It was July 4, 1987. He and I both had off from work, so when he asked if I wanted to spend the day at the beach, the answer was an immediate yes! I love the beach, so I was excited to be spending an entire day there with my best friend, who also happened to be incredibly handsome. Any girl would love this opportunity, and I was thrilled to be not only going to the beach for the day, but also spending time with my very good looking friend. However, I think most of the east coast had the same idea. It was difficult to find a place for our towels on the beach, so we were happy to find a spot in the overcrowded sand. Most of the day I watched him swim in the ocean. I enjoy watching the waves, but after being tossed around by them when I was younger and nearly drowning, I no longer chose to swim with them. I did, however, manage a few minutes jumping over the smaller waves with him. But most of the time I watched, collected shells, and enjoyed the scenery. In the late afternoon we sat on the beach and talked. It was like we were on a secluded island. I didn't hear or see anyone else when he was talking to me and staring in my eyes. He mentioned several times that my eyes were extra bright and beautiful that day. It gave me chills every time he said it.
After awhile we headed up to the boardwalk for some pizza. He was mostly excited about the fireworks scheduled for later that evening, so we headed over to the football field to watch the end of the kite festival and get a good seat for the fireworks. The bleachers were already filling up, but we were able to get on the top where we could rest our backs against the railing. It wasn't long before all the seats were filled, and the people next to us asked us to slide to the end. I didn't mind at all being squished next to him as the sun went down and the cool air blew off of the ocean. The fireworks were spectacular, just as promised. I had honestly never seen such a great show, timed perfectly with the music. I couldn't take my eyes off of the beautifully lit up sky! And the finale was by far the best I had ever seen. It was very loud and bright, and I could dimly hear my name being called. As I watched the sky, the voice grew louder, "Look at me, look at me!" It was my friend. But I didn't want to take my eyes off of the fireworks. He persisted, even when I told him he was missing the finale. I glanced to see what he wanted and noticed he wasn't even sitting next to me anymore. It looked like he was sitting on the steps in front of us, so I asked him what he was doing and reminded him he was missing the best part of the show! All he did was keep asking me to look at him. So I did. He wasn't sitting, he was kneeling. And holding a small box. My stomach did something strange and I could feel my heart beating very fast. I put my hands over my mouth and gasped. He yelled over the booming explosions, "I love you. Will you marry me?" and opened the little box. Tears came from nowhere, and rolled down my cheeks in two steady lines. I could barely hear. I could barely see. Then I screamed. I started screaming and screaming and told the people next to me that he just asked me to marry him!Everyone was cheering and screaming over the fireworks, and the people next to me smiled and gave me a hug. They began congratulating me in strange unknown words, but even though they couldn't speak English, they knew exactly what I had said. My best friend was still kneeling on the steps holding out a beautiful diamond ring. "Does that mean yes?" he asked. Then I was suddenly embarrassed and yelled "Yes!" over and over and began jumping up and down on the bleachers. He finally got up and put the ring on my finger.
The traffic was barely moving out of the little ocean city that night, but I didn't mind at all. I was holding my sparkling ring up in all different directions to catch the light and see a myriad of colors coming from that diamond. It was amazing and even more spectacular than the fireworks!I kept repeating over and over, "Mr. and Mrs." and asking him if he was sure. I reminded him that this was forever! We would be together forever! He smiled and always answered "I am more than sure." Hours later we stopped at a diner right outside the city. I showed everyone who was there my new ring.I showed the hostess, all the waitresses, and every customer we passed.They all smiled and congratulated us. Todd ate while I kept holding my ring up to the lights to catch the burst of colors. "I'm getting married!" I said...over and over.I felt like we were the diner's entertainment for the evening. Everyone was smiling and congratulating us and my new finance had the biggest smile on his face. We were more than happy.
When we got home, I was surprised to see so many lights on at the house. My Mom greeted us at the door and gave me a big hug and then said, "Let me see, let me see!"It had been a very long day for her, as she knew his plan and waited patiently from early that morning to hear how things went. She was thrilled. At that moment, the world seemed thrilled and all was right in it.
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140,907 Literary Works • 673,717 Reviews
I think that a few of the paragraphs could be broken up to make a few more shorter ones. Other than that, this is an amazing story and I really liked it!
Hey, Taleof6kids! I'm Pan, and a happy review day to you. I this has been kicking around in the Green Room for quite a while, so I thought I'd drop in and help you out with that.
Before I give you my thoughts on the plot, I'll just echo remyrin's comments about formatting. Your paragraphs are far too long. It's not always easy to know when to start a new paragraph - it's kind of an instinctive thing - but one steadfast rule is to always have a new line when a new character speaks. Separating dialogue from the rest of the prose makes a story infinitely easy to read.
Aside from that, you generally just need new paragraphs whenever a new topic or event occurs, or whenever there's a change in location or time - or anything, really. Like I say, it's quite instinctual. I'll take your second paragraph and demonstrate how you could break it up.
Breaking up the text into shorter paragraphs makes the story far easier to digest. When everything is shoved together into one solid block of text, the events bleed into one another. Appropriate paragraphing allows you to shine the spotlight on each one in turn.
With that out of the way, let's talk about my reactions to the piece as a whole. I'm very hard to please when it comes to romance stories, so I apologise in advance for being a harsh critic. However, I think my biggest concern for this story is that is isn't...really that much of a story. It doesn't really have any conflict or tension or mystery to it - it's just a string of happy events with no tonal shifts. Which means I struggle to find it interesting, because the absolute hallmark of any narrative is conflict. The character has to want something, and there has to be something in the way of that goal. It could be something as grand as wanting to save the universe and being antagonised by an all-powerful overlord, or as petty as wanting control of the television remote. But there has to be a something to achieve, and the character should have to take action to achieve it. This piece achieves only half of that requirement. The narrator presumably wants to be in a relationship with this best friend, but she doesn't do anything to attain this goal. She's too passive.
So the real question is this: how do you introduce conflict to this story? My first suggestion (and it is obviously just a suggestion - this is your story, after all) would be to make the whole narrative less perfect. It's never very interesting to read a story in which everything goes right from start to finish. Make things go wrong. Maybe the day is a bit of a disaster. Maybe your main character desperately wants to make a good impression on their best friend and have the perfect day with them, but their efforts never seem to go to plan. Then, perhaps, the best friend proposes anyway, and a day they thought was doomed is transformed into one of the best of their life.
Ultimately, there are any number of ways to introduce conflict to the story, so it just comes down to what direction you'd like to take it in. I would definitely like to see much more conversation between the best friend and the narrator. Unless you show me the dynamic between two characters and demonstrate how good they would be together, I find it very difficult to root for or care about a romance. I want to witness their chemistry for myself.
I think that concludes my thoughts on this. This has the potential to be a sweet piece, but it needs rejigging somewhat before it can feel like a proper story. Try to focus on introducing more conflict, making the main character more active, and actually showing the relationship between the MC and the best friend. Let me know what they talk about, what their personalities are, and why they gel so well together.
Keep writing!
~Pan
My biggest thing I'm going to say is formatting. It's hard to read block paragraphs due to not being able to really find dialogue and differentiate sentences. This is interesting, but it was hard to read only because of formatting. I recently learned how to format in a new style about a year or two ago, and it's hard at first. People used to tell me they would click out of my story due to my formatting before I learned the new way. Formatting takes away from a good story, and that's all I'm going to say.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, I do not mean it harsh in any way!! I just want you to know there's a better way to format that's easier to read.