Blog Post 2.2
I wasn’t fast enough.
As I swept up my book-bag onto my back and dashed for the crossing light I saw several shadows moving. That random kid must have been well connected, because one call from him brought a group of his friends over to block my path. One of them pushed me hard enough that I lost all momentum – I stumbled to a stop. Maybe a dozen kids quickly surrounded me, all of them ready for action.
In one second I did several things:
I scanned the group lightning fast for an escape route, and found none.
I began to review what I knew about fighting, but I was never good at that.
All I could think of was one lesson that I learned from years of pointless fights: don’t get knocked off your feet. I thought to myself, if you can hold out long enough for intervention then you will be fine. Just stay on your feet until help arrives.
This entire segment was originally one paragraph, for the sake of making the paper look like two pages instead of three and a half, considering the breaks I wanted to use. At first I wanted to keep the first sentence as the break, to highlight how significant it was for me to have not been able to outrun the situation, but then I decided that other parts of this paragraph could be singled out for their significance as well. I think these breaks would have worked quite well in the original revision if I had used them; the first one-sentence paragraph creates the sense of a climax beginning, while the next few one-sentence paragraphs instills a sense of frozen time. In both regards I hoped to manifest a feeling of urgency in my readers, a goal I think may have been achieved.
One response so far
I really like the effect of setting that first sentence off on it’s own. It creates drama, a sense of impending action and urgency.