Creative Writing Assignment: Person, Place and Song

Had to do this for my creative writing class. The assignment was to make a short story that started with the sentence: The first time someone heard some song by some artist, they were somewhere, doing something. And we filled in the blanks. That said, I'm hoping mostly for critiques on how the character and setting could be improved. Thanks much!

*edited*

The first time Dale heard “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, he was out on a dusty, deserted road in his old beat-up truck, driving home. The moonlight slid through his open window and cast unforgiving shadows on his haggard face. The window was down to keep him awake, but even the brisk sage-scented air seemed muffled and numbed. Like everything else.

He stared ahead, his gnarled fingers drumming an impatient beat on the steering wheel. The wind moaned in his ear. There wasn’t much to look at for miles—unless you liked sagebrush. Dale didn’t. The monotony surrounding him gave him the feeling he was being watched. The vast dusky skies and outstretched plains seemed inwardly focused. As if the moon herself gazed down on him.

If she did, Dale couldn’t help thinking, she’d be disappointed. This was a re-run of yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. He thought bitterly of how he had once believed he would lead an adventurous, daring life and never follow a routine like his father had. But that naiive notion was gone, as was the idea that he could escape his father’s legacy.

Perhaps if he hadn’t tried so hard to escape, he would have actually been able to. Maybe that was his first mistake. The first one, at least. Of course there were more. He drummed his fingers faster, grizzly brows furrowing.

For the fifteenth time that week, Dale instinctively turned the knob on the broken radio. It sputtered feebly, uttered another dramatic death rattle, and fell silent. He cursed the radio as many ways as he could think of. Then the truck and the road and the moon that guided his life.

He let the anger spread, heating his skin like a chemical burn, quickening the pulse his veins and the breath in his lungs. And all pointless, because he was trapped and his anger couldn’t rescue him.

Heatedly, he struck the wheel, desperate to release the pent up frustration.

The truck horn wailed into the emptiness, echoing hollowly off a distant canyon. Creatures of the night froze and locked gleaming, frightened eyes on the road. And then he was lashing out at the dashboard, the radio, anything he could reach, knowing it was as effective as a temper tantrum. Knowing it was stupid, knowing it wouldn’t help anything, and not caring. He had to let something out. A desperate scream in a still night—no one to hear it, no one who would care, no one to stop it all. Dale slammed the radio again, pointedly, this time with more force.

Noise erupted like a dropped bomb. A potent mixture of static, volume, chattering Spanish voices, and a few chords of cheerful guitar assaulted anything possessing ears within five miles. A rabbit, its heart pounding through its body, darted mindlessly out of safety and onton asphalt. Dale instinctively honked the horn and swerved into the brush on the side of the road.

The old truck took the beating well, plowing through bushes and rocks. Dale clung to the wheel, regaining himself enough to turn and make a rough entrance back onto the road. He eased up on the gas, letting his breath out in a flat gust, and pried his fingers from the wheel.

He floundered for the volume and slapped it down to a whisper. Startled out of his anger, he looked back over his shoulder at the lingering dust and the figure of the rabbit hopping away. Slightly embarassed that he could be so panicked by a bunny, Dale focused on the road for a while. Then he took another breath, cursed the rabbit with a tremor in his voice, shook his head, and found the radio back in his line of sight.

Perplexed by the inconsisties of technology, Dale felt for the knob again and clicked the volume up cautiously. The same slurry of sound greeted him, so he fingered the tuning knob, his eyes flicking between the dark road and the glowing numbers.

Around him, the startled animals continued their nighttime pursuits.

And then there it was. “Sweet Home Alabama” dancing right out of the old, dusty speakers. Dale had never been one for music, really. He was rather like a domestic cat presented with a mouse and unsure what to do with it.

He sat stiffly, eyes ahead and betraying no emotion. It felt like he had lived his whole life in that position. But the song pleaded with him, appealed to some self he didn’t yet know. Dale uncertainly tapped his fingers to the beat. For the first time in a long time his eyes crinkled with a smile.

And when next the moon glanced back down, she heard a rough human voice belting out the chorus of “Sweet Home Alabama” from the window of his faithful truck, passing the scenery by.

Good to see you again, Cat.

[He stared ahead, his gnarled fingers drummed an impatient beat on the steering wheel.

I think you may need to edit. Either change "drummed" to "drumming" or replace the comma with a semicolon.

As if the moon herself gazed down on him.

This is a sentence fragment. So is this:

[Then the truck and the road and the moon that guided his life.

I would very much like to see this expanded into a longer story. You could elaborate on why Dale is trying to escape his father, why he's on the road and so on. Of course, that's up to you.

Hi!

I really like this. The description is really vivid and I love the way you described the setting so well without the story dragging. Also, I like the way you incorporated the song so that it had significance instead of being just a random piece of music, and the way it came back to the song on the radio at the end. And Dale joining in was lovely.

That said, I do think there are a few things you could change to improve this. Firstly, it's just a small thing, but near the beginning of the story it felt like you were repeating the MC's name unnecessarily. It gets a bit annoying if it's "Dale this, Dale that", e.g:

Dale didn’t. The monotony surrounding him gave Dale the feeling he was being watched.

If there are no other characters then you don't really need to use his name more than once or twice. I think it would flow better and not jerk readers out of the story if you used "he" instead more often.

Secondly, this is just an opinion but I wasn't too fond of the part with the moon:

The violent abruptness of that did not startle the moon—she knew nothing of desperation and loneliness.

See, I found this odd because if you're going to personify the moon, you'd think that she would know quite a lot about loneliness, hanging up alone there in the dark. To me at least, the moon has definite connotations of loneliness. I think this might work better if you focused more on the desperation part, because I can definitely see the moon as an impassive, calm, pale presence looking down and this might be a better contrast with Dale.

The other reason I think this part doesn't entirely work is because the rest of the story is told entirely from Dale's perspective, so to suddenly switch to the point of view of an inanimate object and then back to the MC just for a few seconds feels strange, and out of place with the style of narrative. It's almost fairytale like, having the moon tell part of the story, which doesn't seem to be at all what you're going for in the rest of it. And seeing as the bit where Dale swerves the van is a key moment in the story, it might be more involving if his feelings/panic were described. The rest is all placid description and musing; this is the only bit with action, and seems like a lost opportunity to me.

I personally think the story would be better if you kept it from Dale's perspective the whole way through, and had him looking up at the moon, perhaps wondering about what she's thinking or feeling envious of her - but hey, it's up to you.

Settingwise, I think it's already excellent. The first time I read this I thought it was kind of lacking in characterisation, but then I reread it and really loved the understatedness of the ending and Dale joining in singing. Perhaps I'm just an unobservant reader first time. XD But, though it's a really great ending, it's not completely clear what kind of a resolution this is. Has he resolved his frustration and loneliness from earlier, and learned to accept life on the road and take pleasure in small things? Or did the moment of danger wake him up and make him realise that he should stop sticking to what he knows? I'm leaning towards the latter, but I think you could make this clearer by expanding more on his feelings after the car swerve - is he elated? Panicked? etc. We get a lot of his feelings earlier on in the story, but then it goes a bit dry later on.

Overall though, I really enjoyed this and think that with a few changes it could be really great.

Umm, so this seems to have turned into a long ramble, but anyway, I hope I was able to help a bit. Thanks for the read!

Stori and Kiwisatsuma-

Thank you so much for your reviews! Great to have feedback again, I remember why I liked this site now... haha. I'll be going through and editing now- thanks again!

-cat4prowl