Important Announcement DullPencil is temporarily on hiatus as we search for new staff members to replace our founders, who have moved-on to various post-high school endeavors. If you are a middle or high school student, and are interested in volunteering, please send us an email to inquiry@dullpencil.com.
Exciting News! Reini Lin, one of our fantastic Dull Pencil Anthology Vol. 1 alumns, has founded a new, mind-blowing literary magazine called Fragments of Chiaroscuro. You must check it out!
Congratulations to Jodi Fleming, whose foreboding opening to The Coming slammed its way past the 100 vote mark!
Congratulations to SeineW, whose heavenly opening to Grace sniffed its way past the otherworldly 300 vote mark!
Congratulations to SeineW, whose divine opening to Grace catapulted its way past the elusive 200 vote mark!
Congratulations to SeineW, whose Grace-ful opening to Grace ascended its way above the 100 vote mark!
Congratulations to BretP, whose piercing opening to The Great Deal stabbed its way past the 100 vote mark!
Important Announcement: Our old dullpencil.com site has suffered a fatal attack from a diabolical hacker on 12/14/2015. Seriously, who attacks a site as unthreatening as Dull Pencil? Please rest assured that none of our user information (email addresses) were compromised, and please be patient with us as we rebuild the site at our new address, dullpencilpress.com, with data we were able to recover from our old host. We're also using a new, more secure, coding platform, and it may take us awhile before we can restore the one-click voting function. In the meantime, I'm afraid we'll have to do it the old fashioned way: please send us an email to vote@dullpencil.com, to let us know which 150-word post(s) you liked. Then, we will update all the vote tallies at least once every week. If you are not a member and would like to join our community, please email us at inquiry@dullpencil.com, and we will manually set up an account for you. We apologize for this great inconvenience, and hope that we will be able to restore all the functions and contents soon.
Congratulations to SeineW, whose heavenly opening to Grace sniffed its way past the otherworldly 300 vote mark!
Congratulations to SeineW, whose divine opening to Grace catapulted its way past the elusive 200 vote mark!
Congratulations to SeineW, whose Grace-ful opening to Grace ascended its way above the 100 vote mark!
Congratulations to BretP, whose piercing opening to The Great Deal stabbed its way past the 100 vote mark!
Important Announcement: Our old dullpencil.com site has suffered a fatal attack from a diabolical hacker on 12/14/2015. Seriously, who attacks a site as unthreatening as Dull Pencil? Please rest assured that none of our user information (email addresses) were compromised, and please be patient with us as we rebuild the site at our new address, dullpencilpress.com, with data we were able to recover from our old host. We're also using a new, more secure, coding platform, and it may take us awhile before we can restore the one-click voting function. In the meantime, I'm afraid we'll have to do it the old fashioned way: please send us an email to vote@dullpencil.com, to let us know which 150-word post(s) you liked. Then, we will update all the vote tallies at least once every week. If you are not a member and would like to join our community, please email us at inquiry@dullpencil.com, and we will manually set up an account for you. We apologize for this great inconvenience, and hope that we will be able to restore all the functions and contents soon.
This week's 150-word editor blog: Real vs. Believable- Posted April 22, 2016 -
Someone just told me a fantastical story about a lady who had escaped death by mere minutes at a mass shooting in a Toronto mall, only to be killed just a month later in another mass shooting inside a Denver movie theatre. She swore it was true, and, of course, being a rational human being, I did not believe her. Well, it did turn out to be true. If I had read such an account in a novel, I probably would have stopped reading it, because it wasn’t believable, and the fictional veil would’ve been torn away from me. Just goes to show you how brilliant Mark Twain was when he said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” I often concentrate on making my stories seem real. However, there is sometimes a stark difference between what’s real and what’s believable, and we have to be mindful of that, especially when we’re writing a story based on real-life inspirations. (Read more blogs here) |
It's Here!!!!!
The debut volume of the Dull Pencil Anthology has been published, and you can purchase your very own copy here. A special thanks to all the wonderful contributors (now published authors!), who've persevered through the grueling editing process. Remember, all profits from the sale of the anthology will be donated to Room to Read, the amazing charity devoted to promoting and enabling literacy in the Third World through training teachers, publishing local language books, and building schools and libraries. |
Latest 150-word opening submissions from members
The Coming
Posted by Jodi Fleming on 2/12/2016 155 Votes
It started with a bang.
I was born at exactly the moment when terrorists slammed a Boeing 757 passenger jet onto the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, on September 11, 2001. A quarter hour later, just as the second plane rammed into the South Tower, my mother died from amniotic-fluid embolism. And, as the towers finally collapsed about an hour later, my grief stricken father’s body was found in the hospital’s parking lot, on top of the crushed roof of a Saab sedan that was parked in a space marked “Administrator Only.”
No one told me these things. I discovered the details of my disastrous birth by looking up old newspaper articles online. I can’t say that I felt particularly distressed upon learning these facts, since I’d never known my parents, and since my life with Tim and Robbie, my adoptive “parents,” was pretty sweet.
But, the timing of the chain of events – the correlation between them – were just too perfect to be coincidental.
I was born at exactly the moment when terrorists slammed a Boeing 757 passenger jet onto the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, on September 11, 2001. A quarter hour later, just as the second plane rammed into the South Tower, my mother died from amniotic-fluid embolism. And, as the towers finally collapsed about an hour later, my grief stricken father’s body was found in the hospital’s parking lot, on top of the crushed roof of a Saab sedan that was parked in a space marked “Administrator Only.”
No one told me these things. I discovered the details of my disastrous birth by looking up old newspaper articles online. I can’t say that I felt particularly distressed upon learning these facts, since I’d never known my parents, and since my life with Tim and Robbie, my adoptive “parents,” was pretty sweet.
But, the timing of the chain of events – the correlation between them – were just too perfect to be coincidental.
GracePosted by SeineW on 1/8/2016 372 Votes
“God told me to do it.”
I hope that works. I just can’t take another month of after-school detention. Being new and all, I’m hoping that Principle Heeley is as stupid as he looks. “Wha … ok, Grace … Miss Chung. Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that God told you to pull up Barbara Mendoza’s shirt over her head during the school assembly?” “Yes.” No turning back now. He starts to drum his desk with his fingertips, looking at me with a frown that seems to be sniffing the air for floating bullshit particles. He clears his throat. “Look Grace. I’m gonna tell you straight. If you stick to your story about God, I’m going to have to refer you to the district psychologist. If you tell her the same thing, she’s going to have to … do something. If you tell her a different story, you will get expelled. If you change your story now, to me, you just get more detention, maybe a short suspension. Now, what's it going to be?” “God told me to do it.” |
EvolutionPosted by Viteo23 on 1/8/2015 54 Votes
It’s always hot when she woke up. That was the problem with having artificial blood: it didn’t transfer heat around the body very well. So, when you’re asleep and the heart beats slowly, parts of your body would overheat.
But it was the only way people like Morey could live on an oxygen scarce, cold planet like Mars. The blood was like a magnet for oxygen molecules and was infused with nano-heaters that contained various radioactive isotopes that release heat while keeping-in most of the harmful radiation. It allowed you to walk around the surface with tee-shirts and shorts. The only problems were the overheating at night and, for people with dark complexions like Morey, the blood vessels all over the body would turn a bright orange when she physically exerted herself. So, she didn’t really think much of it when she started getting orange patches on her belly after her morning jogs inside the Pabo crater before school. But then it started itching. |
To read the Top 25 vote getting 150-Word openings and comments for the current solicitation period, click here. All 150-Word posts and comments for this solicitation period can be found here. The Archive page contains all 150-Word posts since 2012. Only members can access these pages, and vote for submissions. To sign-up, please send an email request to inquiry@dullpencil.com.