Short Story competition- an archaeologist’s nightmare

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing a story is getting started…..

For my students I often use a short piece of writing to get them started, to get the creative juices flowing and to limit the time spent biting the end of the pen.

I thought the other day that this would be a great way of encouraging other people to have a shot at a tale or two and so I decided that a little contest might be fun.

The rules:

Taking the following short passage as a starter, write the story this inspires you to write in as many or as few words as you like. Copy and paste the text below as your starter; it’s not to be changed in any way. The rest is up to you but no smut please. And definitely no pornography. I have some tolerance for strong language but only when it is in context.

Then what? You have two choices at this point. You can either post the story on your blog, and put a link to the contest here(and encourage your visitors and friends to have a try too) or if you don’t have a blog, either post the story in the comments section for this post or email me the story and I will include it in a follow up post which links all the contestants together so everyone can have fun reading what the others have written.

The reward:

Apart from the satisfaction of writing a great story? OK, you mercenary lot….if you are not already on my blogroll, I shall add you. If you are, I will plug your blog here.

As an added incentive,  I will write either a blog post (as guest blogger) or a short story or poem, on a subject of your choosing (within reason; I have limits….) for whoever writes the story I would most like to have written myself. Yes, I know this is entirely subjective but hey, I have to decide somehow.

One other thing: the archaeologist in the starter is almost certainly Alex from Strangers and Pilgrims…..

Over to you.

An archaeologist’s nightmare

Many years ago while Alex was a student, he spent some weeks one summer helping on an archaeological dig. The weather was fine and while the work was quite boring, the other people were pleasant and he found he was making friends.

One afternoon, he was kneeling in a ditch with the sun beating down on his back. He was slowly uncovering something buried in the earth but when the piece of pottery came free, so did something else. Looking down with utter horror, Alex saw poking out of the mud………

© Vivienne Tuffnell 2008