(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)

The knight had never seen a battle that surprised him.

Until that fateful day when the terrible creature appeared.

No one would survive to tell the tale.

He wondered what had made everyone freeze.

Then he smelled its fiery breath.

The entire army stared, speechless.

Nervously, he turned around.

Piercing yellow eyes.

Enormous teeth.

Dragon!


This piece is based on What If? Exercise 93: “Ten to One”. The exercise is to write a 55-word story in which the first sentence has ten words, the second has nine, etc., until the last sentence has only one word. The objective is to show that precision and thrift in writing can produce surprisingly powerful results. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for reading!

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