Collaborative story writing

Story starter we chose	Starter 3 — twenty-two days of rain
Main character's name	Cadi Morris, 12
What that character wants	To prove to her older brother that she saw the glow first
Where and when it happens	Aberdyfi harbour, the morning the rain stops
Writing order (initials 1–4)	A.P. → R.J. → C.M. → L.D.

The rain stopped at twenty to seven, and the silence woke Cadi up before her alarm did. For twenty-one days the gutters above her window had been roaring. Now there was nothing but a gull and the slow drip off the shed.

She got to the harbour wall in her pyjama top and her brother's coat. The puddles were still there, flat and grey, except they were not grey. Every one of them was glowing a soft purple, the colour of the inside of a mussel shell, and the nearest one to the sea was humming like a fridge.

Cadi took out her phone to film it. The screen showed the harbour, the wall, the gull — and eleven perfectly ordinary puddles with nothing wrong with them at all.

Cadi lowered the phone and the purple came back. She raised it and the puddles went grey again. She did that four times, feeling more stupid each time, until a voice behind her said, "It doesn't like being recorded."

It was Mr Prosser from the chandlery, still holding his keys, not looking at her at all. He was looking at the puddle nearest the slipway, the one that hummed.

"You can see it too," Cadi said. It was not a question.

"Everybody under about fourteen can see it," he said. "And me, apparently. Which is a problem, because I'm sixty-one." Behind them, at the top of the hill, Cadi's brother Iwan was coming down the lane with his hands in his pockets, and she knew exactly what he was going to say when he got there.

Iwan said it. "There's nothing there, Cadi."

He walked straight through the humming puddle to prove it, and the hum stopped. Not faded — stopped, the way a fridge stops, leaving a hole in the noise of the morning. Every other puddle along the wall went out at the same moment, eleven small purple lights blinking off in a line towards the sea.

Mr Prosser swore quietly and put his keys in his pocket. "Well," he said. "That's that, then."

Cadi looked at the water still dripping off her brother's trainers. It was glowing.

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Iwan looked down, and his face did something Cadi had never seen it do before.

"Cadi," he said, very carefully. "Is it on my shoes?"

She could have lied. Three weeks of being told she imagined things, and here he was, standing in the middle of the slipway with the proof dripping off him and no idea what to do with it. It would have been easy.

"Yes," she said. "And you're going to help me work out why. Get your phone out — mine doesn't see it, but I bet yours does now."

They stood on the harbour wall as the sun came up properly, two Morrises and a chandler, watching a pair of trainers glow the colour of the inside of a mussel shell. Behind them, the gutters were finally dry.

Turn	Writer	What I added	What I left for the next writer
1 — opening	A.P.	Cadi, the harbour, 11 glowing puddles, one hums	The camera cannot see the glow
2 — problem grows	R.J.	Mr Prosser, the age rule, Iwan arriving	Iwan is about to say it isn't real
3 — turning point	C.M.	Iwan walks through it, all 11 go out	The glow is now on Iwan's trainers
4 — ending	L.D.	Iwan believes her; they team up	Nothing — this was the ending

One moment where the parts joined up well	The mussel-shell colour in turn 1 comes back in the last line of turn 4, and nobody planned that — L.D. just reread the opening.
One thing that contradicts itself	A.P. says Cadi is wearing Iwan's coat, but in turn 2 Iwan walks down the lane with his hands in his pockets and no coat is mentioned. Easy fix: give him a hoodie.
One sentence we would cut	"She did that four times, feeling more stupid each time" — we like it, but turn 2 is slow to start and this is the sentence we would lose.