This is a free writing short that I wrote today at Writer’s Group. We used a nonlyric musical track as the prompt.
The ocean, just the smell was enough to make me smile. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there, just over the hill and through the bushes. Alex brushed past me, pedaling as hard as he could. It didn’t take him long to realize I wasn’t following him.
A good story has a protagonist, goals, and opposition. Opposition includes obstacles and forces of nature, but typically opposition also takes the form of a character. Sometimes the opposition is another protagonist, leaving the audience to choose who they want to root for, but many stories include at least one villain, a character that is definitively “wrong”. Villains can be narrative or mechanical.
Stories frequently show how characters grow to become heroes, or demonstrate and prove that a character is a hero. A hero represents an ideal, the ability to set aside selfish desires and work for the sake of others, sometimes sacrificing personal goals in the process. In a word, altruism. Heroes live by a moral code, with the will to endure, resist temptation, and help others.
