Daddy Dearest
"He loves you, you know," Her mother tells her one night, tucking her in.
"He scares me," She admits, quietly. "He shouts a lot."
"He's just under a lot of stress lately," Her mother explains,
laying a heavy hand on her daughters head.
"That hurts."
"He really does love you," Her mother insists,"He loves all of his children.
Every single one of us."
66 words
Daddy Dearest - edited
"He loves you, you know," Mother tells her one night, tucking her in.
"He scares me," She admits, quietly, timid. "He shouts alot."
"He's just under a lot of stress lately, he really does love you," Mother insists, ardently. "He loves all of his children. Every single one of us."
50 words
Chilling. Good final line to make the reader really react. You can cut much of the narration - leave in some context-setting but trim it way down to get to 50 words. If you are continuing the sentence e.g. "her mother insists", you need to use lower case for "her". And it might be better with a full stop before "He loves all".
ReplyDeleteIt works just as well edited down. "a lot" is two words but you could do without "timid". Check how to punctuate speech in narrative and also check punctuation at clause boundaries - "he really does love you" could function as a sentence, so it can't follow a comma. A dash or a semi-colon would connect the two ideas - which do you think would work better to create the tone?
ReplyDelete