My short story for the ErgoFiction Challenge is all wrapped up at 1,836 words. I still need a title but I like the ending that I added on tonight. It may still be a little more obscure than I was planning but I like it and I hope you will too.

Whenever I write a short story I learn something new. I think it's because a short story is such a condensed form that each sentence carries so much more weight than in a novel.

I spent a silly amount of time figuring out how to write two sentences of description. It made sense for one thing to be described before another. But I wanted the focus to shift from the latter to the former. Because of the order of objects in the sentence it did just the opposite.

Example 1: The stream sprouted from the mountainside colliding with another and rolling in a torrent into the harbour.

Example 2: The harbour filled and flowed from the river that fed it, a huge body of water that began as a trickle from a mountain high above.

In the first example you're left with the image of the harbour and the expectation is that the story will continue from that point. You've moved the reader away from the mountain. If the next sentence then showing something on the side of the mountain the direction is jumpy. In the second example the reader is left with the image of the mountain because the description has moved away from the harbour. It is essentially showing the reader the same thing but each is taking them in a different direction.