Winner - Recommend Your Favorite Freewrite - 1/9/2021

freewritehouse (67)adminin Freewriters • 4 years ago (edited)

The Participants

My favorite freewrite this week is by @doppley, using the prompt “live with spirits” and “chalice.”

He gives us a complete short story in his freewrite. I mean that he utilizes (effectively) the technical parts of a well-constructed plot.

In the first paragraph we are given a character with a goal: to win a race maintain his reputation. The character is confronted with an obstacle when it begins to rain, and that obstacle becomes more serious when it turns out it is raining blood. A further complication comes in the form of a screeching voice that knocks him to the ground. He his thwarted in his quest, and we are presented with the major dramatic question of the work: will he be okay?

Perhaps so. In the second paragraph, he wakes up and realizes he had a nightmare. But now he is confronted with new obstacles, which grow in seriousness both within the paragraph and in the story as a whole. The lights are out, he has to go basement (which we all know can be scary in the dark), and then he hears the voice from his dream, but now it is in real life. These increasing obstacles create rising action.

The action rises further in the third paragraph, as his situation becomes increasingly perilous. There is a pattern to the presentation of obstacles: we start with commonplace complications (he's in a dark basement, struggles to find the fuse box, can't find a spare fuse), and then we ramp up to the truly scary when the stairs creak. I don't think a pattern like this is a bad thing; it works; certainly I did not notice it when I enjoyed the story on the first read.

In the concluding paragraph we get a resolution to the rising action in the form of an answer to the major dramatic question, will he be okay? The answer is probably not, and the form the answer takes is both inevitable and surprising. We expect to find out if the voice talking to him is real (inevitable part of the resolution), and it is surprising (horrifying) when he opens his eyes and 'it' is staring back at him.