’t interested in reading about an ordinary life. Take that stereotype and flip it. To give an example, one of my past creative writing students once wrote a story involving domestic violence. Instead of telling that tale from the victim’s standpoint, which most of these stories do, she told it from the point of view of the abuser. The result was that “Raining Glass,” by then seventeen-year-old Jun Park, won Your Story Contest #62 and she had her work published in the July/August 2015 edition of Writer’s Digest. More than 400 writers (mostly adults) entered that contest.
I used that idea in my story “Menos Coca, Más Cacao.” My protagonist has a boyfriend who is a police officer—a person you can turn to in times of trouble, yes? No. He turns out to be one of the most ruthless members of a local gang. And she discovers this fact in the most terrible way: she sees him take off his balaclava and then slit the throat of her father. That’s got to hurt the marriage plans.
PICTURE PERFECT
Okay, here’s where I disagree with some “traditional” writer advice: use all five senses.
Garbage.
There is rarely a scene where all five senses come into play. Forcing them in makes whatever is happening seem unnatural. Instead, focus on the senses that make sense for the scene. When my protagonist and her father are hiding in a space under the floorboards as their place is ransacked by local gangsters, I chose to focus on sound:
In minutes, we hear them tearing up our home, breaking everything that can be broken, knocking pictures off walls, smashing glass. I can hear objects falling to the floor, fracturing above our hiding spot. And I don’t dare breathe.
There is no light under the floorboards—sight imagery would be difficult. They are not eating and there is nothing present that gives off a strong smell. Though cramped together, I don’t exactly want to use touch imagery for a father and daughter hiding out. Sound makes sense here.
DUCT TAPE
Duct tape sticks to everything. The goal of a contest entry is to stick in the brain of the judge. You need that weird factor, something they haven’t seen. In this case, in the final scene of my story (SPOILER ALERT), my protagonist takes revenge with an unusual murder weapon:
In one hand, I’m holding a poison dart frog…enough poison in its skin to kill twenty humans on contact.
And I think of my mother. And I think of my father. And I think of one sweep of the arm.
And I rub that frog all over my lover’s body…
And now that you’ve read that, you can’t get the image out of your head, yes? Neither can someone else:
Judge #1: “I like the one with the frog, you know?”
Judge #2: “Oh yeah, THAT one!”
Mission accomplished.
Once you hook that editor’s eye, and they can’t look away, reel them in with smooth storytelling and compelling characters. You never know, you might just land the biggest catch of all—a place in the winners’ circle!
To support Ace’s writing and to read the rest of his story — “Menos Coca, Más Cacao” — purchase your copy of The Things We Leave Behind from the CHP bookstore. A Kindle version is available through Amazon and a KOBO version is available through the Kobo store.
Interested in the 2022 Anthology Contest? Learn more HERE.
*this post contains Amazon links - any purchases made through these links returns ad dollars to Chicken House Press
