Summer Will Suck.

My prompt: Genre: Realistic
Element: your story must be written in the future tense

So, naturally, I started writing things in the past tense. XD

Then I started over and this came out.

Rated for some harsh language-- I change when I'm writing. I really, really do.

Edit: I changed the spacing on Word, but it won't really work here, so I'm leaving the extra line spaces.
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I am not going to be a happy camper this summer.

Why?

Because I'll be going to summer school. I'll be forced to endure long, boring classes with few bathroom breaks and fewer snack breaks while half-listening to the teacher I’m supposed to be paying attention to, attempting to take notes, ignoring the obnoxious come-ons of a certain noxious Jeremy Cowls, and generally just wishing I were someplace else.

To make matters worse, my friends will be all over the world. Tanya’s family will be going to Spain as “One big history lesson”, Marcus’ family will be visiting the land down under, “Because it’s cool,” and Natalie will be flying to Portugal for a mission trip. Even Sandy, who hates travelling, is being dragged on a trip to China because they have ancestors there or something.

Me? Oh, I’ll have plenty of choices—Christian camp in California, band camp in Arkansas, horse camp in Alabama, even a family vacation in Colorado, which is something we only do once every other year because of my dad’s crazy work schedule as a firefighter.

But nooo, I’ll be stuck here. I’ll be forced to babysit stinky, crying toddlers and noisy, disobedient kids as a way to actually pay for the extra schooling that I’m going to so obviously need. Now, normally, I don’t mind this. I like kids. They’re fun to be with. They’re fun to play with. They’re fun to mess with, ‘cause they’ll believe practically anything you tell them, no matter how outrageous it is. They don’t judge you the way older people so often will, because they’re young and they don’t know any better. That’s how kids are.

But if I have to do something that normally provides money for gifts and movies and things that I actually want, just to pay for something I really, really don’t want at all…

Let’s just say I’ll be resisting some serious urges.

And no, those urges definitely will not be maternal ones.

Hey, I’m sorry, but when you’re stuck down south, in the heat, doing something to pay for something you need but don’t want, surrounded by screaming kids who won’t listen to you for several hours while thinking, “I’ll bet my friends are having the grandest time right now”… well, you’d be having some serious urges too.

I might even be forced to get a real job.

UGH.

Do you know why I babysit? It’s because I don’t want a real job. I’m not a very structured person, and the only jobs I’d want have to do with writing, kids, and animals. I don’t want to be a waitress, I am not cut out to be a saleswoman, I do not want a job stocking shelves or moving boxes, and a desk job (which I wouldn’t be able to get anyway) would absolutely, positively kill me.

And I’m not even joking about that last part. I’d commit suicide. (How could anyone not?)

On top of all that, I’m going to have to listen to my mom bitch, bitch, bitch about how I should have passed all my classes and how she doesn’t know where she went wrong with me and how my friends are such horrible influences on me and GodDAMMIT Fye, why didn’t you study?!

And because she’s my mom and I hate these rants and she’ll never listen to anything I have to say in my own defense, I’ll only mumble and groan and roll my eyes and say, “Mom, shut up” before getting the heck out of there as quickly as humanly possible. And then she’ll cry and I’ll feel bad, but not too bad because, come on, mom, aren’t you tired of this routine already? So then she’ll get mad and storm off spouting things about what a horrible daughter I am and how she would never have dared to use such language in front of her mother. At which point, I’ll roll my eyes, walk away, and pretend like nothing happened.

Of course, she doesn’t actually like fighting with me, so she’ll eventually break down and come running to me crying, saying she didn’t mean it and she’s so sorry and Fye, could you ever find it in your heart to forgive me? To which I’ll pat her back and mumble the most encouraging things I can think of (which usually isn’t all that much—it’s a little hard to sympathize with something that’s a daily routine). Then we’ll hug, kiss, make up, and do the whole thing all over again the next day.

Yes, this summer is going to be positively awful. And the kicker is, it’s not even going to be my fault.

It’s going to be the fault of my stupid big brother, who is currently blasting his music so damn loudly that I can’t even hear myself think.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cords to cut.
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I rather like this.

I loved this. This was absolutely funny and so entertaining. I can so relate. I don't wanna get a real job btw. haha. I couldnt really find anything wrong with this grammar wise. nor was i really looking. But i did like it. And i thank you. Because I needed this laugh. Keep up the great job. And Happy Writing!!!!

Hellõ there, it's Pervy here. This was a good, solid piece of writing. I noticed no faults in the grammar section, and throughoutly enjoyed it. I'm sure every teenager can somehow relate to this, the situation somehow sounds very familiar.
Good, cheerful writing! Me likes.

-Pervy the Apocalyptically Perverted Iguana.

I am loopy from a combination of a whole lot of things like pain and lack of sleep. You have been warned.

ignoring the obnoxious come-ons of a certain noxious Jeremy Cowls

You say "noxious"; I think fumes. I can only imagine the suffering poor Jeremy Cowls suffered growing up with such horrendous body odor.

That said, I think a second "obnoxious" would work better. It flows better and it makes a bit more sense.

I’m going to so obviously going to need

And this sort of blew my sort of mind. Sort of.

...I just confused myself.

Anyways, pretty sure there's an extra "going to" in there.

GodDAMMIT Fye

Fye = my previous avvie
Fye = male
male =/= female vibes I'm getting from this what with the mentioning of maternal instincts and all
me = o_O ? <= confused pirate/expression of confusion + punctuation; take your pick

Personally, I like the confused pirate interpretation better. I like pirates.

So yeah. Overall, this amused me, especially the last sentence. XD

One thing though: you had some extra spacing in between some paragraphs. While I can see you put them there for purposes of emphasis, they came across to me as a bit too... much. Almost as if you tried too hard and so they felt borderline melodramatic (which kinda makes no sense since this wasn't really melodramatic at all, except maybe the beginning, but it works and it isn't too much... if you take out the extra spacing, that is). The sentences (for lack of a better word) are emphasized enough just by being their own paragraph, and having the additional spacing is overkill.

Otherwise though, no (other) complaints from this corner. You did a pretty good job with the tenses (I didn't catch anything off about them or any slipping) and this entertained me. :3

And with that, I'm going to try and get some sleep.

(And thus put an end to my parentheses abuse, among other things, yes.)

Hey anime!

I am soo jealous of you right now. I am nowhere near starting my story for this contest. In fact, I barely have a plot...

But anyway, as for your entry, I loved it. The humour was great and helped to express the personality of your MC. The whole thing about how it was going to be her brothers fault for playing loud music was brillaint - it had me laughing

You wrote the future tense really well and the whole thing worked. In my opinion, you followed the prompts well! You also seemed to capture the voice of a moany teenage girl well - it kind of sounded like me in some parts. The bit about her arguing with her mum on a daily basis was believable and relatable and helped to make you character a little more real. As did the parts about her friends going away on amazing holidays while she has to stay home and babysit. You wrote the whole - 'pity-me, my-life-is-rubbish-and-boring-and-while-everyone-else-is-having-a-great-time-my life-is-hell' voice of a teenager well. The moany tone could have gotten a bit annoying after a while but the humour you had in the piece helped to balance it out.

This isn't a very helpful review, because I can't think of anything constructive to say other than, 'well done'.

Now all I have to do is try and write my entry. This could take a while...

Good luck in the contest!

xDudettex

Pahahaha this made me laugh! You definitely have the "realistic" part down because I swear I could feel every single emotion that she had! You had so much frustration in that short story that I wanted to jump into it and help Fye out XD I felt so bad for her, so you definitely have the whole "feelings for the MC" things down! I think I only found one grammatical error, but that's it, I'm pretty sure.

But nooo, I’ll be stuck here. I’ll be forced to babysit stinky, crying toddlers and noisy, disobedient kids as a way to actually pay for the extra schooling that I’m going to so obviously going to need.

You should change the highlighted fragment. It should be either "that I'm going to so obviously need" or "that I'm so obviously going to need" either one of those would be fine, you just added an extra "going to" which is easily fixable by replacing it with one of the fragments I suggested.

Overall this was super amusing and I was laughing through it (especially the last line! That was so funny X3) I liked the tension in it, and I read through it very fast. It just flowed so easily, like the MC was rushing everything in in one giant rant about her future sucky summer ^.^ I loved it :3

Hi there Kara (I'm gonna keep calling you that even though it has nothing to do with your new username, k? K)!

I'm here to give you your contest review. :} As you probably know by now, the entries have already been judged and the winners announced. This review is to let you know the kinds of things Ranger and I talked about when judging your piece, and hopefully help you understand our decisions and learn from it all.

First of all, you did a really good job of making this read in a natural, conversational way. None of it felt forced or contrived or stinted--it all flowed in a very easy, emotional, believable way. I could feel your character's frustration, and I genuinely felt bad for her. You incorporated your genre and element quite nicely, too. I didn't expect to see future tense used this way, but it definitely worked, so good job! Also, where did the name Fye come from? It's lovely. :3

Anyhow, onward.

In general, I'm really not sure what I can say about this piece because it felt like a blog post. Really, I almost had to check I was reading the right thing. That's both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because (as I said before) it made this piece feel very raw and very real. It's a bad thing because... it doesn't feel like it was written by a master blogger. This might be intentional (after all, your character isn't necessarily Shakespeare) but it made the piece come off as more of a rant than a story.

There isn't any actual character development or conclusion or... plot, really. It's just any person complaining about any series of unfortunate circumstances. Sure, the character's voice comes through pretty well, and it's amusing and entertaining... but it doesn't change. The character doesn't grow or change in any way, and neither does the reader. The end is nice, but I'm left just thinking "poor kid, seems like a nice person--too bad she has such a rotten summer ahead of her." I didn't really feel like I got much else out of reading the piece.

Now, like I said, you've nailed the Realistic genre. Maybe you've nailed it too well, even. This feels so realistic that I'm hardly sure why I should read it rather than just go onto Facebook or YWS and read peoples' blogs/statuses. It was fun, but in the same way that Facebook or YWS is fun. You don't have an extraordinary story to tell, but that's okay--in my opinion, the point of the genre isn't to tell an amazing, lucky, symbolic story that technically could have happened in the real word (though that would have been acceptable too, of course) but rather to tell an everyday, meh-ish kind of story in a way that makes people look at everyday, meh-ish things in a new way.

I think you've almost reached that level with this piece, but not quite. There are parts where the character's voice makes it fun to read, but for the most part I wish there was something here other than just ranting. I'd like to see more of the way your character sees the world around them--because, of course, that is my world too, and maybe if I understood more about how Fye sees it, that might give me insight as to how I could see it.

I hope this review helps somewhat. :} Please feel free to PM me or post on my wall.

Thanks so much for entering.