First Flight “Come on, honey. You can do it,” Mother chirped, hovering in front of me. Her wings beat slowly downward, keeping her airborne. The sun reflected off her bright red plumage, seeming to set her on fire. She gazed at me, caring eyes encouraging me forward.
I glanced downward at my feet nervously, nudging a twig aside with one talon. This would be my first flight, and every nerve in my body seemed to be on edge. My heart was beating so rapidly in my chest I was sure Mother could see it.
I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. The attempt proved unsuccessful. Swallowing once, I took a hesitant first step out of the nest.
I was falling, gravity dragging me quickly downward through the air. I opened my beak to scream, only to find that I had forgotten how to speak. The wind was whipping past my ears, blocking out all other sounds.
Then Mother was beside me, yelling into my ear.
“Your wings! Flap your wings!” she shouted. I extended my wings, catching the air. My downward descant slowed. I flapped downward once, and felt my entire body move upward. I flapped once more, floating in the air.
“You did it!” Mother yelled in a prideful voice. I’m flying, I thought. I really am! I’M FLYING!!! It was like nothing I’d ever felt. I felt so light, so free. I was on top of the world, and I didn’t think I ever want to land again.
“But hovering is only part of flying.” She flew upward, and I followed as best I could. Soon, we had broken through the canopy of the forest.
“Now, you have to learn to catch the wind. It’s your friend; always glide when you can.” She demonstrated, catching the breeze, her wings fully extended. She flew quickly forward on the back of the wind. “Remember though,” she said, glancing back. “The wind is a traitorous friend. It will as soon as kill you as save your life.”
***
Hours later, I and mother flew back to our small nest. I felt like my wings were about to fall off; I was so tired. We landed on the smooth twigs of the nest mother had constructed for me.
She glanced at me, eyeing me up and down. She chirped in laughter.
“You’ll get better at it, honey. Trust me. You just have to build up your muscles. Rest. I go see about getting us some food.” She jumped out of the nest and flew off into the fading sunlight.
What a day I had, I thought. Flying. I can fly.
I really liked this. As I was reading I wanted to read more about the experience of flying. It was a little too short. You should try exploring taking it to the next step and adding more detail. More about the first flight experience. But, nonetheless very good! -Z
Aww, that was so cute! I loved everything about it. Nothing was overdone, though I thought some things may have been a little vague. But if this is one of your writing exercises then I'm thinking that I really need to read some more of it.
Again: simply adorable.
Hello there Kanen,
I thought I'd drop by to give your piece a quick review.
So, a writing exercise... Turn yourself into a bird and see how realistically you can portray the picture of your first flight.
Now, I commend your prose in its fluid and progressive build up that you as always create with an impressive grace.
Let us however look at some other aspects of your story. A bird just flew! Come on, this is his life long dream. He wants to learn how to fly. True writing talent comes in describing his complete elation at having achieved his purpose. While you did convey certain emotions, I did not quite feel any sort of attachment to the persona of the chick. To appropriately convey this we need to take a look at several tools that allow a writer to make a connection with his reader.
Let's start with the actual description of the experience of flying. Where you came down in this activity was the fact that you did not successfully portray the actual feelings of the bird. While there is the perhaps fleeting feeling of elation at actually flying, the true elation needs to come from elsewhere. The experience of what you felt flying and what you saw and how you soared from such heights is what will create the utter dream situation that you describe and connect your feelings to the reader.
Let us then imagine how precisely the bird would experience his mother's voice. They are both of them birds, and therefore find that communication with one another is similar to how we would find communication with another human. Therefore a bird would not notice another bird's "chirp". It would more likely merely just see this as normal casual tone of conversation. Therefore, it would be far more fitting to merely say the word "said", and thereby portray the speech more realistically while at the same time not distract the reader from the dialogue itself.
That's it for now!
Have a great one
These are the points that I thought need the most work. Throughout the draft, you err on the grammatical principle of creating a new paragraph after every dialogue segment. I’ve highlighted those areas, so you can easily correct it later. Strikeouts are places I think you should remove (opinion- spelling- and grammatical-wise) and the italics are segments or words I think you should insert. Watch carefully, as some italicized areas are small, and difficult to see.
Overall, you did well. Nice prose, although it is a little redundant in some areas (just a matter of opinion). The reactions of the mother do little to express or reveal her emotions, but perhaps you saw this as unnecessary, since the aim might have been for the reader to sympathize with the MC: the baby bird. Either way, I applaud your efforts and would enjoy reading a rewritten draft of this.
Thank you all for reading this. It was in fact just a writing exercise, something to get my creativity flowing and get rid of my writer's block. I really don't plan on continuing it. Thanks again.
Hi Kanen. it's the first time here I have read a story with an animal character. It was refreshing. I liked the concept. i think you are going to continue it or was it a short story? It was neatly written and I could find no errors. Just one though:
Short, but not a bad start to a story. Still curious exactly what your main characters are, or even what their names are, but I assume you plan on revealing those in later chapters. Unless of course you don't plan on continuing- in that case, never mind.
It should be 'didn't think I would ever want to land again.'Should be 'Mother and I'
Every few nitpicks, which is always a good sign. Good luck!
Use another word besides downward.
Mother should be capitalized.
Eyeing is spelled eying.
This story is good, but doesn't have anything in it to make the reader want to finish the story. There isn't any real emotion. Other than that, it was fine.
Cute.
This read like a Disney scene.
Dont take it as a bad thing, I grew up back when Disney was good and diddnt have to rely on the maveriks at Pixar and their princesses.
You grew up then too but you get my drift.
This was... short.
I'd have like more feeling in it all, the moment of flight, falling and progression was all short.
It dissapointed me.
The character diddnt really have more thought in this other than I'm going to do it, crap I'm falling, oh wait I CAN do this, Man I did it.
Which is fine for something very short and simple like this.
I'm probably reading into this too much, expecting too much out of something that according to your post was a writing exersize, which then renders my previous statements moot.
But still with some tweaking, addition and some serious undertones, this could be a very effective short piece.
Just get back to me if you have any thoughts or insults as to my review.
I was joking by the way, dont take this all harshly.
Best wishes, hit me up if any questions.
Era.