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The way I've spent my summers have always been different from the way they're usually spent by others. Where I live its summer year round; the weather stays hot 9 months out of the year (not to mention the odd winter Monday that sees temperatures fluxuate from 40°to 85° Fahrenheit) and vacationers perpetually flock to our crappy little attractions. There is basically nothing to do here besides take an hour’s drive to Disney World to watch bored Brazilian families try to bond over rides I’ve ridden a thousand times. I might also drive for a while until I hit an overcrowded beach, but eventually a person realizes that a weekly ogling of bikini babes isn’t worth the overwhelming likelihood of developing skin cancer. Unlike most people, I have too much access to vapid frivolity. This year I want the opposite of that. This year I want to drink in a little culture. I’m tired of lying about in the same heat I always lie in, except in these months I have to lie besides roasting Canadians and the lowest of the low.(otherwise known as wealthy New Jersians) I want to venture out and see something old that isn’t a Spanish slave fort or a memorial to the Confederacy. I want to go to the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon: America’s greatest natural wonder. The Grand Canyon: the antithesis of gaudy hotels owned by Mickey Mouse that people like me are forced to work in. The Grand Canyon: one of the few places left where a man can just clear his mind and lose himself in the empty vistas of nature’s empty space. The Grand Canyon: opposite of lush, opposite of commercial and opposite of Florida. This is the first year I can afford to go somewhere alone. My sister offered to share the bill and come along with me, an offer I was quick to deny. “I won’t be making any stops”, I said with an awkward smile. “You wouldn’t have fun with me driving day and night."That wasn’t even a lie necessarily; after consulting my trusty map app, my meager back account, and the tiny amount of unpaid vacation hours my boss had begrudgingly given me, I’ve realized that the only way I can actually get to my destination and back is if I get there without wasting time on luxuries like motels or looks at Americana or any disruptions of any kind aside from the occasional pit stop. I’m looking forward to being alone on this journey. Three hours on the highway and I’m still excited by the prospect of uninterruptedly enjoying the countryside. The road stretches on and on through nothing but the Florida boondocks that the interstate cuts through; it’s good to take in the serenity of the land while I listen to my music and catch passing glimpses of my fellow travelers. It’s kind of funny making eye contact with these people. So many hours with nothing to do have led me to start analyzing strangers via a passing glance. Five seconds is all I need to figure out the mindsets of most: Some like me are enjoying the ride and sticking their heads out to smell the clean country air; others are up to their necks in anxious children and can’t hide the glint in their eyes that comes with imagining shutting them up by crashing into a ditch. One guy looked so miserable sitting with his nagging wife that I could have sworn he was about to jump out of his moving truck and plead that I mercifully crush his neck with my front tires. My little game is interrupted by the wreck in front of me. I don’t have time to see if the drivers are alright; my car isn’t the only one driving seventy-five mph tonight. I wouldn’t be anxious to do so if I could; their problems aren’t my problems, and my only problem right now is deciding whether to pull over for a drink and if I'm ready to take a leak. I don’t need to worry about strangers. I’m by myself; no-one’s weighing me down with their needs and inadequacies. . Later on, when I see an old man with his grandson pushing a stalled sedan, I can’t help feeling some guilt for not pulling over to help them. I may still feel a little bad leaving them, but passing shame isn’t enough to get in the way of my good time. Nothing is. I got a flat half way through Louisiana. I had pulled off the interstate to get a burger when a freaking possum decided to cross the backwoods road I was then driving on. Swerving away from the wood-rat like the city slicking idiot that I am, I hit a curb and smashed both my bumper and the Smartphone I had been charging on the dashboard. When I got out to check the dent, I was too distracted by the thought of 18 hours of having to listen to country music to think about checking on the small but steady hiss coming from one of the left tires. I noticed the wheel deflating a couple minutes after I left Burger King. I also noticed that I had forgotten to bring a spare. This was bad; not only was I probably the sole Hispanic stranded in the middle of crackercounty, I was an idiot who didn’t even have a phone and would have to go walking in the dark through someplace I didn’t know to find some help I couldn’t afford straight away. I never doubted that there weren’t some ATM’s in the back skirts of Baton Rouge, but with my luck at the time I was convinced that I’d never find one. Fortunately I wouldn’t need to. A mud covered chevy pulled up behind me around a mile into my trek. As someone who associates the South with Forest Gump and Mississipi Burning, my immediate thought when the driver called out to me was to sprint into the woods and hide until the Klan got bored of the idea of a lynching. Instead I decided to meet my movie death head-on by turning around and heading towards the mystery truck’s headlights. “Was that your car back there?” the stranger (who introduced himself as Travis) asked with a kind smile, throwing off my expectations of the dimwitted movie villain that I was expecting to meet. Travis’ camo t-shirt and slight drawl couldn’t mask how far and beyond common decency he went with all the things he did to help me. Easy to be around and a far better conversationalist than I’ll ever be, he sacrificed his free time in the middle of the night to patch up and replace my busted tire free of charge, which was a kindness to strangers I know I’d never do. Now that he’s helped me on my way I regret not bringing people like him along on this vacation. It’s good to be around good people, especially people who talk enough to eliminate the need for these lovely radio stations. I pity the bumpkins who can only tune into Arkansas NPR. Now’s not the time to get lonely though. Realizing the drawbacks to being alone on the road may have been an ordeal, but it isn’t enough to make me turn back around. The reason I went on this trip was to understand what it meant to be by myself; I can survive a few more days of tedium. Besides, its not like the journey is more important than the destination. My sacrifices will be worth it once I get to the Grand Canyon. God, I hate the Grand Canyon. For three hours I’d been stuck in the congested traffic jam that led into the park (which the jabbering vacationer on the phone next to me insisted was a “queue” instead of a line) and now that I’m in I immediately want to leave. A tourist attraction this massive should have at least something to do. Yes I wanted some quiet contemplation, but after all the miles it took me to get here, I was thinking that I could at least go bungee jumping or something once I was done meditating. Instead I’m staring at a rocky hole in the ground with an overly sociable Midwesterner father to keep me company. He means well: I’m grateful that he shared his meal with me while making memories with his kids, but his bland monologues about college football and nature are driving me insane enough to go ahead and throw myself off a cliff, which lucky for me is only a minute or two away. I envy his kids; not because they have a great father (which I’m sure they do) but because they can turn up their iPods to drown out the droning nothingness that he passes off as speech. There is nothing to do here. The air is dry and dusty, the land is parched and cracking and the multitude of middle aged sightseers take up every piece of shade and fill it with their incessant small talk. Evolution didn’t mean me to visit here; without the humidity of the Caribbean my lungs have shriveled up and are ready to explode. The wind has also turned against me, and when it’s not making me wheeze it’s searing my face with projectile sunburn. I probably only have minutes before this alien environment finishes me off. “What you gotta understand about the senate is” Oh my God, I’m gonna jump. If this guy keeps talking I’m gonna walk up to that giant boring rear end hole in the ground and savor the freeing bliss of my body hitting its bottom with a tiny echoing crunch. That being said, his company is better than nothing. I have to have something to pay attention to aside from the “natural wonder” these yahoos keep gawking at. Even if I brought a thousand friends the tediousness of this over glorified ditch would still compel me to end my life. I’ve obviously made a mistake coming here. I’m not capable of introspection.I need to leave. I need excitement, I need stimulus and I need Florida. Florida: The Sunshine State. Florida: where retirees go to die and refugees come looking for a better life. Florida: the melting pot where people of every ethnicity and tax bracket are never too far apart, and where places to entertain them are never too far away. I’d give anything for a movie theater or even a retention pond to remind me of it and make me forget that could I’m stuck in this desert. On the return trip (which I’m starting right now) I’ll have to decide what I’ll do first once I get back. A day riding roller coasters or hanging out on the pier should wash this Canyon’s taste of dust and monotony out of my mouth. I can’t believe I got sick of too many sources of fun. I’ll never leave home again. Sithsaber fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 17:56
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Reposted from thunderdome because it never got a review, and because I think it was way more interesting than Gau's piece.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:04
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Sithsaber posted:The way I've spent my summers has always been different from the way it’s "Summers" is plural. "It" is singular. You should have said "the way they're" this is grammar-school level poo poo. usually spent by others. Where I live its should be "it's". third graders learn this. summer year round; the weather stays hot 9 months out of the year (not to mention the odd winter Monday that sees temperatures fluxuate hi, your spelling is also bad from 40% to 85% Fahrenheit) degrees aren't percents. and vacationers perpetually flock to our crappy little attractions. There is basically nothing to do here besides take an hour’s drive to Disney World to watch bored Brazilian families try to bond over rides I’ve ridden a thousand times. I might also drive west or east for a while until I hit an overcrowded beach, but eventually a person realizes that a weekly ogling of bikini babes isn’t worth the overwhelming likelihood of developing skin cancer. Unlike most people, I have too much access to vapid frivolity. You have several grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and spacing mistakes. A piece this unpolished reeks of amateurism and a lack of caring. If you can't care about your own piece, how do you expect me to care about it? You don't understand how to use punctuation. You have several run-ons, comma splices, and just plain weird constructions. You're missing about a hundred commas in this piece. You shift tenses more than once. Pick one and stick with it. Content-wise, this is a boring story with absolutely no redeeming factors. Your main char is unlikable. The conflict in this story is cliche. Everything in this seems like a snap judgement by the character, with no real deep thinking. In the end, it feels like he didn't change at all, and that his entire trip was worthless. Reading a story about an unlikable person saying a bunch of unlikable things, only to keep being totally unlikable and learning nothing at the end is not fun.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:31
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crabrock posted:You have several grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and spacing mistakes. A piece this unpolished reeks of amateurism and a lack of caring. If you can't care about your own piece, how do you expect me to care about it? The lesson was obvious: gently caress national treasures, long live Disney World! Real question: if the main character is narrating, shouldn't I change tenses when I'm talking about what happened in the relative past? Sithsaber fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 19:13
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Depends on what you want to do. But for most of this you're in the first person present. This assumes that you're telling me stuff as you experience it. Thus, everything that is in the past is just past tense. There's no reason to go past perfect. If you're going that far back, you're just muddling your story telling by making me keep 3 different time periods in my head. Stick to one, with brief glimpses into the past. Don't ever do something like "turns out i wouldn't need to!" because that spoils your future story, and is the future tense in a past memory (i.e. the present). Also, you just flip to past for no reason when telling me about your flat. Why is all that past tense? That's really the only part of your story that actually has story elements to it (conflict and resolution) and you take the reader out of the action to talk about this thing that's already happened. in other words, it removes the tension if we already know it's been resolved because you're obviously now in the present. Basically, when you'e got somebody reading your story, they're doing mental work. When you start throwing several tenses into the mix, that's something they have to keep in their mind "Where am I in time, in relation to this story." When you flip back and forth, it makes way more work for the reader, and they will miss some of the switches. This leads to confusion on the part of the reader, and more likely they'll hate your story. Obviously sometimes you need to mention something that happened to you in the past. That's fine, but make sure those are brief (or very long!) and it's clear that we're back in the present when you bring us back. One of the best lessons I ever learned about writing was: If somebody doesn't get something, or misses something, THAT IS MY FAULT AS THE WRITER. It doesn't matter what my intentions are, or how well I understand it, I have failed as a writer/communicator. I can't rely on other people to know what I am thinking. And that's what all this tense stuff boils down to. You're creating an unnecessary impediment to understanding the story. There's no reason that the flat couldn't have been told as just another part of the journey, rather than telling me about something that happened. Honestly, that's your whole story anyway. The reasons for wanting to go on a road trip should be about a paragraph long.
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Jul 23, 2014 19:32
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crabrock posted:Depends on what you want to do. But for most of this you're in the first person present. This response requires me to ask you about finding an audience. I love me some nonsequiters and weird poo poo. Wouldn't it make sense to give up on middle aged normies if they "get it" less often than the target demographic? Obviously your answer will not be applicable for quite some time.
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Jul 23, 2014 19:49
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Sithsaber posted:This response requires me to ask you about finding an audience. I love me some nonsequiters and weird poo poo. Wouldn't it make sense to give up on middle aged normies if they "get it" less often than the target demographic? you've got a forum full of maladjusted weirdos who laugh at all sorts of "weird poo poo" telling you your stuff isn't making sense. You can love non-sequitars, and some people even enjoy reading that (see Chairchucker/Mercedes who get a lot of positive attention). But you're only kidding yourself if you think the problem with your writing is the audience.
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Jul 23, 2014 20:04
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Sithsaber posted:This response requires me to ask you about finding an audience. I love me some nonsequiters and weird poo poo. Wouldn't it make sense to give up on middle aged normies if they "get it" less often than the target demographic? What is your target demographic, Sithsaber?
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Jul 23, 2014 20:04
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Just grazing through, I noticed a couple of structural errors, but I won't dwell on that. Compared to the other things you've posted, this is less overwritten, so that's good. It's still wordier than it needs to be, though, and it's boring, so I'll cover those two issues. First, wordiness. When you add extra words, they soak up meaning from the important words. They slow you down as a reader. Look at your opening: quote:The way I've spent my summers have always been different from the way they're usually spent by others. I'm big on snappy openings, and this isn't the worst, but it's not very good. Personally, I would rewrite the entire thing to make it more interesting, but we're talking brevity right now. Look at this: quote:I always spent my summers differently from others. It says the exact same thing with half the words. When you do your editing pass (and you should do that for any piece you write) always be asking yourself if you can write this more clearly and more succinctly. A trap people fall into is thinking that more words means more ideas, but ideas are strongest when they're not hemmed and qualified. Even if you're going for a wordier, less terse style, you still have to make every word count, especially in shorter pieces. Okay, enough words on brevity. Now, on being boring. From my reading, I understood that the main character's goal was to get out of the touristy Florida and out to somewhere wild. Okay. That means that a good chunk of your story is irrelevant. I care about his opinions of Florida to the extent that it interacts with his desire to go to the Grand Canyon. You could have gotten that across in a few sentences, probably. I care about the people he's looking at during the drive and the crash he sees only to the extent that it impacts or reflects upon him trying to reach his goal. Description is fine, but when most of your story is description, you need to cut back and take stock of what's really important. I can remember from a story I wrote that I paused the plot for a flashback that gave some worldbuilding, but know what--that didn't work, and I got told I should have edited it out, and they were right. The most important things in your story are your characters and plot. Of course, it doesn't help much when your character is just kind of annoying and your plot is barebones. Nothing happens to make his goal challenging aside from a flat tire and a broken cellphone. If there had been more of a confllict then maybe the 'ironic' ending would have felt more jarring. But without a solid conflict, the ending is boring too. And it might have been boring anyway. As a personal note: Why didn't he just drive to Zion or Arches or Canyonlands or the Petrified Forest if he thought there were too many tourists at the Grand Canyon? I mean, I get the idea thematically, but it makes him seem like not-a-person when he doesn't consider 'hey I'm a day's drive away from a bunch of other neat national parks'. Anyway, Sithsaber, as a reward for reading through this critique, I want to offer you something: an hour of my time. I'll spend an hour reading, then writing a crit of, something you write. I'll be respectful and direct in my crit. But, it has to be a new story, and to get you into the swing of writing solid conflicts, I'll give you one. Two close friends, male and female, who have zero romantic feelings for each other, have to part ways. The reason, setting, all of that, all up to you. No longer than 1200 words. You don't have to write this if you don't want to, it's entirely optional. I just want to give you a chance to put what we've been telling you into practice without the pressure of TD.
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Jul 23, 2014 20:05
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Djeser posted:Just grazing through, I noticed a couple of structural errors, but I won't dwell on that. Compared to the other things you've posted, this is less overwritten, so that's good. It's still wordier than it needs to be, though, and it's boring, so I'll cover those two issues.
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Jul 23, 2014 20:17
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You are allowed to post in TD, that was a mod's mistake. But if you do write that story, you shouldn't post it in TD. Either put it here, in the Farm thread, or in its own thread.
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Jul 23, 2014 20:30
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Sithsaber posted:I don't think I'm allowed to post in td anymore (multiple probabations are issued when I do) so I'll get to this when I'm done with another story. You can post in TD, but since you haven't read the OP (I'm still assuming you haven't) I'll TDLR it for you. You can post only for two reasons: 1: to let it be known that you are in for this week. God help you if you try to join a prompt after it's been closed. 2: to post your story. That's loving it. You've previously shown to us that you're irresponsible when it comes to posting in TD and you don't know when to quit responding to crits and just posting filler. But if you follow those two guidelines I've set for you, you will most likely not be probated for posting in TD anymore.
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Jul 23, 2014 20:36
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Djeser posted:You are allowed to post in TD, that was a mod's mistake. But if you do write that story, you shouldn't post it in TD. Either put it here, in the Farm thread, or in its own thread. Technically doesn't his probation reason say that he can't post in Thunderdome until he actually reads the thread? Is that the one we're talking about? Sithsaber, my understanding is that you were getting a lot of reports, and some of those were from Thunderdome, so a mod used their judgment and probated you to un-derail an ongoing issue, since your interprompt post seemed lackadaisical and wasn't formatted like a story (which usually have a title and word count, to delineate it from regular posting). If you want to actually read the thread and participate like 300+ other people have, feel free. not critting this story cause you ignored my crit in your other thread ;___;
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Jul 23, 2014 20:39
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Mercedes posted:You can post in TD, but since you haven't read the OP (I'm still assuming you haven't) I'll TDLR it for you. I have read the newest thread op multiple times. I'll still stay out for now to let poo poo settle down and because I already have a Monastery story that is too close to this week's prompt. Ps. This story was originally posted on the same day as the hell-dream story.My last request is that you declare Gau the brawl victor if he did better than me. His story is cleaner and does have a more clear cut conflict, but I found it uninteresting. Sithsaber fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 20:41
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Sithsaber posted:I already have a Monastery story that is too close to this week's prompt. So write a new story
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Jul 24, 2014 03:37
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