Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language.
Don't look down
At around five Meg trudged over to the table lugging her bag over with her. She dropped the bag on the chair which sent vibrations through the floor boards. She settled down and began with maths one of the easiest subjects for her as it didn't require a bulk up of bull shit which began to take a strain on Meg after over 3 years of it. They were studying functions in school which required quit a lot of brain power to fuel a solution.
She was so deep in thought she hardly noticed the door open nor the icy breeze that came with it and before she new it a speckled women, about 5”6 wearing a busy multi coloured jumper and a big smile was towering over her. She grunted a short hello to her aunt and went back to her problem but then her sister arrived in and being the comical easy going carefree 17 year old she was Martha made her signature brand of bad jokes and when she was finished Meg was in no mode for functions and needed to get away from it all.
She fetched a cap and her fathers huge fleece and made for the back door, although it was almost May, it being Ireland the clumpy extra layers were unfortunately necessary to brave the wintry conditions you expect to find in a harsh December. As she unlocked the gate, sliding past the edge and ducking under the electric fence which kept her fathers livestock in check she began to try and clear her head of the thoughts that were wrecking havoc, crashing in to each other forming a sea of of anger sadness and just general confusion which were not uncommon for a girl of 15.
She ducked under another wire and eventually made her way onto the path that led to the mile field her chosen destination for this walk. The wind blew wildly and she flinched as it hit her soft pale Irish face. She kept her eyes firmly on the ground as a precaution to keep the sun out of her sea blue eyes, as she did so she thought of all the things she had missed by keeping her eyes rooted to the ground not looking up to see the bustling world or colour and madness that lay above the ground. She had been a creature of comfort for most of her adolescent life and although there was a lot to be said for the comfort of staying in your comfort zone she began to realise that she was not happy and she would have to make a change in order to change this.
A gust of wind caught her by surprise as it ripped across her freckled face and she was alluded by her previous thoughts. She looked up to see that she was almost near the turn for the hill she would need to travel up to reach her field and if not for the wind she may have mist it. She thought of how a single gust of wind had changed her course and the times such simple forces had done this before.
She was brought back to the day she had been playing in the yard when her ball had been thrown into a bucket of soil filled water and how it had became slippy and she had thrown it badly due to the slippyness of the ball and it had landed in the field next door. So she opened the wire and got the ball but as she was coming out her mother had called her for dinner and so she had not closed the wire after her due to her anticipation for food because she had been famished because she had not been able to eat her lunch because she had forgotten to pack it because she had been up late the night before researching mental illnesses because she felt like she was going insane but it had turned out to be a bad case of hormone imbalance caused by being 15.
The next day a bull broke out of that field and attacked her father and he had broken both arms and a leg and had been rushed to hospital. If one of the things leading up to the accident had not happened then maybe her father would still be able to provide for her family and her Mom wouldn't have had to work three job's to support them and maybe she wouldn't be so stressed and she mightn't have done what she did.
It just goes to show how one split second decision can change a life so don't look down.........
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138,126 Literary Works • 672,075 Reviews
Hello, orlam! I seem to have stumbled across this piece of yours ~
Let's just jump right into the review. (But a quick note, I am on a phone so, please excuse any ridiculous typos. ^^)
So, the previous reviews have mentioned a lot of editing items, and I whole heartedly agree with most of their points. Things such as commas are rather important and impact the flow, marking natural pauses and easily stringing sentences together (as Rydia said.) However, there are a lot more issues than just punctuation. For instance, it felt like most of the piece was extremely wordy. Not only that, but there were a few run-on sentences throughout this. Here's an example:
I showed replacing the comma splice in the run-on sentence with a period, as well as a few other edits, in green. But this sentence -- as well as a ton others in this -- is wordy to the point of slowing down the flow. It's hard to read, I had to reread several sentences a couple of times to understand it, and I strongly recommend going through and trying to make them come together better. If you'd like some assistance or further explanation, I'd be happy to help!
One final thing I want to talk about regarding structure is the length. An important part of flow in the story is having varying sentence length. You know, having some nice and intricate sentences next a few significantly smaller ones. For the most part, this piece is filled with sentences that just never end. They go on and on and on and on for ages and it gets convoluted after a while. So while you shouldn't have short sentences for an entire paragraph, all long sentences doesn't work either. Work on cutting out some of that wordiness and varying it a little bit.
Now, regarding the actual story, I'm not feeling anything with this story. Also as Rydia mentioned, there was no real point to her leaving the house and the reviewer below me said that there was no huge hit to our emotions when the big reveal came. I just never cared about the main character to get so invested that the end was such a huge twist. There are several reasons for that:
The first being that it doesn't really fit quite right with the entire story. I mean, the entire first part is very intricate and focused around her doing math homework and having to deal with her homework? How does this at all show a struggling family? A perhaps breaking family? As also, she seems completely fine. Normal. Bland even. We just get summaries of what she's doing and how she feels, as well as parts that skim over interactions and I don't feel we ever truly meet this character of what's going on in her life. So when we suddenly discover that her mother is working herself to death, and their family is struggling and her dad is completely broken, I don't care. It's too suddenly thrown in there like a cheap attempt to pull the rug from under the reader, not an endearing moment where the reader should sympathize with the main character.
What else takes away from the emotional impact is that the story is actually bashing the main character. Most of the narration is putting Meg down for just being a hormonal teenager. To quote the story, "...it had turned out to be a bad case of hormone imbalance caused by being 15."
Hormone imbalance? Really? How are we supposed to sympathize with this character and their situation if she's just being downgraded to an irrational teenager who's only feeling down because of too many hormones in her body? Not only does it not at all work towards that build up, it's actually quite frustrating to read. No one -- no one -- likes their problems being written off as irrational and pointless so why would they enjoy reading about it?
As the reviewer below me mentioned, the two parts of the story -- beginning and end -- just don't fit correctly together. We don't learn very much from the beginning and the end has very little impact. It might help to try to tighten up the focus of the story a little more. For instance, instead of focusing so heavily on math homework in the beginning, perhaps show some actual interactions with Meg and her family. Perhaps there's some tension between her and her family members over what happened. Maybe her sister is resentful of her because it happened and her aunt unsuccessfully tries to console her. (These two characters are briefly mentioned in the beginning and never even talked about again.) There could even be an exchange like "Where's mom?" "Out working one of her thirteen jobs because of you." It would make it much more prevalent to the story and give a little bit more background.
For now, I don't even understand the ending of the story at all. As well, the excessive periods at the end are completely unnecessary.
Final thing I'll mention is that I appreciate how you tried to incorporate some imagery in to this, however it doesn't fit very well. Quite frankly, I don't see the point of all the details of her face and being told that they're in Ireland or anything like that. Since this is such a short story, those things don't really matter to the over all message you're trying to convey and it just bogs it down a little, since you go into such detail. It doesn't add anything, so cut down on that a little bit.
You have a nice start here, but as the review below mentioned, it could use quite a bit of tightening, revision and lots more work. If you'd like any further explanations or some assistance, I'd be glad to help~
Happy writing!
- Wolfe
Hello.
I could sit for hours and tell you about the grammatical, punctual and spelling mistakes, but you have enough of that in the reviews section down here. Besides, I believe it should be the writer's job to check these things... and this feels unchecked. Maybe take another look, try read it aloud, etc. The usual techniques.
Conceptually, you're sound on the surface. That is to say, the idea of subjunctive history is a theme commonly explored, and you've definitely understood the idea. Execution of this, however, I feel needs refinement.
You very blockily show the audience I think two different examples of subjunctive history: the wind (the foreshadowing) and the ball (the event). I do like the wind idea, but it does need to come much more subtly than you do so here. The nature of this type of sequence of events, especially with something so natural yet so disruptive as the wind, deserves a more gentle and descriptive approach. You write in third person, so insertion of this is easier.
The story of the ball itself seems to be the point of the whole story... so why do we get the opening in the way we do? The elaborate and intricate examples of Meg's characteristics and mannerisms wouldn't be a problem in a longer story, but here they feel redundant. If the story is about the tiny events leading up to something huge, this opening section could be made much more valuable if, for example, hints and references were given in order to each element of the event sequence. As it stands, the ball-story comes out of nowhere, and the realisation - the "wow!" factor - doesn't hit the reader as hard as it could, if at all. Some more focus I think is essential.
I'd also bin the last part of the story, from "If one of the things leading up to the accident had not happened..." onwards. This is unnecessary explanation; you're audience has realised what has happened already. There is no need to jump in and make everything very convenient and safe by explaining your intentions at the end. If you write well enough, you will never need to do this, and plus, the concept is an easy on to follow in the first place.
Lastly, while I love the colourful, flavourful world-building around Meg, I feel it perhaps doesn't quite suit this story. It feels like you've written the beginning of one tale, the end of another, then slapped them together... and the result is jarring at best. By refocusing how you open your story, highlighting the importance of the different elements, this could become a much stronger piece overall.
This isn't a horrible piece by any means, and this is an alright draft. Overall, I consider the biggest issue to be the wavering focus - the audience doesn't know what's important, not even subconsciously.
Well done for what you've achieved so far. This has some potential.
-Kieren
Hi there! I thought I'd squeeze a review in before bedtime
Specifics
1. Adding commas will make this easier to read as they tell your reader where to pause and take a breath and how to read a sentence. Sometimes it's obvious but not always! For example, your first sentence should be: 'At around five, Meg trudged over to the table, lugging her bag with her.' I also took out over because it's surplus to the sentence and slow your flow down without adding anything extra.
2.
3.
4. It'snot entertaining for the reader to be told that Martha made a joke, instead you should have the dialogue in your story. Dialogue is what makes characters come alive and this feels a bit flat so far without it.
5. I'm not sure why she needs to duck under the electric fence when there is sure to be a gate. Also, livestock are often smaller than people - certainly young sheep or cows are - so electric fences normally go low to the ground so animals can't go over or under them, which would also stop a person from doing so.
6. I'm not sure what you were trying to say here but the sentence doesn't make sense. Perhaps you meant eluded, though that's still an awkward use of the word.
7.
Overall
This feels rushed, especially toward the ed where you make some big jumps to reach the conclusion. It also feels like it doesn't go very far - there's no real point to Meg leaving the house as the end points are all expressed as thoughts and you're not leading up to any particular action.
I liked the run on sentence you had about her leaving the wire open because she was hungry. I thought that built a good sense of tension! The rest of the story however moves slowly and uneventfully.
Why not slow it down a little and try adding more description - I think that would really help.
Kind regards,
Heather
Hi orlamurphy01, acm here for a review! I really liked this piece, and thought it had a great message, though there were a few things I would fix.
1. Sentence structure:
This would be, 'At about five, Meg trudged over to the table, lugging her bag over with her.' There needs to be a comma after the word five and the word table.
This should be, 'She settled down and began with maths, one of the easiest subjects for her. It didn't require a bulk up of bullshit, which began to take a strain on Meg after thee years of it.'
This should be, 'They were studying functions in school, which required quite a lot of brain to fuel a solution.'
This was all in the first paragraph, but I'm not going to nitpick through the whole piece. I just encourage you to go through and edit before publishing. The biggest things were that a lot of sentences were run-ons and didn't have enough commas to break them up. Still, I liked the message of it and felt like it had a good character. Overall, great job!