Young Writers Society

This is the first time I've posted anything to this forum so I thought I would start with a very short piece I had published on The Weaponizer site so people can get a handle on the sort of thing I write/have written.

Comments or whatever are much appreciated!

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Running


A small Volkswagen Beetle weaves in and out of the motorway traffic, cutting up cars and articulated Lorries as it finds the narrowest of gaps to pass between; never once dropping a mile on its speedometer. A young couple are sat inside it; both of them will be dead in a little under twenty minutes. As the small, thin hand on the speedometer hits its highest mark the young guy driving will feel the steering wheel slip. The slightest loss of control will cause the car to swerve, he will attempt to correct the mistake, but by then it will be too late. The front bumper will make contact with the pressed steel of the barrier running along the central reservation and with the driver’s act of sharply pulling down on the left of the steering wheel, he will cause the car to turn sharply and cross two lanes before being hit by the front of an oncoming lorry in the middle lane. The car will be sent spinning towards the hard shoulder where it will collide with another pressed steel barrier. Its speed will cause it to rebound back towards the lorry and the occupants will be sent hurtling underneath. It is at that moment, as the back of the lorry lifts up, and over their car that they will be crushed. They will die instantly.

For now, they are still alive.

The driver is around 25, light brown hair, tall, athletic; she is younger, somewhere in the region of 22 and has long blonde hair which she occasionally flicks out of her face with a sharp shake of her head. They are running. They have been for many months. One autumn day they realised that they were unhappy, life was drifting along at a monotonous pace and they both began to question their very existences. They knew they were not unhappy with each other, but somewhere they felt as though things could be better. He was stuck in a dead-end job, numbers would pass in front of his eyes on a glowing LCD screen every day, and he just had to make sense of them. She was a university student doing a course in journalism and was approaching the end of her final year. As economies collapsed the young man watched the ominous numbers fall, turn red and appear in brackets or with a small dash preceding them, whilst at the same time the girl watched as Newspapers went out of business and journalists all over the world began to battle for less and less jobs. One year ago they found each other, sat in opposite corners of an empty bar, neither one touching their drinks, afraid of what might happen if they let their emotions come to the fore. Their eyes met, they felt excitement for the first time in years, they looked away.

Closing time came and they both exited the bar together, he turned to her and asked if he could buy her lunch one day. She accepted. Over the next few months they grew closer, occasionally meeting by accident, often in quiet bars. They would sit and talk for hours but neither one knew what the other did, the topic never came up; as far as they were concerned they lived two lives, one with each other, one without. For a while they managed to maintain a balance between the two, but eventually their lives without began to take over and they found themselves unhappier than when they first met. Then came that autumn day; stood in the small town square trying to decide where to have dinner, the young girl exhaled slowly before breaking their only rule.

“I’m scared of the future”

“Yeah me too”

“I’m about to enter a world that is crumbling away in front of me. Journalism is dead, that’s what they say. Yet somehow I’ve got to find a job.”

“I’m stuck in a job that has sapped my life; I’m no longer awake at work. I’m just there in a physical sense.”

Silence passed between them as they stood there waiting for the other one to speak. Looking back neither one can remember who suggested running away from it all, but that is what they did. They headed to his car, climbed in and drove out of the city. That night they left behind their lives without each other and finally began to live solely with each other. Before they die they will share one last kiss, they will also exchange words one final time.

“I’m glad we ran…”

They have nineteen minutes left.

Hello Syntheticman! I'd first like to commend you on your excellent grammar, which made your piece quite nice to read. On top of that, everything had a very good flow; there was nothing choppy about it. Your transitions were smooth, especially the first one between the image of the two being crushed under the weight of the lorry and driving peacefully on the road. (The image of the accident, by the way, was very well presented. I liked the moment-by-moment narration.) I imagine that transition might have been a bit difficult, but I love how simple you kept it.
Actually, your writing style reminds me of Markus Zusak's. Have you ever read The Book Thief? Sorry about that tangent, but I think you'll understand if you've read it

The only thing that I can really suggest is to try to develop the relationship between the characters just a bit more. It's interesting that they share this common uncertainty about what their future holds in terms of jobs and success and accomplishment. You did a great job of describing that aspect of their relationship here:

As economies collapsed the young man watched the ominous numbers fall, turn red and appear in brackets or with a small dash preceding them, whilst at the same time the girl watched as Newspapers went out of business and journalists all over the world began to battle for less and less jobs. One year ago they found each other, sat in opposite corners of an empty bar, neither one touching their drinks, afraid of what might happen if they let their emotions come to the fore.

But how exactly do they act together? You wrote about how they tend not to mix their outside lives with the part of their lives they live together. But how close are they exactly? You told us that they share a kiss before they die, but I'd like to know more. Otherwise, the fact that they die together doesn't hold much significance; it doesn't affect me as emotionally as it might if I knew more about them. Even if you gave them names, that would help me to relate more to these ill-fated characters.

I hope this has helped! Please let me know if you have any questions. Best of luck with this piece, I really enjoyed reading it!

GreenFinch

Hi GreenFinchLinnetBird and thanks for the feedback - I'm really pleased you enjoyed it. One of the reasons I posted this story was because I want to extend it and create a much longer piece out of it, so hopefully I will re-post it here. That should also give me chance to work on the characters a little more. Also looking at your comments it seems I need to re-work the relationship a little. I was trying to make it a little ambiguous, are they lovers or not? But it seems that might not have been as effective as I'd planned.

Once again thanks for the feedback and I am about to put The Book Thief on my wishlist!

Hey! This was a great piece, I enjoyed reading it and it got my attention at a very sleepy time, so well done! For me it was a very serious and sad mood all through the story, but I think that's what I liked the most about it anyway. It was very cool how you told us that they would die from the very start.

The first paragraph didn't quite work for me though, I think it was too much description. Whether that is because I don't really know much about cars or how you drive them, that I was very tired and didn't pay great attention when I first read it, that it was too much description for me to hang along with or because you just suck at writing I can't decide, although I doubt it is the last one! However I saw that GreenFinchLinnetBird loved it, so I suppose it is just about what your reading-taste is like

Maybe cutting it up in more paragraphs? I really have nothing constructive to say about it, because the writing and grammar is very good, so it's just me complaining and you can very well ignore it!

I liked the description of the girl very much, "which she occasionally flicks out of her face with a sharp shake of her head" this sentence said much more about her than what colour her eyes are would have done, and it's short and simple as well, which apearance-discriptions should always be. I got the impression that she was very detirmined when I read it.

The running metaphor is great! How they are running but you never actually say what they are running from, or if they are running from anything at all. They might just be trying to get fit for bikini-season, but I got the impression that they were trying to keep up with life, but never getting to the finish line. Or maybe trying to escape from their current existence and way of life. Although I'm not sure if it is a metaphor or not, and I might just be rambling now.

"Their eyes met, they felt excitement for the first time in years, they looked away."
I LOVE this sentence, it really hit home. But I want more of this moment, and more of this night! Here you can have a long detailed description of a moment and I wouldn't mind at all!

I wasn't too keen on the next paragraph though, because you had such a good build up just before and it was like when someone tell a joke, and you get really exited about how it's going to end and pay the greatest attention and your eyes light up because you get the feeling it has a really good punch line, and then it just doesn't. (I don't get that exited about jokes though, but you get my point) Anyway, it was good writing, and I liked it in itself, but I felt like I missed something. I want the detailed description of the moment! After the moment the next paragrapgh will be just fine though. Hope you understood what I tried to convey now, because I know I wouldn't, this doesn't make sence, but no matter how I write it it doesn't, so I'll just leave it now.

I wish the story would have stopped at "I'm glad we ran...", because it is a bit awkward that they just sat there without talking or anything for nineteen minutes unless she fell asleep or something. I was in this really serious and sad mood because I knew they were dying and stuff, and then I just pictured this awkward situation in a car with two people that didn't know what to say and just looked out the window and was very aware of the silence. Also, who was it that said that he/she was glad they ran? Was the other person actually just thinking "Yeeeah, I really wanted to watch the game tonight" I'm exaggerating now, I know they both wanted to run away, it's just I can't get over the 19 quiet minutes. But I don't know.

I couldn't find any typos or sentence mistakes, so that was all good as far as I could see. You'll have to make do with comments that aren't constructive or even makes sense. I realise now that it sounds as though I didn't like it, but I did.

Hey Idunn Sofie and thanks for the feedback. I completely agree that the latter portion of the story needs fleshing out a bit, though as I said to GreenFinch, I didn't want to be too obvious as to whether or not they had a sexual relationship etc. In regards to the opening, I wanted it to be very descriptive and ended up spending a good night watching Police, Camera, Action in order to capture the crash. I was aiming for something visceral.

As for the ending, I realise now that I wasn't as clear as I thought, and re-reading it I can see why. My original intention was that the couple share this moment and last few words just before they die, not nineteen minutes before. The line that starts "Before they die they will..." is supposed to be set in the future, the idea being that the story ends one minute after it began but jumps between the past and future. I hope that makes sense?

Anyway one final point. I wrote a lot of this with one song on loop (it helped inspire the metaphor) and I thought I should share it. Gil Scott-Heron - Running