The New York Times "City Room" blog editor challenged readers to create the very beginning of a hypothetical 1950's-era pulp novel.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/want-to-be-a-pulp-fiction-writer-heres-your-chance/
My humble entry:
Somehow the sunshiny color of her dress didn't match the way she was wearing it. The dress's shoulder was shifted all askew baring skin and bra strap, leaving the outfit looking shabby and sad. Her too thick lipstick was a shade of red that didn't quite copy the color of the glass rubies strung 'round her slender, milk white neck. Apparently she'd dressed in too much of a rush to have time to notice these details, or didn't have time to care. More important matters needed fussing over, this was plain in her harried eyes and hurried step down the street.
Ralph gazed on until her colorful streak disappeared around the corner. The fumes of the rye he had been sipping were giving him that dizziness that made his mind see things with a kind of poetry never written in any of the books he was used to reading.
Reading my peers' entries after I posted my own, I realized I didn't come near to satisfying the parameters of the genre: the ridiculous hyperbole, the edginess, the grittiness, the violence in word and gesture. In fact what my attempt really makes obvious is how oppositely my tendencies run, unfortunately in this instance.
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