The radio was on and the river was in sight. I drew a breath, the crystal linings laying on the ripples of water were awe inspiring. The sun was still in the sky displaying the beauty for me. I worried though, wondering if the sun would be too hot and my fishing would be disrupted, I tried not to think of it. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to worry about the sun, or anything for that matter, I was going to think.
So maybe I could have thought somewhere else, but where? At my house I am way too lonely, or rather, alone. It’s too quiet for proper thoughts to play in my head and for me to listen to them. Too quiet for me to just discover something new about the world, or myself.The quiet would disrupt it, and I would try to find something else to do, another way to spend my time.
And then, where else? At the office if I tried to think I would probably get fired, as an assistant I am needed all the time. I am needed for the coffee, for the papers to be scanned, for the plants to be watered, and for the mountains to be moved--oh wait, that’s just what it seems like.
Then where else? At my sisters? I have no sister or brother for that matter, no family but me and my mom. And then that brings me to what would be my last resort, could I go to my mom’s to think?
That one only leaves me thinking some more. That is a confusing question. My mom inspires my thoughts, but could I go to her place to think? No, but I don’t know why. I guess it was just one of the things on my list to think about today. I think it lands on number 234. So maybe that was a random number, but I do have a lot to think about.
I park at a good spot, turn off the radio, then leaving my flip flops I get out and lock the car. It’s a simple red volkswagen beetle. I give a tire a weak kick to show it my appreciation for taking me here. I have had it for about four weeks now, just got it after graduating from college. The sun moved on me while I was parking and now was shining even more fervently on the river, thankfully it was not the side I would be fishing at. I sweat a lot and quickly, so not only would that be unpleasant, it would also disrupt my thinking. Walking over from where my car was parked I found the place I was hoping to sit on and then sat.
There was plenty of shade thanks to bushes behind me. I was sitting on a large rock just over the river. I figured it would be a good fishing spot for me. It was only when I had settled perfectly on the rock, my legs dangling off of it, and a small smile on my face did I realize my plan were thwarted. I looked around and felt around for my fishing pole. “What?” I spoke my thought. Then I started laughing. It started out as if I had the giggles and then continued in little fistfuls, I just couldn’t contain myself and started roaring in laughter within five minutes. I was a little bit glad no one was there to see me at that moment. For I was the epitome of ‘laughing at yourself’. By the time I was calming myself down, I had been holding my sides in pain. It was just too much!
Of course, I had not brought my fishing pole. Nope, I had not even bought a fishing pole. I somehow thought that going fishing was just an act. It was the physical action of going to the place. And so that is what I did, I made a mental note to myself I was going fishing, I prayed for the weather to be good, I thought about the location and where I would stay. Then I hopped in my car and drove there, only to realize I had no fishing pole, I had no bait, and I had no experience. Who was I kidding? Possibly fishing was just an excuse for me to be able to be by myself (without constant attention of family members), enjoying my thoughts. Or maybe it was just a way for me to feel like I was going to do something this weekend, since usually I had no plans. I would then have to think about that too. I jumped off the rock, wincing a little bit at the smaller rocks that met me at the bottom, and then walked along the river side. I was tiptoeing so that my feet wouldn’t have so many impressions of the small rocks and pebbles that were gathered below me. They were beautiful actually, I grabbed one and threw it into the river watching the ripples.
It was quite liberating. I never knew taking a rock and throwing it into a river could be so freeing. I thought about how many people would like to do that right now. Probably around 7 billion or so. It just would be so fun for everyone in the world to have a chance, once in their life time to throw a rock into a river. I took another one and threw it in harder. It actually happened to be a weaker throw than the previous one and landed in the water close to me, breaking into the surface it brought up water towards me and I ran away squealing like a little girl. Well, to my mom I still was anyways. I was tempted to start my laughing fit again but I reined myself in. “That’s it. You are going to pay!” I said, yes, to the water! I took a handful of rocks and pebbles and just started throwing them into the river.
“This one is for that one person who can’t stop talking!”
“This one is for people like me, who talk to themselves!”
“This one is for the fact that I didn’t bring a fishing pole!”
“This one is for people who come out here!”
“This one is for anyone who feels alone!”
I stopped after that one. I crumpled down to the grainy ground, breathing hard and sobering up. I felt like crying. What was I doing here? This was a deserted place, and I was alone. I was all alone. I tried to hold in the tears, that wasn’t why I came here. The sun was shining and I was suppose to be hopeful. I was suppose to be free. I was suppose to think. How hard was it to just sit and think without having to worry or cry, or anything but just think? The tears made their way through and I laid down on the terribly uncomfortable ground and cried. It wasn’t really that I was alone, but that I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know why. That was why I wanted to think. I just wanted to know why, I just wanted to figure it all out. I wanted to figure out why I was so seemingly ungrateful, I had a wonderful family, and I had, had wonderful friends in my childhood. And being alone is not so bad. But then, I almost felt isolated, like there would be no more interaction with people as there was before, and I must say, that worried me.
The sun left me soon and it got cooler, I had been closing my eyes trying to calm down, and finally do what I had originally came to do. I did have some peace being there, there was something special about nature. I think it is that it has nothing to do with me. As in, us, humans, it was something that we didn’t do, and something that no matter how hard we try, we cannot control. I mean we can farm it, and produce it, but we cannot create it, and we cannot stop it. It’s something that’s a bit of an enigma if we truly choose to think about it. Knowing that it wasn’t made by me, or has anything to do with me, makes me feel like I don’t always have to be in control. I don’t have to tell gravity to please make the pebble land in the lake, it will. I don’t have to tell the sun to go away or come, it will. I also don’t have to interact with nature to like it. I just do. It brightens my mood. It makes me smile. It’s beautiful. It liberates. My eyes got slightly heavy as the wind played with my toes before creeping over me as if a blanket of reassuring windy warmth. It was not a cold wind, but a soothing one, of cool temperatures that had hints of the warm weather in them.
I woke up with an aching reminder never to sleep on the side of a river. The small rocks and pebbles were ingrained on my back and I didn’t want to move--correction, I couldn’t move. I finally gathered enough courage and turned and then stood. It hurt. So much. That could not be stressed enough. I then walked painfully back to my car and got in. My head was pounding. I turned the key and started going. I thought back on my day, well, there was definitely thinking. I thought. Maybe not about myself, but I still thought. I sighed. “Even better,” I said. It was even better. Maybe that’s what I needed, to not think about myself. But to just think about things, and life, and my surroundings. Maybe the more I discovered about what was around me, the more I would find out about the real me? I wasn’t sure, but I would be back again, another day. I had a friend, a helping hand in my thought processing, it was the sky, the sun, the trees and hope, the hope I had among these things.
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“The radio…the river was in sight.”
There needs to be a comma after “on”.
”I drew a breath, the crystal linings laying on the ripples of water were awe inspiring.”
The comma between “breath” and “the” should be a semi-colon or a period with a capital “t” in “the”.
“The sun was still in the sky displaying…”
This sentence is a little strange because it’s almost as if you don’t know, as a reader, if it’s supposed to mean that the sun “remained” in the sky or if it was “unmoving” in the sky. This is because of the use of “was still”, with “still” have multiple things it could mean.
“I worried though, wondering if the sun would be too hot and my fishing would be disrupted, I tried not to think of it. It didn’t matter.”
This sentence can be broken up to make it flow a little better and the to make the mean of the sentence come across better. You could put a comma before “though” and a period after it. Then you would make the “wondering” into “wondered” and put an “I” in front to make it a complete sentence. Also, in the last part of that first sentence the things before and after the word and aren’t parallel. This makes the sentence sound slightly off. By putting “I wondered” at the beginning of that new sentence, it takes care of part of the problem. But to make it completely parallel you’d have to put another “if” before “my fishing”. I would then put a period after “disrupted” and change the period after “it” to a semi-colon because those last two independent clauses are both short and go together.
“I wasn’t going to…sun, or anything…matter, I was…”
In this sentence you have an independent clause followed by a dependant clause followed by another independent clause. The first clause and second can go together to form a complete sentence. But it would probably work better if you were to put a dash (–) after “sun”. This makes it seem like the dependant clause is interrupting the independent clause, which it is. Then comes the next independent clause which means that can stand alone as a sentence and needs to have a period or semi-colon (Probably a period would work best.) after “matter”.
“So maybe…”
Comma after so.
“Too quiet for me to just discover…”
This isn’t a complete sentence. And I know that, for style, some authors do this all the time. They put fragments and things in their writing to show that there should be certain parts that need to be paused at or completely stopped. It’s also used in plays to show actors where they should stop or trail off in the dialogue to make it flow better. But here it just seems like a fragment that needs a needs a subject. “What’s too quiet?” The “house” or “it” would work.
“And then, where else?”
For the conjunction “and” to be needed you’d have to have picked a spot in the previous paragraph and wanted to add to it. Since a place wasn’t found in the previous paragraph you’re actually trying to say “If not the house, then where else can I go?” So, you’d probably need to use “but”. As in: “I can’t use the house…but where else could I use?” Or you could use “so” “I can’t use the house, so then, where else could I use?”
“At the office…tried to think I would…as an assistant I…”
Okay so, there needs to be a comma after “at the office”. There also needs to be a period after “fired” and “as” needs to be capitalized. Also, there needs to be a comma after the clause “as an assistant”.
“Then where else?”
Still, this sounds odd. I’d probably use “If not there, then where else?” It sounds more complete.
“At my sisters?”
How many sisters? One, seven? If it’s one sister then use “sister’s”. If the narrator has more than one sister and they live together use “sisters’ “
Wait. If the narrator has no siblings then why even bring it up? It seems pretty pointless to bring up something like that that really has no context in the actual story. If you were using that to bring up the mom, why not start with the narrator staying at their mother’s house and explaining that she was really the only family the narrator has.
“No, because I don’t know why.”
No! Don’t do that. Please, don’t do that. The narrator is thinking to themselves, yes? If they are then they should be able to contemplate things without having to admit that they don’t know an answer. If the question they are asking themselves comes up at a dead end then don’t have them think it. It’s irrelevant that the narrator doesn’t know because they actually do. Somewhere deep down the narrator probably knows why they are going to have to think about their mother. It’s not random and by writing this you’re just being vague. You’re telling the reader that you have this vague idea but you don’t really know if you’re going to actually expand on it and it’s kind of a let down for the reader who might actually want to know what was going on with the mom. As a reader, we want to know the details of the story,
not a general over view of all of things the narrator is going to think about before they think about it. If they are going to think, why not just have them go ahead and do it when they first mention it. Thinking, after all, is what I though this was about.
Okay, about the car. We don’t have to know that the narrator just got it after graduating. We don’t really care. It’s not relevant because they are going way from the car. It’s not the setting; it’s not an important piece of the story at that particular moment. It just happens to be the thing that they drove in.
“The sun moved on me…”
What does that mean?
As of right now, I've worked on this review for about 45 minutes and am about halfway finished. From what I've seen your character seems to be a little all over the place in terms of development (mostly just knowing what's important to keep the story moving forward) and in terms of the emotions that are being shown. There are parts where they are irritated but then they quickly laugh at the oddest moments, especially in the part about the fishing pole.
I would go back through and check the grammar, especially the run-on sentences. Then I would go back through and think about how exactly the character is feeling. Are they angry at the mother, or saddened by the fact that she is the only family they have left? Things like that. And I'd look at the plot and really think about where the story is going. Then, check to make sure it can get there. Because from what I read, and I stopped where they left the fishing pole in the car, there really wasn't a plot. The narrator had some random thoughts that fit together at places and not at others and even when they did sort of fit together there wasn't really any actual information in the thoughts....
If this seems harsh, then I'm sorry. But I'm just trying to help. If you'd like me to finish this review, I can. And if you have any questions, just message me and I'll be glad to answer them.
I hope this helps!
~peanut~
Thanks so much. I am too busy to fully look everything over at the moment. And I am very picky with my work and stuff so it would take forever for me to correct it. I guess I understand your frustration. I guess I should have wrote in the begining that this was suppose to be vauge and short. I don't want to be too specific or give too many details. But I see where I could have added a bit more. This was actually written as ideas flooded by, spontanesly so if it sounds all over the place that's why. And, I would recommend you read it to the end. There wasn't nessicarily a plot, you are correct, as I was writing thoughts as they flowed in. But I don't know if you would see the ending as any better actually...
Also, the character did not leave the fishing pole in the car...it was clear she said she didn't bring it. She didn't even buy it. So please if you're going to reveiw read carefully.
Anywyas, thanks. I didn't really want to post this as it is just one of those "practice" writings, but it is good to make sure everything works out well for the reader in some ways.
Hmm, you indeed have portrayed the semantics of drama. The emotion the main character feels is intense and is clearly irritated about her life and not bringing a fishing pole. My only concern lies greatly onto the plot. The plot is scattered about and it is not clear. It would be best if you attempted to give the readers more of a back story on the main character's annoyance. The atmosphere is good, just work on the plot as a whole.
Thank you!