Have you ever wondered why you're having such a bad day? Everything seems to be going nowhere but down and you just want to escape into the ground. Believe me, I know what you mean. My names Mikey, and I’m here to tell you why.
“BEEP!”
My alarm clock goes off. I feel my eyes are as stiff as a deer in headlights. I haven’t gotten any sleep and I have big exam today. I slowly get out of bed and step on my brother legos he left, and let out scream.“Well my day has started off great.” I thought to myself.
My mom frustrated says, “Mikey get down here the bus is in our driveway!”
“Just great.” I say under my breath.
I quickly get dressed and shoot through my door. When I get to the stairs I stumble and fall all the way down. “Nothing better than these kinds of mornings.” I think in my head. I give my mom the did-that-really-just-happen look and rush out the door.
I get on the bus and see kids, giggling with amusement, groaning over me being late, and sleeping like always. After our bus makes it to school I step out with my head down. Wishing I could start the day over, wishing I could go home.
Frowning, everyone goes to their classes, but I had to go to the bathroom. Stumbling over my I feet I barge in and hear the bell ring.
“Great. Just. Great.”
Mrs. Barkley annoyed and mad says in a monotone, “Tardy again Mr. Davis?”
I take my seat and see Sandy Walker, the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Her bright blonde hair framing her face just perfect. Bright piercing blue eyes. Perfect lips with the right proportions and smile unnoticable. I remember playing her in tennis. I won 30-15, a great match but an easy one.
“Can we see Mikey Davis in the office please?”
“Sure thing.” Says Mrs. Barkely
I Make my way out of the classroom with my cheeks burnt. What could happen next?
I open the door to the office and see no one. I start to get a little scared but I keep walking in. I hear banging coming from the principal's office. I turn around the corner and see a trap door where the sound is coming from. With great curiosity I open it see what's on the other side. I take light steps down the squeaky stairs. Everything seems dark. The lights shoot on.
“Hello Mikey.” I hear a small women say.
“Welcome to the system.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“ I am Susan the one who keeps track of all of your bad days to keep you in line. Take a step down I’ll show you around.”
I see rows and rows of computers and smiling people. To my left are all girls and to the right are all boys. The room is hot and bright. Everyone seems so organized, pens and pencil perfectly lined up. What is this place?
“This is Tom he makes sure you never fall.”
“This is Lisa she makes sure you get enough sleep.”
”And right here is Burt, he makes sure you never get embarrassed.”
“If you guys keep track of all these things why am I having such a bad day?”
“Well you see Mikey we've had a crash in our system. Which leaves us with no control over your bad luck.”
“And how do we fix that?” I asked.
“Well you see. Thats the thing you must make it through today with nothing bad happen to you again. Everytime something bad happens the computers start over again and will never be fixed. Do you think you can keep it together for the rest of the day?”
“Well you see having good luck isn’t exactly my thing.”
“Mikey you've got to go. Remember what I said.”
“But wait..”
I head back to class knowing my day will never get better. On my way back I see Sandy I get distracted by her eyes and trip over my feet. Off to a good start. As soon as I fall I hop up and keep walking so the luck doesn't start over again. I hear the bell ring and head to lunch. After I’m finished eating I hear Susan calling my name.
“Mikey!”
I realize I was needed in the system again so I secretly make my way back down there. Once again no one was present in the office so I went down the stairs.
“Hello Mikey we have a problem. It looks like the crash has gotten stronger and cannot be fixed. Just remember everyone has bad days but you just have to make the most of them. It’s what makes the good days seem so much better.”
I’ll never forget that day because now I know why I have such bad days.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hi, lburkeen12, Alpha here to review!
Writing an original short story is a hard thing to do. It's too easy to fall into the 'ah screw my luck, this is a crap-tastic day' kind of story. I don't think you have that problem. You have a good concept; the bones of the story are great, but the flesh needs to be a bit more lean.
I'll go over this from the start, quoting little bits and adding comments. Shall we?
I honestly like this start. Sure, overdone, but it works for a reason, right? I'd change that "Everything seems to be going nowhere but down", to something shorter and clearer, like, "Everything seems to be spiraling downwards" or somesuch. Oh and, do add an apostrophe before the s in "names".
"Thought" ----> past tense
Rest of story ----> present tense
May I ask why you picked to write this in the present tense? It reads a bit clunkier, maybe it's because it puts the spotlight on your writing style, which is good most times, but feels rushed at some parts.
I like how you capture a swarm of students' general mood. The second sentence is too detailed in my opinion, you don't really have to specify what happened there, the outcome is enough.
So many details! It's always great to give a character a face and description, but she isn't mentioned again in the story so what's the point? I think your problem is that you try to write in the same manner as the things you read. This is all fine if you read short stories by good authors because they tend to be contained and plot-driven. Novels, on the other hand, can be both plot driven and character driven as they leave more room for development.
You used, "Well you see," three times here.
How did he know? You should give an indication of some sort, like the meaningful tone of her voice or how she pointed over her shoulder to where he had come out from.
Well, that wraps it all up... right? I guess it does, it's a good ending, but it feels somewhat lacking. I think it's because the climax of the story had already ended (the climax being Mikey discovering that his bad luck could have been controlled had the system not screwed up).
Overall, a fresh idea and good structure. Just pay attention to your grammar (the Knowledge Base has a grammar forum that can cover anything you want to work on) and try to learn how short stories work. Avoid unnecessary details and characters, and think more on how you want your story to unfold and where the climax falls. And that's basically it.
Hope this helps! If you have any questions or comments, do reply.
Cheers,
Alpha
I like your use of onomatopoeia with the alarm clock, though right after I don't think the simile "I feel my eyes are as stiff as a deer in headlights." made very much sense because when talking about a deer caught in headlights it usually is used to describe someone as being or looking shocked or stunned. And I think this sentence "My mom frustrated says" would flow better if you were to word it differently. And the end of this sentence "Perfect lips with the right proportions and smile unnoticable." doesn't quite make sense because if he's describing her as being pretty then her smile wouldn't be unnoticeable. In general the story seemed a bit rushed.
But the idea for the story was very good, I just think you need to work on pacing and having more variety in the types of sentences you use and how you word them,
Hey lburkeen12
I hope that your enjoying writing program or whatever one calls it, its a nice place to review good works, submit your own writing and also get inspired as well taught a few things of writing .
Well let me start with my review
I have to say that I love this short story because in my personal opinion it shows that all people have bad days, you just have to make the most of them. As much as we would like to only have those good days, bad days has to exist for good days to happen.
Things which caught my eye in the story was how you had started it, it was truly well done. But I feel, in my personal opinion that you rushed some parts of the story, I don't know if you just wanted to finish the part quickly or not. Although some parts of the story as somewhat a weird grammar, it had truly been a good read.I'm happy that you chose a certain tense and actually stuck to it,some writers completely go off the tense. So I'm happy that you had a good mind set and understood where you wanted this story to go
You have a well thought out first person, if I could put it that way. The way the story flowed was interesting and something i didnt want to end so soon. My curiosity was all over the place, something which I can't have. If you wouldn't mind would you continue with this short piece of writing. I love it but I really want it to continue
I would have loved if you pulled more out thr story but other than that great story. Its somewhat inspiring, and might help a few people reading it. As i said before its my personal opinion of the story, those things caught my eye and thats that. Keep on writing, can't wait for the next
Sincerely bizzlebabe
Hello lburkeen12,
First off, welcome to YWS! I hope you're finding this a fun place to read and review as well as submit. If you have any questions, search for a person with a green name, or pop by chat. Here on YWS we like to review using this: The YWS Critiquing Sandwich. With that in mind I'll begin my review.
I really liked the flow of the story and how well you managed to imbed first person narration into the flow of things. You've got a very good voice in your writing for first person narration. Most of the time I get distracted by all of the "I" [verb] phrases like I did, I saw, I heard, I realized, but you have a good balance between that and other sentences like "Off to a good start" and subordinate clauses like "As soon as I fall" so I liked that. I also like that you picked present tense and did a pretty good job sticking to it. You've got a nice strong voice in writing and your own unique style, so keep it up.
I do think you could use some improvements when it comes to variety. You use "Well you see" a lot in a short amount of time and it was distracting from the reading of the story. If you changed that or erased one or two of the times it was used, I think you would be much better off when it comes to the sound of the story.
I also feel like you really rushed over some of the things in the story which you could have expounded upon to make a better story. For instance, you don't describe the computers, just that everything is neat. You don't really put us in the position of this alternate universe by describing it quite well enough. In a lot of ways, description is lacking here and we need more of it to really get into the flow of the story and understand everything that's going on. With everything we include and exclude in a short story, there is some reason why it is there. Being liberal about what details we include doesn't mean, however, that we can avoid details like setting. If you go back and work in more short descriptions of setting, like having Mikey describe setting for us through his own understood language, I think we would have a better story. For instance, describe the teacher in a way that Mikey would, is she fat and ugly? Old and scraggly? Grimey health teacher? Beefy gym teacher? Try to explore these sorts of ways to develop setting in short phrases rather than at any length, and you'll have my vote for a good description too.
Lastly you have a couple typos in this.
You have an extra space:
This one has a weird capitalization:
This is missing a space between the period and the start quotation:
That's all of the typos I found! I'm sure someone else will come along and look more in depth for typos. They usually do. If they don't you can check out the "Will Review For Food" forum and put this up there in someone's thread to get a very thorough review of your work.
In summary I think you handle first person and unique voice very well. I feel like you're lacking a bit of description when it comes to setting, and you have some speed errors which need to be edited out. The habits you have for writing are very good, such as sentence structure, variety of sentences, and so on. I think you've got a really good base for writing and you should keep exploring and expanding on your body of work. Keep reading short stories and I think you'll find a better understanding of what your descriptions are lacking in.
I hope you liked the review. I am attempting to improve you as a writer, so I hope this helps too. If it doesn't, tell me and I'll see if there's some other way I might be able to help you.
-Aley