I have discovered a new writing challenge, and am going to try it on for size, see how it fits, look at my reflection and assess the situation 🙂
100 Words is another weekly writing challenge over at Velvet Verbosity. The lovely lady behind the blog and challenge launches a word or phrase at us on a Monday and gives us a week to play with it any way we like, as long as it is exactly 100 words long. We can then link up our post using the nifty linking tool, have other challengees read our posts, and best of all, read theirs! So, here goes…. I hope you like it!
*****
– Raw –
They didn’t quite make it.
The girl, grasping the tiny little boy close to her chest, ran like fury as if wild horses were chasing her down. I, who had grown up feral amongst the gang of the abandoned, who had learned to fend for myself instead of embrace a care-free childhood – I had never witnessed this before. This urge to protect, no matter what, was alien to me.
Here, I saw love for the first time. I saw it in her terrified face, I saw it in the tiny boy’s fists grasping his sister’s shoulders. I saw it raw.
*****
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Freya Writes... 
Another interesting challenge! It can’t be very easy to write something in exactly 100 words. I often struggle with about 100 or about 150 and it took a lot of editing yesterday to reduce my story to 333 words.
Very good take and, as always, superbly written!
The atmosphere in this piece reminds me of the one you posted a few days ago, ‘Destroyers’. Of course the point of view is different but it could be what a person witnessing the scene could have written – even if the child was a little sister, not a boy.
Aha! I wondered if you might make the unintended connection between this post and Destroyers! It could almost be a follow-on or viewpoint from another person witnessing the scene.
I quite like the very tight word limit – it means that I strip out all the unnecessary language 🙂 – but it is indeed quite a challenge. Perhaps it is something you could aim for at a later date?
Thank you for the positive comments – I really appreciate it.
Very nicely written. This is one of our favorite challenges at the team blog that I spearhead. The Wild Horse of Bad Wolf Bay was created by Teammate Wanda for this prompt.
Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ll take a more exploratory delve into your team blog and Teammate Wanda’s response in the next few days.
I tried Velvet Verbosity a while ago and could never get my stories to make it to 100 words and make sense. Congratulations on doing that! 🙂 There’s just enough tension in the story to get you hooked and definitely a lot of ‘raw’ emotion here. Good job!
I agree, 100 words is quite the limit! I have learned not to be precious about phrases that I thought might be ‘clever’. Often, they just repeat what I have already written 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed it, and that it was just ‘raw’ enough.
Great effort Freya. Intense and powerful. The 100 words is a challenge, I like it. I tried this one out. I found the topic the biggest challenge. My reality is I love the editing bit.
Thank you! Ooh, I’ll have to take a look at your submission in a moment. And since you shared your secret, I’ll share mine… I love the editing bit, too 🙂
Great job!
Thank you, Sam.