A/N: This is the short I submitted to the June 2016 Contest. I'd love some feedback.
She stood clutching the metal cable. Her charcoal-gray converse blended in with the wide metal barrier she had climbed onto. Tears ran down her face and mixed with the rain. It was coming down in sheets. Wave after wave of droplets collided with her body, soaking her clothes and separating her hair into defined strands that whipped across her face with the wind. Her hand trembled violently as she pulled it from the cable to swipe her long, brown hair off her forehead. She stared into the dark waters, which were writhing nearly 300 feet below her.
Her left hand dangled limply by her side. Her other hand still grasped the thick cable, one of many that kept the Brooklyn Bridge from plummeting into the East River. She was young, too young to be standing on the edge of a bridge in the middle of the night. Her eyes, however, held the depth of someone who had seen the ugly parts of the world and couldn't quite cope with it.
The girl's face twisted in agony, partially from physical pain, but mostly from the torture of a stalemate between two halves of herself. She bared her teeth and clenched her jaw tight. Her knees were weak with fatigue. She clawed into the depths of her mind, searching for something, anything that was worth living for. She came up empty. Her chest heaved with shaky sobs. As she drew in a long breath, her rib cage expanded with a beautiful defiance. She wasn't going to let the darkness that drove her to this bridge continue to plague her soul. She lifted her chin to look at the twinkling city lights. Brooklyn always looked nicer at night, when the Sun had turned its back on the dirty streets and crime-ridden alleyways. It wouldn't be the worst way to go. Where else could she get a view like this?
As she stepped off the bridge, the ends of her hair hung suspended above her head, before the building momentum yanked them out of sight.
Between the raindrops on my window, I watched the darkness take her from my sight.
I drove by, and my headlights abandoned her.
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141,368 Literary Works • 674,383 Reviews
This piece was beautiful, scary and sad all at the same time!
I was absolutely hooked on this from the moment my eyes read the first sentence, well done! I hope to see more pieces by you!!
keep writing
Thanks!
Remington38 here to reveiw your writing!
I would love to see more like this by you.
Wow is the first thing I have to say, just wow. I absolutely loved this story and the first paragraph alone sucked me into a moment in this world you have created. The imagery and description (which is always my favorite part of a story) was astonishing. I have no words really there was so much emotion just in the last line alone let alone the rest of it. The wording just flowed beautifully and ahhhhh I just loved it. You are a very talented writer
Thank you so much!
Hey, sunshine!
I hope you're having a WONDERFUL day today!
This piece was really really REALLY pretty and beautifully intricate. The way you worded everything just spoke to me. The pacing was awesome. Your use of sentence structure (short sentences vs. long sentences) was strong.
In the ending of the third paragraph, however, I sort of got lost, specifically after the sentence, "She wasn't going to let the darkness that drove her to this bridge continue to plague her soul". I read to the end thinking that her stepping off the bridge meant that she didn't actually commit suicide. I thought she ended up fighting the darkness and winning, but reading the second to last sentence caused me to reread it.
I understand that you were probably going for her rebounding for a single, beautiful moment. Perhaps you should make a clearer transition between "crime-ridden alleyways" and "It wouldn't be the worst way to go"?
Overall, this was a fantastic piece, with lots of clear imagery and description, which I completely adore.
Keep writing, beautiful!
Thanks for the review!
Woah, this is really good.
Your descriptions are amazing and give me a complete image of what's happened while also sending a little chill down my back.
You definitely add a twist at the end with the person driving by. It's interesting and makes your story different from others. Also because you end it so suddenly it leaves the reader wondering and also they might try to think what happens next. Does the person stop and turn around? I like that you leave us to come up with ideas, but even yet the story truly ends here.
The title pulls readers in and the way it is inside the piece is well placed.
Overall this is amazing!
Good Luck and Keep Writing
Sláinte -Junel
Thank you!
time to review this.
I like this story's twist, despite being a very short story it still had somewhat of a twist. I like the commentary this twist makes on the bystander effect and the somewhat cloudy morality regarding suicide.
This isn't to say I don't have my quarrels with the twist though. My first problem is that it seems like the complete lack of empathy from the narrator is a bit overdone, I mean surely the bystander would feel something, say something or do something? Just driving by silently seems quite psychopathic.
The POV is also quite confusing. I know to preserve the twist's value it needs to seem like an omniscient POV only for the reader to find out it isn't. However I think a single concurrent POV would be more beneficial to the story than the confusing changes in perspective. For example how could the witness determine her knees were weak with fatigue, at best they could take a guess.
Some minor story flaws:
Apparently she is at a stalemate with herself but there is no clear tipping point that makes her jump. It mentions that she searches for a reason to live and finds nothing, surely that would be the first thing you ask yourself when considering suicide. Perhaps write a clear moment of realisation for her, or don't say she is in a stalemate.
The headlights were illuminating her, but she was on the side of the bridge? I know this is fairly minor but when trying to build a mental picture the reader it is annoying to try and have to imagine the circumstance in which the headlights would illuminate her.
She doesn't notice the person in the car whose headlights are shining at her. I don't know it just seems odd that she pays no heed to the car. Perhaps it could solve both problems if noticing the person in the car prompted her to jump off.
General descriptions:
They were certainly thoughtful descriptions, perhaps too thoughtful in the context of a person witnessing suicide. The description to me, while vivid, isn't very rich or deep. This is because it focuses very heavily on the visual aspect of things, and rarely uses metaphors or similes to give the reader a more visceral, personal experience. Try to incorporate all the senses.
Best of luck and keep writing.
First of all, thanks! Thus was really helpful and you make a lot of good observational points.
I wrote it to seem unfinished because I wanted the readers to be able to fill in the blank space of how the driver felt. It's kind of a full in the space sort of thing. That's how I intended it anyway.
Yes, it was pretty difficult to decide how to write the perspective twist. If I completely followed the first person PoV, you're right, it would've been completely visual descriptions. It was tricky, determining what was okay to put in there.
The stalemate thing: yeah. That makes sense.
Headlights: You know when it's dark out, the high beams of your car have a pretty wide illumination field. Light spreads very easily in the dark. And, like I implied in the story, the whole description was of a split second experience. The driver caught sight of the girl out the side of his windshield, right in the edge of his headlight field.
The girl probably wasn't focused on cars driving by her, given that she was, you know, about to kill herself. That can be kind of distracting.
That was a great point about the five senses. I'll try to keep that in mind.
Thanks again!