Skip to main content

Writing a short story

So, recently I started looking into Jack the Ripper. (Don't ask me why, it's a weird story.) I found out potential suspects and the one I think did it is named Joseph Barnet. Barnet was "active" during the late 1800's, and targeted prostitutes in London because he disagreed with "their choice of life". So you know--he killed them. (Allegedly!) He was roommates with the last Jack the Ripper victim; Mary Kelly. Rumor has it that Barnet was in love with Kelly, and wanted her off the streets. He earned money so that should wouldn't have to do the dirty, but he lost the job after a while so she was forced to go back to being a prostitute. They had fights over money, and ten days before Kelly was killed, Barnet left her. Coincidence? I think not!

Now, as I questioned my life while researching this, I thought maybe I could write a historical fiction short story about Jack the Ripper! I could have someone kill him! So I made up a story in which Kelly's friend, our unknown narrator, witnessed her murder and was too shocked to try and stop it. She decided to go after Barnet herself after she told the police what she saw but they didn't listen. She followed his movements, figured out where she could kill him and got him to follow her at an abandoned flat complex where she planned to kill him!

You're on the edge of your seat, I can tell.

Now, as exciting as this sounds, I didn't know how to put all this into words. I felt like Dwight Schrute from The Office while writing the story because it seemed so far-fetched to me. But it was for a grade so I couldn't stop. After two weeks of working on this short story, I came up with something kind of OK. But my god--writing stories is hard! I've always respected good authors but now my respect has grown! I think this was a good experience for me because a lot of my future students will want to write short stories in my class if I give them the option (which I will) and having this experience can help me help them! I can try to help them out of writer's block, or help them scatter the clues of their story. Though my experience is limited, I can help! Woo! Let's hope I get more experience in writing short stories in the future because quite honestly it was kind of fun.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sourdough Bread Journey

 I've always been interested in baking bread and I recently took on the endeavour of baking sourdough. Immediately, I started to hear how difficult sourdough bread is to bake due to the the time consuming aspect of baking the bread properly. Even before this journey, I knew that bread-bakers always attributed sourdough to a very difficult bread. So, I started this journey with my guard up, expecting to make many mistakes that would result in uneatable bread.  Guess what. They lied.  I'm not saying it was incredibly easy, there are plenty of lessons I've learned through my mistakes. But those mistakes do not mark a difficulty for me, they mark my accomplishments. I've made mistakes I never thought I could make through my journey of baking sourdough, but they taught me valuable lessons and I don't regret a single mistake I made.  I decided to dust off my blog after taking to a friend about sourdough, and all she had heard about it was that it was the most difficult th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching the March For Our Lives

I woke up today, turned on the T.V., flipped the channel to MSNBC, and didn't turn it off until 2:30 which is when I went down to Olde Town Square to participate in Fort Collin's march. The speeches I saw were so amazing and moving; my mother sister and I watched and cried together as the march went on. I loved the fact that only the kids spoke today--no adults! What an amazing sight! This truly is the future generation's revolution. This also meant that people couldn't say that because a Democrat spoke at the march, it was a political thing. This is a life vs. death thing. I am mainly writing today because I wanted to talk about what my mom said while we were watching the march. She said that when she was younger, she used to have the fire that these kids have. She used to fight for people who couldn't fight for themselves, she used to shout when she saw injustice, and that's the reason she became a teacher. She wanted to bring that fire to the future gener...
2 comments
Read more

#NeverAgain

America is all too familiar with school shootings. So many shootings aren't even covered by the media because Trump's tweets are way more important. It's always the same routine; after a shooting, the White House will offer their "thoughts and prayers", and say it's too early to talk about gun laws. Then, after a few weeks our representatives will try to start a conversation about gun laws, but since there are too many disagreements the conversation is brought to an end until the next shooting. Then the cycle starts over again. But this time, there is something different. The Parkland school shooting survivors are not satisfied with the White House's "thoughts and prayers", and are demanding change!  I am deeply saddened by the school shooting in Florida and disappointed in our representatives for saying there was nothing they can do to prevent this. Ok--let's break down that argument, shall we? The claim that nothing could have been done ...
Post a Comment
Read more