This was written at the point where the Iron Man falls off the cliff, adding more detail to the original text and focusing on powerful verbs, metaphor, imagery and alliteration.
Suddenly, his great iron body surged forwards. He had lost his footing. His body was a hundred, clattering dustbin-lids as he tumbled over the cliff and down, down, down onto the jagged rocks that led towards the hungry waves. His flashing eyes lit up the path of his flight; he crashed and creaked, thrashed and smashed. As the mechanic mass of the Iron Man fell, his petrol heart was set ablaze, so that it looked like a meteor was colliding into the rocks. The bolts and screws that made him whole began to jut off, one by one, and his body dismantled. His iron anatomy spread out across the beach: an arm, a leg, a finger.
At speed, the bulk of the Iron Man plunged into the raging sea. A wall
of water rose from the ocean, and a great sizzle could be heard as the
water extinguished the fire. His iron torso was swallowed then spat out onto the rocky shore. Then, there was silence.
Was this the end?
The headlamp that was the Iron Man's right eye flashed then flickered, then faded like a candle in the wind, until its power expired.
Silence.
But wait! The Iron Man's index finger began to twitch, then the next one, then the next one. His upturned palm swivelled and swayed like a writhing tortoise on its back. CLAP! With one energetic spring, the hand flipped itself over and scurried off like a spider along the pebbly beach. It went in search of the arm first, and when the hand was but a centimetre away from the arm, it suddenly clicked on to it, magnetically. Without effort, the hand tugged the arm along the pebbly surface towards the rocks before the arm was duly attracted to the the Iron Man's torso. Bit by bit, part by part, the scurrying hand gathered up all the pieces of the Iron Man's giant body and, like a jigsaw, the Iron Man was fitted back together.
K McCallam©
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