The laces were undone, mangled together into one disgusting brownish clump. A dusty toe stuck through the webbing in the front, and generic Duck tape, bought from the Corner Mart for $0.59 eons ago covered the bare, almost nonexistent side webbing. The old scars from the past snaked up a pair of brawny white-thigh pre-adolescent legs, with fresh scars and yesterdays’ bruises on top. Incessant dust that seemed to creep into everything blanketed his shorts, which had once flowed past his knees. The old ratty T-shirt was a hand-me-down, from his youngest uncle to his cousin to his two older brothers. It once was white.
Beneath his scrawny, sinewy arms, blue veins were bulging out. There were Blisters in his palms, old ones under new ones, and he had severely callused tips from one too many 5 a.m. mowings. Shaggy brown hair, a shade darker than the dust covered his forehead, and by now the hair flip had become second nature. Skin tanned from summer errands, skinny athletic build, tall—5’10’’. And piercing through the dust, blue-green eyes, an ocean of hope in a desert of despair.
He had a dream. One day, he would run far, far away, away from the dust, away from the hunger pangs, away from the whip that lashed at his back each night. They mocked him for it. Who was he, the drunkard’s son? They told him he was crazy, out of his mind, that he would never leave the run-down shack he called home. Come afternoon, when he would run past and they would be on the sidewalk getting high, they threw stones, laughing and taunting him, saying: “Loser, what are you trying to do? Run to mama? Oh wait, I forgot. You don’t have one.” He would flip his hair and continue.
“And now, 400 meter sprint gold-medalist, smashing one of the longest-standing world records with his time of 43.08, we have, representing the United States, Dustin Phlipp!” As he stepped onto the platform, legs of steel shaking, a single tear fell from his blue-green eyes. It cleared away the dust.
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125,013 Literary Works • 672,842 Reviews
Heyo Zanda! Happy review day! Flite here for a review! Ly has pointed out a lot of the technical details already, so I'm going to focus on the content and characters instead. Anyways, I won't keep rambling, let's get to it.
I'm sorry, I lied. But that is a really looooong sentence and I think you should separate that into parts. There are also a lot of redundant conjunctions that clogs up your sentence. I'd simply rephrase it like this.
[i]A dusty toe stuck through the webbing. Nix the generic, as Duct(not Duck) tape itself is generic unless this is a world where Duct tape has superpowers or something. Do we really need to know where we got the Duct tape from and how much it cost? The point is that is used to cover the torn webbing, yes?
You've used scars here twice, avoid using the same word so closely if you can. Repetition does no good in this instance. Thigh and legs is the same thing, I'd get rid of thigh because that brings a very strange tone to your story. Apostrophe should be placed between the last 'y' and the 's'.
Awkward sentence phrasing. Rearrange the later sentence to the front so that it becomes, 'the once white t-shirt....'.
Now, the second paragraph is very static description on the MC and borders on an info dump in terms of the content. It's something that we could have read off a profile sheet, don't tell us these things (including the first paragraph). Show us instead. If you want to show how old and dusty his t-shirt is, or his frame, there are other ways to go about it. In this case, considering the content of your story, I would actually start off this with him running and ease into the description.
*raises eyebrows* Right, he flips his hair. I'm not sure if that quite fits the character being portrayed here, as flipping hair in general is quite a flippant action.
I quite like the idea of this story, I really do. But I feel that it's far too short, especially because you've spent half of this chapter describing what Dustin looks like. We know a little about him from the second last paragraph, but not enough to get a clear image on exactly what is happening. Where is Dustin? Why does Dustin want to be an athlete? His family is terrible and his mother has gone, I wish that you'd shown us more of this than merely telling it. There is a lot of room for further development here, so I really hope that you re-consider on editing this. One more thing, you said that Dustin stepped onto a platform in the end. Except there haven't been a mention of any platform throughout the entity of this story.
I hope I've helped in some way, and if you have any questions, please let me know.
-Flite
Thank you so much Flite for your comments!
Happy Review Day!
Go Smaug!
Hey there, here to review!
So, I see what you have here as him having a flashback to the past from the present time. I like how you play around with the time periods to show where has was to where he is now. You used some pretty good imagery as well in the first part to show how badly in shaped he was, which I thought was well written.
I can't really comment on the plot or dialogue seeing as there really isn't much to say at this stage, so I'll go into the nitpicking on certain parts which I think could have been rephrased.
The corrections are made in parenthesis:
"The old scars from the past snaked up a pair of brawny white-thigh pre-adolescent legs, (with) fresh scars and yesterdays’ bruises on top."
You could just with or along with in this case, just to get it to flow better.
"Scrawny, sinewy arms, blue life veins bulging out, connected his shoulder to his wrist."
This seems to be worded a little weirdly, and it causes a little confusion. Do his arms and veins bulge out together? Maybe try rephrasing it to "Beneath his scrawny, sinewy arms, his blue veins were bulging out". Also, the shoulder and the wrist are pretty far apart, perhaps replace wrist with arm?
"(There were) blisters (on his) palms, old ones under new ones,"
Rewording a statement can make it flow a lot smoother.
"Come afternoon, at 4 pm when he would run past and they were on the sidewalk getting high, they threw stones, laughed, taunted him"
"Come afternoon, at 4 pm, he would run past and they (would be) on the sidewalk getting high, they threw stones, (laughing and taunting) him"
If you're narrating an event as a flashback, try and use the past tense.
I liked the last paragraph the most when he came back to the present and you showed how far he had come from his past. What I would suggest it to reread your piece and see if any parts could use rewording to make it sound better and contribute to the overall flow of the story.
Other than that, it was a pleasant read! Good job!
Thank you so much Lycando for your review! Looks like I do need to open up that grammer textbook again!