The Official Writing Challenge
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08/21/14
Great writing, on topic and of course the powerful message of being filled with the Holy Spirit, and the wonderment of Christ's power.

Well done.

God bless~
08/21/14
Nice telling of a bibical story from the perspective of the jailer. There was some verbiage in the first few lines of your story that I really liked. I love it when words paint a picture for you. Well done.
I liked how you gave life to this Bible story.

Peace and joy comes when in obedience a person gives action to his faith by being baptized for the forgiveness of his sin.
(He may have even been the one who had beaten Paul and Silas.)

Stories written like this make very nice reading stories for children. Another person could read this each year to a group of children and many would get to hear about this Bible person's obedience to Jesus.

Again well written.
I loved that! What an unexpected main character.

There were a couple of places where I got a little mixed up with tenses. At the beginning, it seemed to start out past tense ("The night air was thick"), and then seemed to move to present tense ("I'm tired and ready to go home"). Then it went back to past tense.

The message of the story still came through clearly; that just tripped me up a little bit. Could also be just me.

On second thought, perhaps it is one of those times where one could get away with a shift in tense, because it puts the reader right inside the jailer's mind, getting his thoughts play by play. I'm not the world's authority on tenses. Just thought I would share what came to mind.

At any rate, that really had me hooked! I liked your word pictures. Plus I'm a shameless sucker for Bible stories rewritten from the perspective of a minor character. :)

Thumbs up!!
I totally enjoyed this story. You brought it to life and I could really relate to the MC. Your beginning was great; you started off with the conflict right away. I also could see the topic right away too. In the MC's mind, he began evaluating if it was just that Paul had been arrested.

I noticed a couple of minor things in the construction of the article. You mixed up the tense some, starting with present, then switching to past and back again. This is easy to do. In fact, I missed one spot in my article this week as well, even though I was aware of it and triple checked it.

The other minor thing was some missing commas, especially after introductory phrases and parenthetical phrases. I have a thread on the message board where I give links to some of my favorite resources. Also, you may want to check out Jan's Writing Basics on the message boards. She is a great help for all levels of writers and responds to everyone who posts.

I liked the POV of this familiar story. It was unique and fresh. I think this would make a brilliant Sunday School lesson. I could even see some questions for kids to consider and ways to relate the MC's fears to things kids deal with today. I'd really encourage you to consider tweaking it and maybe expanding it for kids. You have a great way of expressing yourself, and I was totally into the story from beginning to end.
I try not to read other comments as I comment so not to impact my opinion. I see someone else pointed out the tense issues and I thought I'd give you an example of how to keep it in the present tense. (Often past tense is easier to do, but often present can pull reader in.)
The night air is so thick, it's almost an effort to walk through it. Even though the sun has set, the heat from the day lingers on. I’m tired and ready to go home and lie down for the night, but I'm on duty until the day shift comes in to relieve me. Everyone's left, so it's just me and the prisoners. My boss got in my face before he left. "Watch over them two in the middle cell. If they escape, you might as well go with them because your life won't be worth a plum nickel."
I feel drawn to go see them in person. Paul and Silas are local celebrities, going from town to town talking about this fellow Jesus.
I added a bit to show you some ways to add dialog and some suspense.
Again, I want to stress what an awesome job you did with this piece. Even though I knew the story, I was still hanging onto each word. You did a great job of staying true to the Bible while still adding your own touch to the story which makes the reader stop and think.
08/26/14
I love your take on the topic. The message comes through clearly too. This is an enjoyable read and I look forward to reading your next entry!

Seems someone else has covered enough critique for now. Yes, pay attention to the tenses, and please take advantage of all the wonderful writing tips and lessons available here at faithwriters. I'm so happy to have you with us!