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

Our trip to the beach was an annual family tradition.

Every New Year’s, we’d go down to watch them.

The beach would always be crowded that night.

Everyone wanted to welcome the new year.

The final countdown to midnight began.

At one, they started flying.

All along the coast.

Exploding sky flowers.

Colorful embers.

Fireworks!

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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