The Plot Sickens: Free-write & Reflection.

            It was Christmas Eve. Fog stuck to the tarmac at Lindbergh Field. Inside San Diego International Airport a high pitched beep sounded, signaling the use of the intercom. “Due to the poor visibility, the air traffic control had decided to delay flight 654 from San Diego to London”.

            At this announcement, the waiting room erupted into a rumble of groans. The once silent families, deeply immersed in their own lives, had seemingly awoken into a burst of discussion and indecipherable noises. One woman had completely forgotten about entertaining the young boy accompanying her, and quickly turned to her husband and becoming consumed in a rapid and intense conversation. On the opposite side of the room, A middle aged man, dressed in a charcoal grey suit, was engaged in a thundering argument with an attendant working at the airport. Towards the middle of the room, a man, wearing a San Diego state t-shirt and cargo shorts, was having a heated conversation with the cell phone pressed tightly to his cheek.

            Across the airport in an air-conditioned office a man sat on a beat up chair barely supporting his weight. He was observing the whole situation over the grainy television set placed on his desk.. His radio began to emit the crinkly sound of static, followed by a deep voice. He gathered his radio, gun, and San Diego Airport badge, strolled to the other side of his meager office, turned the metallic door handle and strolled down one of the long hallways of San Diego International Airport.

            The article The Plot Sickens, written by Fanny Howe, discusses the flaws pertaining to the writing styles of young authors. The article states that “All the others concluded with extraordinary violence.” referring to the fifteen out of twenty stories that did not include a happy ending after being assigned to the 100 college students taking the course The Craft of Fiction. I can confidently say that the outcome of my free-write neither substantiates nor deviates from the author’s claim while at the same time does both. The Plot Sickens describes how in students responses to the free write “terrible things would happen to their protagonist” and this is one area in which my story differs. Although my incorporates an amount of verbal violence, these do not happen to the protagonist since the main character is simply another point of view used to narrate the story. One way that my story relates to the “flaws of young writers” which are stated by Fanny Howe, is the lack of a happy ending. There is no problem being solved. There is no problem for the protagonist to conquer. It is just a story. I’m not saying that there are no conflicts in my story, but they do not affect the well being of my main character. They may have as the plot progresses, but as of right now, the narrator is simply there to tell a story.