Tom could always use some help! {ALI}

Hey Tom! Thanks for being so patient with this, but I am finally here to give you some help! Flow is an important part of writing, perhaps it is the most trickest aspect of writing especially with roleplay as you are not the only one contributing to a story, even veterans sometimes struggle and I have lost count how many times I've scrapped a post to start again because it didn't flow quite right! So have no fear, you are not alone in this but I am going to do my best to help you; your example threads have great flow though there is always room for improvement!

Exercise 1

So lets get started with some exercises! Flow works like a river and your character is on a little canoe, heading from point A-B! Of course, before you get to B, there are a lot of detours and stops along the way, this is kind of like what an overall thread is like. Don't worry, we're going to start with baby steps (paddles?) and begin with the most important part of a thread- the opening post.

 Opening posts- as you know- are very important across sight: they're needed in the bloodbath to throw your baby into hell, they're needed in planned threads to ignite muse and they're needed in open threads to entice someone to pick your thread up and it's all about flow! If your opening post flows nicely and makes sense, you're gonna get further on that proverbable canoe but if the flow doesn't quite work, then you're gonna be a bit stuck.

So for this first exercise, I would like you to write the opening and closing paragraph to a potential thread starter where one of your characters finds a dead body in an ally.  Don't worry about the inbetween just yet! We'll work on the filling in the next exercise, just focus on the opening paragraph and the closing one.

Tom