Congratulations! You reached the final challenge.

Here's the prompt:

Can you describe someone changing over a period of a few years? Can you give a picture, in only a few sentences, of how an acquaintance could change utterly, going from success to ruin, or vice versa?

Here is a passage from RL Stevenson's Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes.

“In fact, from this point of view, Edinburgh is not so much a small city as the largest of small towns. It is scarce possible to avoid observing your neighbours; and I never yet heard of any one who tried. It has been my fortune, in this anonymous accidental way, to watch more than one of these downward travellers for some stages on the road to ruin. One man must have been upwards of sixty before I first observed him, and he made then a decent, personable figure in broad-cloth of the best. For three years he kept falling—grease coming and buttons going from the square-skirted coat, the face puffing and pimpling, the shoulders growing bowed, the hair falling scant and grey upon his head; and the last that ever I saw of him, he was standing at the mouth of an entry with several men in moleskin, three parts drunk, and his old black raiment daubed with mud. I fancy that I still can hear him laugh. There was something heart-breaking in this gradual declension at so advanced an age; you would have thought a man of sixty out of the reach of these calamities; you would have thought that he was niched by that time into a safe place in life, whence he could pass quietly and honourably into the grave.“

To conclude this short course, write your own version of this paragraph, describing a sea change in someone over a three year period.

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Wow. That's it. I hope you've enjoyed this series!

Congratulations on completing this training sequence.

I have some more free courses, by the way — and a premium course on plotting a story that I think you might like.

Reply to this thread, and let me know what kind of things you’re working on.

Yours, Daniel

Day Six: A sea change [Copy the Greats]

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