Ref: Pages eight and nine of the text by Robert Olmstead.
1.Begin a story with the words, this time. Talk about a version of literal or figurative death. Write at least two paragraphs.
2.Allow a character to imagine how something might have gone. Use verbs that allow the action to be ongoing.
3.In a paragraph, use delicate words to describe something harsh or horrible in order to reveal something unexpected.
This time it left the boy alive, for a while. The beast snatched him from the field and thrust him onto a broken branch of his mother’s apple tree. It hid and baited them out. The boy’s family rushed to the sound of his cries and the devil took them too.
This time it waited until they attempted a rescue. It left him skewered on a branch, stuck through but still breathing. How he must have felt knowing it was his cry that brought his family’s doom. I found the wet remains at the base of the tree. He tried not to cry out. I found him with his belt stuffed in his mouth, but it was the self-inflicted knife wound to the neck that ended him. He watched it happen and couldn’t kick himself free. I arrived the morning after to find him stuck to that tree. His life painting the green apples with a slick, red varnish that dripped onto eager roots.