A painfully shy little girl, about 5 or 6, with long, blonde curls; clutching her Golden Book story of Cinderella. Carefully clinging to every word, to every picture; wanting to escape into the pages and doing so only in her overactive imagination. That little girl is now Cinderella; nice, kind, talking-to-the-animals Cinderella; wishing that some day her prince WOULD come and rescue her. Even if it wasn't a prince; even if it was just someone...anyone.
With each page turned, her reality shrinks farther away. Smiles light up her face replacing the far-too-many frowns of a 5 year old.
In her mind, her very own fairy godmother comes to save her. With a special little song and a couple of waves of her magic wand...everything wrong is made right; all things sad are made happy. She no longer cries herself to sleep at night; she is no longer afraid.
Her rags turn into beauty.
She is transformed.
With each page turned, she gets closer to the end; she takes extra time now, reading certain lines over, not yet ready for the fairy tale to end. She looks more closely at that gorgeous, sparkling dress; those slippers made of glass; and as the clock strikes twelve running; running so the prince won't see the reality of what is Cinderella.
The little girl is out of breath now; so caught up in the fairy tale it is hard to distinguish fact from fiction. She knows how it ends; it's the same every time. The only thing that changes is Cinderella's face; it becomes her own as she imagines her happily ever after.
The End.
The happy ending.It's what we all hope for, isn't it? We all want everything to be neatly tied up in a bow.
In fiction, this can be, well, a little boring. Or predictable.
This week, we'd like you to write a scene that includes a happy ending - it doesn't have to be the actual END of your story, if you're working on continuations, but it should include at least one challenge for your hero to overcome.
