Writing Sample

A classmate pointed out that jobs for writing bad genre fiction (usually romance but I couldn't find anyone hiring for those) are sometimes posted on Craig's List. Here follow the requirements for a piece of sample writing and the response I submitted to the company offering the job.

Writing sample: In the "writing sample" space below, write a scene for a fantasy story given the following scenario: a 17-year-old slave girl has escaped from her master and is trying to reach the forest outside the city. The city is surrounded by a fifteen-foot high wall patrolled by guards. It is nighttime. The girl is at an alley at the base of the wall, and has decided to climb the wall to gain her freedom. Write the scene of her escape.

You may take whatever creative license you like as long as your scene: Starts with the girl trying to climb the wall from the alley Ends with her safely on the other side (the guards may or may not be alerted) Is between 200 and 400 words Within these constraints, make your scene as engaging as possible, something that would get your reader to read the rest of the story.

 My submission, written in about ten minutes:

"Where is your Uncle, child," the biomechanical eye-creature queried, "why are you not tending to his pleasure! His pleasure is not likely that you stand by the precious Clear Plastic Wall and besmear it with your idle thumb-, foot-, face- and belly-prints!" Twyllorna put on her best pouty smile. "My Uncle's pleasure," (always was it typical for a specimen of human property, such as Twyllorna, to refer to her owner as Uncle), "is that I tend to the pleasure of the biomechanical eye-creatures, whose sacred duty is the observance of the Clear Plastic Wall, and the protection of the same from such besmearment and besmudgery as may occur."

The biomechanical eye-creature would have smiled, had he lips, but instead he twitched the uncloseable lids of his nine eyes. Shuddering, he: "And you must have known the degree of titillation it provides to a biomechanical eye-creature, when such a saucy beastress as yourself should foul the great Clear Plastic Wall with the seepage of your many pores. Ohhh." Twyllorna attended to its pleasure to a great degree, applying a methodology not explicitly mentionable here. Indeed, anywhere.

She came again the next evening and the evening of the day which followed it. On the third evening she did not come, but did on the fourth, indeed. Verily. And when she was arrived, the biomechanical eye-creatures clustered about her. But on this day, Twyllorna, the curveous and wily beastress, had altered her appearance! She was entirely cleaned and smelled of little but soap and Right Guard, and when she rubbed herself unto the wall in a feigned motion of climbery it left only the slightest moistureprint which evaporated with some immediacy.

"Oh, I can give no pleasure this evening, for my Uncle has given me a bath," she cried. "If only I could run, back and forth, up and down, and cause my pores to exude their exudances."

"There is more room for such acrobatics on the other side of the Clear Plastic Wall," she hinted. And so, did the biomechanical eye-creatures stack themselves in a mighty heap and allow her to cross over the wall.

"Goodbye, suckers!"

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 I got a form letter a few days ago saying that I was "among the strongest candidates". I can't imagine what the others were like.