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Writing Exercise #7

For our second meeting in April our Writers' Group prompt was:

When _____ ignored the "Enter at Your Own Risk" sign on Mr. Sedgewick's property line, she had no idea what the consequences would be.

This got me thinking about a story I had wrote years ago, so I dug around in my files and found the story, but somewhere along the line I had deleted most of it and only had a beginning and some notes. As I looked it over I realized that with some tweaking this could work as a pretty good story.  I only got so far as to edit what I already had written and this is what I presented:

Welcome to the little town of Trent Valley.  There isn't much to do here.  The kids have options limited to the bowling alley, the one screen movie theater, the Trent Diner, or Keller's Pizzeria and Ice Cream Shoppe. By the time they turn seventeen and get a driver's license they are ready to get out of town on a Friday night. Again their options are limited, to the mall the next town over.
          So when Friday night comes around they pile into a car and drive the 20 miles to the mall.  For the first few months this is the greatest place.  Then it starts to get bored with walking a circuit around the mall and sitting in the food court. One thing that works to their disadvantage is that at least two friends will be working at the mall and won't want to go hang out there.  This is okay to you because the kids from the neighboring towns are ruining your time there any way.  By the time you are a senior in high school your free nights are spent hanging out in someone's basement or living room.
          There is a need to find something to do.  You have a car, a bunch of friends who are bored as well so you go out and try to make your own adventure.  You go looking for innocent trouble and fun. Searching out old buildings and deserted areas of local towns and the surrounding communities hoping you find something interesting.For J.C., Allie, Devon and Wes this was a typical Friday or Saturday night during the summer months.  This Saturday night in June was starting out like all the others so far this summer.  They all met at Allie’s house to eat and plan before it got dark enough to go out.  Allie had pizzas and soda on the kitchen table.
          On this particular night no one could agree on where to go or if they really wanted to go out at all.  Because an agreement couldn’t be met they decided to just stay in, of course there was nothing on T.V. and nothing in the DVD rack looked all that interesting to watch.  After everyone had all announced for the hundredth time that they were bored did Devon spoke up with an idea; there was the old farm house at the back of Mr. Sedgewick’s property and it was supposed to be haunted.

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