Sunday 8 January 2012

A Cliff-Hanger Part I - Mrs. Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus Week 88


Jenny Matlock


Welcome to week eighty-eight of Saturday Centus.

THE PROMPT THIS WEEK IS: Hanging off a cliff! (Might as well be literal while we're attempting to use this literary device!)
WORD COUNT - Not to exceed 100 words plus the 4 words of the prompt. 104 words total.
STYLE OF WRITING - Any so long as you utilize a cliffhanger writing device to wrap your story up. Next week we'll do an additional 100 words for the rest of the story.
ADDITIONAL PICTURES IF DESIRED

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Here is my text:
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Charles took the footpath up the hill overlooking the town and the bay. It was misty at twilight, but he could still see the reflections of the city-lights in the sea. It started to rain when he reached the top, which was above a wall of seabirds' nests. They dug into the limestone making it hollow and it could crumple under your weight and leave you hanging off a cliff, if you were lucky enough not to fall 400 meters down onto the rocks.

With pencil and notebook in hand,
he heard a voice. Turning around, he felt the ground sinking.
'No!' he gasped.

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Word count according to WordCalc: 104

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Best wishes,
Anna



P.S.
This text is fictional, but the landscape and bird life are inspired by my many nature-walks when I lived on Iceland for a time, many years ago. But that was a very wild, natural landscape, with no city-lights reflected in the waters of a bay. It was a beautiful but dangerous place. Sometimes tourists did fall off cliffs and die.


Another source of inspiration for this text is one of the first scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film, Rebecca, after Daphne du Maurier's novel, with the same name, where Maxin de Winter (Sir Laurence Olivier) is standing a little too close to the edge of a cliff over-looking Monte Carlo. This is were he meets his second (and never named) wife, played by actress Joan Fontaine.

First Commenter:

Judie McEwen



of

Rogue Artists




To visit other SC-posts please go to this site or click on the image below:

Jenny Matlock

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Here are Mrs. Jenny Matlock's instructions:

Welcome to week eighty-eight of Saturday Centus. I am only one week behind in reading now! Go me!

So...

It's a new year and I'm feeling like we should stretch our brains just a tiny bit to rid ourselves of the last residues of fudge and sugar cookies.

Let's try a two week Saturday Centus.

Using a literary device.

Yes.

I said a literary device.

It's good for you.

Don't groan. Please.

This week I thought we could try to use a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger is defined as: The narrative ends unresolved, to draw the audience back to a future episode for the resolution.

Thus...

The two part challenge.

Next week we will conclude our cliffhanger centus.

Cool, right?

The regular restrictions apply: PG, no splitting of the prompt, play nicely and visit the other entries, any style or genre of writing you prefer.

Please display my link button or just a hyper-link back to Saturday Centus. Be careful to link your SC URL to the Linky and not just link to your main blog.

E-mail me directly with ???'s or ask your question in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

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