Published August 30, 2009
Criticism is smiled upon, as I have edited this but once. : D
The light drizzle one summer afternoon merely aggravated the feelings of a middle-aged woman, driving home in her sedan after an excruciating oral surgery. The gap in the back of her mouth seemed to enlarge into a massive black hole every time she glanced at herself in the rear-view mirror. Her circumstances make her near-accident seem more likely; the truck in beside her, in the wrong lane, suddenly veered off into a side street in front of her, without his direction blinker on. He just barely skimmed the front of the woman's car, and her heart skipped a beat/
Behind her had been a sports utility vehicle, containing a mother and daughter, coming back from a winning major league baseball game. Needless to say, they were in better spirits than the woman mentioned previously, and the mother was rushing back to her hometown to drop her daughter off at a friend's house for a sleepover. Her heart stopped when she saw an unmoving vehicle in the road getting closer and closer to her car when she hadn't been tailgating in the least. She -- reacting as any individual in her conditions would -- wasn't prepared for another unjust court battle over car accidents that year.
The woman from the baseball game clutched the steering wheel a bit tighter let her left toes fall on the brakes. She felt her front license plate touching the back one of the in front of her, and began to shake furiously, even though her mind had been waterlogged with relief.
After a few seconds' pause, there in the middle of the road, the woman with the tooth extraction, ever so gingerly, lifted her toe from the break and let herself glide down the hill, starting at five miles an hour as and increasing speed gradually as she descended. In the car behind, the two occupants' hands were still trembling, but they were moving forward, nonetheless. And so ended just another day -- a day that the woman, the mother, and the daughter would all surely forget. But, instead of letting two lives be nastily entwined, by, perhaps, one stepping on the brakes a moment later, they went their separate ways, and lived their lives as though nothing had happened.
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140,283 Literary Works • 673,074 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Well this is an intriguing point to start off on. It almost seems like a sort of setup to one of those detailed sequences where a lot of little unfortunate incidents end up causing mass chaos and I absolutely love the tension that you're managing to build with this while also simultaneously not giving us too much information about this woman and her story and dipping into info dumping territory.
OOooh this is really lining up perfectly in that sense. I can see how you're tapping into the message of this other person so powerfully as well, giving these two characters so much life and suddenly much more of a stake than could ever be possible if these two were just cars about to get into an accident. The tension is building so powerfully and I love it.
Ahhhh I was expecting things to end in a fiery car crash but this is arguably much more powerful of an ending. I think its a beautiful way to tie up this tension and showcase how a bit of patience, a bit of care and a bit of luck has seen these people through the day to live their lives. There's a lot of emotion simmering there I think you do really well into tap into this. This seems the perfect size for a beautiful little piece like this that just hits up perfectly in the feels.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hey Abigail, Evi here. ^^
Wordiness
Night owl's right-- it's a cool idea that would have a lot of morals and emotion behind it, it you delve a bit deeper into the action. As it is right now, it's actually really well written, just not exciting enough. Not dramatic enough.
First of all, everything a about this is a teensy bit over-told? Like, you're using too many words-- too many impressive, large words --when in reality more concise ones would fit better and tell the same idea just as well. Even separating some sentences into smaller chunks might help. For example, reasons why the first sentence is tell-y:
Instead, try something like this:
From her sedan, a middle-aged woman watched the melancholy drizzle outside. All she wanted was to get home-- she had just gotten back from oral surgery-- but everything about the summer afternoon was moving lethargically.
Of course, that's just the way I'd rewrite it; you should do it however you like! ^^ (Although feel free to use that re-wording.) Basically cut out some of the adjectives and make the sentences shorter, more concise, and less like they're trying to cram as many words into a single paragraph as possible.
So, pretty much all this piece is lacking right now is some heightened drama. I realize that the point of the story itself was that nothing happened-- literally. It was a nearly avoided accident, bound to be forgotten eventually, but one that could have been deadly. I think that's where you need to focus: deadly. Right now you talk about going to court, but that doesn't make the readers anxious enough. You need a more serious consequence for hitting the brakes a second later. Sure, insurance prices and getting rear-ended is a pain, but it doesn't make the readers feel enough relief when they avoid colliding.
So, how to do this? I suggest change the stakes, first of all, like I said. Secondly, add some more emotion. You're telling a lot about what exactly these women do-- which toe they lift from the pedal, where they came from --but we don't get much of their reaction. Maybe it's cliched, but I'd love to see their life flash before their eyes, or the mother with her child in the car reflexively reach one hand in front of the daughter, like the ever-protective mother. Add some dialogue within the cars, even; maybe have the daughter complain about how her mother shrieks when she's trying to listen to her favorite music, or the woman with oral surgery makes some analogy of falling into the black hole that they just drilled. Add some personality to these characters-- and make the situation even more perilous. ^^
All in all, very well written! Just need some extra oomph.
~Evi
It's a cool concept, but you need to consider both what you're trying to say and how you say it. You might want a bit more basis. It just all seemed kind of random. Maybe say more about the first driver who took a sharp left. Add another character for us to feel for. Also, say more about the woman and the two in the car behind her. We don't know enough about them to feel the relief that I think you're trying to create when they avoid the crash. You might also want to make the crash more dramatic. Getting rear-ended isn't fun, but it doesn't seem to fit here.