Pointless Ways of Writing a Short Story for a Competition

This broken pencil is pointless, and, not very useful for writing a story, but have you seen the new television teatime quiz show, Pointless, with Alexander Armstrong?

Each day the contestants have to guess the least likely answer given by 'one hundred people in one hundred seconds' on such various topics as countries ending in 'a', or the films of Doris Day, or the periodic table of elements (not my favourite!). If they're right then the counter goes down to zero, and they win the jackpot in the final round.

What am I getting at? Well, my point is that we're often told in books and magazines when considering a competition entry, write a list of all possible scenarios and then write some more. In similar way to the Pointless programme, you have to try and think of something that no one else has thought of so your story is unique. It's not easy, but give it a try!