Extremely helpful, thanks! This is exactly the kind of criticism I’m looking for!
Haha, the funny thing is I wrote all the stuff I posted here either in high school or my freshman year of college before I learned anything about “good” creative writing … I look back on it now and am sort of disgusted with my own writing, so considerations of revision are definitely on the horizon!
Short Story / Time
I didn’t want to sleep, so I crawled through my window and out onto the lawn. The sky was a milky pale grey as either the sun rose or moon fell, I wasn’t sure; my clock on my bedside table had stopped days ago, and neither Josiah, my roommate, or I were planning on fixing it.
I crawled up to the sitting rock, the place Rhiannon showed me when we were twelve. She was my best friend then, even though it was weird for a guy to have a girl as their best friend and not girlfriend at that time. I think she was the first to find it; at least, she could make it sound that way. The rock was high and rugged on the sides, but at the top was a smooth and flat as the top of a table. She would take me there whenever either of us was feeling down and out, and we’d just sit there. Sometimes we’d talk, and we could talk for hours and hours. But mostly we would just sit there, sprawled on our backs and looking at the stars until the late night faded and died to early morning.
Rhiannon moved when we were both sixteen.
I remember one time, when I bid her join me at the sitting rock, that I climbed to the top before she arrived and forced myself to walk to the very edge, close enough to fall if you didn’t have your balance right. I stood there, looking over the side, and wondered what it would feel like to just free fall through the air; I’m not talking about suicide or anything, but I mean if you could just free fall like a bird on its way down to catch something, and then just swoop back up and fly off, right before you would have actually touched the ground. I stood there that way for a good ten minutes before Rhiannon showed up. She was still riding that goofy bucket bike she’d had forever and a day. It had these pink streamers on the sides of the handle bar, and a big and bulky red horn she would blow whenever she rode it around. She wasn’t exactly the best bike rider, either, or at least she didn’t look like it. The bike would teeter and totter to either side, almost on the brink of toppling over before she would correct it again. Sometimes I thought she did it on purpose, but she did it so often that I was sure she must have just been a bad rider. It was okay, though. Whatever either of us was bad at, it was something worth laughing at, and certainly her bike riding applied.
It takes about seven minutes to climb to the top of the sitting rock– what with wind and a constant need to get your bearings (it was a scary thing to climb for anyone)– but ‘Ria could do it in about four. She was a good climber. She used to hate me calling her ‘Ria, but I never did in front of her; just to myself, like now, when she’s nowhere so near that she could yell at me for it. Anyway, she climbed to the top in just over four minutes, and flung herself down to look up at the cloudy sky. The stars were veiled behind that curtain of clouds, but somehow she still managed to point it out.
“Look,” she said, just like always. “That’s the one.”
“The one” she referred to was the wishing star. Only she could find it; I was really bad at that sort of thing. But every time we met on the sitting rock, she would point out the star, and we would make a wish. The wish was always a secret, but we had to tell each other something. So we’d make up a silly wish and share that, if not for a good laugh then to make ourselves feel a little better than when we first got there.
“What’s your wish?” I asked, falling down to the ground next to her. She squeezed her eyes tight and smiled up at the peeking moon.
“I wish to have a billion dollars . . . worth of ice cream!” she said, breaking into a fit of laughter even before the last word slipped from her mouth. After the laughter subsided, she sighed and looked to me.
“What about you?”
“I wish life would never change from what it is on the sitting rock.”
There was a moment of silence. At that point, we were both fifteen, old enough to know when something that was said was of great importance, yet not old enough to know what to say to them.
“There’s nothing like the sitting rock,” she finally said. I nodded.
“Or the wishing star.”
“Life is always going to change from the sitting rock, Jules,” she said suddenly. “It’s changing right now.”
“I wish it wouldn’t.”
“Well then you wasted a wish,” she said sharply and suddenly. She got up and climbed back down the rock, giving me only a slight glance before disappearing completely over the side. I got up and went to look over. She was sitting there on her bike looking back up at me, a smile on her face.
“You’re mean,” I called down to her, shaking my fist.
“Gotcha!” she called back, before teetering and tottering away on her bike.
I always knew she meant what she said, about wasting a wish. I got older, grew up, and then realized that Rhiannon had grown up long before me. I didn’t know how, only that she did, and she knew something about the world that I didn’t until later; that the world always changes, whether you want it to or not. Even if you never fix that broken clock, time flies by until it’s ten years later and you’re back to wishing you were sixteen, when only ten years ago you wanted to be twenty-something. It’s funny how I only realized this, back up on the sitting rock, and gazing at the wishing star (or at least what I thought was the star), years after Rhiannon had gone and left me to learn life’s lessons alone. I thought it funny still as I made my wish.
I wish chocolate bars grew on acorn trees.
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FrakKevin reviewed Version 1 -
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Awww, I liked this. I like reading about characters, young ones, who can still come off as innocent. This was a very smart short story that didn’t over complicate the story. Sure it lacked character detail, but I felt I like I knew a lot about them based on her wish and small clues. Stuff like mentioning he had a room mate, put in him in the age rang of 18-25.This is a good flash back story that was done rightl
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jessica0293 reviewed Version 1 -
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It’s very basic, but it’s got a message in it I love.
You don’t necessarily sympathise with the protagonist, but you’ve wrote it in a way that makes it impossible not to feel for him. It’s simple yet sweet, a very nice combination.
The ending is the highlight of it for me, it made me laugh a little too, with his whole introspective discussion going on and his last wish. Your writing style makes it all the more enjoyable too, the way you create imagery like it’s a painting.
Aw, it’s just an adorable, little story I can’t help but love.
I’d love to read more of your stories =]
Enigma28 reviewed Version 1 -
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‘time. I think’ – just need to take out the extra space.
This is a great piece, almost profound actually. I agree with you, the fact that you’re just put in the field with Jules is great. And despite what you think I think that this actually has great character development although suttle, and the ending makes it almost profound, I especially like the part about not fixing the clock.
Thanks for sharing
Jodie
Korp reviewed Version 1 -
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I love it. Every once in a while one comes across a great bittersweet story.
I felt, even within this short piece, I could get some feel of what the characters’ personalities were. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if this was lengthened in some way, or if you wrote another stand-alone story using the same characters. I’d enjoy seeing their relationship fleshed out a bit more.
“The rock … top of a table.”
This sentence doesn’t make sense.
”... through the air; I’m not talking…”
This sentence is rather long-winded. I’d change that semicolon to a period to allow the reader a moment to breathe.
“shaking my fist.”
I don’t know about you, but oddly enough I’ve never actually seen someone shake their fist; at least, not in a serious way. It’s so cartoonish, and it just didn’t seem appropriate in the context it was used.
”... she called back…”
It’s assumed it was her speaking, and saying “called” again is repetitious.
The ending amused me.
Well done, overall. Favourited.
roguescholar reviewed Version 1 -
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I really enjoyed this piece…there were a few awkward sentences here and there…
I’d be happy to detail the parts I found awkwardly phrased, should you like…
But overall, I believed the characters, I believed their friendship…it was a nice sentimental piece…it was sewn up nice and neat at the end…and the final wish made me chuckle a little. I enjoy stories where the central characters have some sort of epiphany…and this one hooked me up quite nicely…
Great story.
malapropist reviewed Version 1 -
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Sentimental piece, but with some revision you can avoid making it too sappy. The “moral” that the narrator explains to the reader is heavy handed and a little over the top. A really good story should bring the reader to some thematic conclusion without hitting them over the head with it.
If you cut out the sentimental, expository parts of this story, it will have a lot more punch. Here’s an example:
“I wish to have a billion dollars . . . worth of ice cream!” she said, [laughing]. “What about you?”
“I wish life would never change from what it is [right now].”
“Well then you wasted a wish,” she said sharply.
Without the clutter between, the action in the story is immediate, the tension is immediate, and it forces the reader to start thinking about what’s going on. Showing something through action and dialogue is one million times better than telling us through exposition. Trust your reader not to be an idiot. We don’t need you to hold our hands through the story. You’ve got an ability to render a scene effectively. Cut the exposition and trust in the scene you’re creating. It’s pretty good. It’ll stand on its own without you needing to explain what it all means. Good luck.
Shelovestosail reviewed Version 1 -
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The flow was a bit choppy, but the message carried it through for me.
GraceWithInk reviewed Version 1 -
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Beautiful in its simplicity and honesty. It reminds me of a friendship I have, and how that person is changing drastically due to time in the military. Life moves at its own pace. This story illustrates how little control we have over it all.
Kudos!
peace
sg
samfreely reviewed Version 1 -
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I think the old saying goes: Youth is wasted on the young. Sometimes it takes these moments of clarity that we achieve as we get older to realize this fact.
I liked your little anecdote. As you said, not much of a short story. What with no real character development and all. But it was still enjoyable none-the-less. There really isn’t much to critique here. It’s great as is. I don’t really feel that you could develop this any further, or that you really should. You know what my wish is? To find clarity in the most obscure places.
It’s short and profane in a way that I don’t really come across too often on here. Good job with this. Keep at it.
wagedomain reviewed Version 1 -
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Overall I thought it was pretty well written. I’m not a huge fan of sappy nostalgic style writing personally so I’ll look past that for now.
Some of the word choices were awkward, especially near the front of the story. It felt like two different people wrote it, one the first half, one the second. Near the very beginning I would probably drop the semicolon joining the second and third sentences and just make it two full sentences.
In some of the sentences you used a word twice within three or four words, and it was a bit jarring, specifically:
“Sometimes we’d talk, and we could talk for hours and hours.”
Hours and hours I’ll give you, as it’s a common phrase, but the double use of talk is a bit distracting. There were a few other times on the first two pages this seemed to happen as well.
Towards the end the word usage got better, though. However, another instance of an awkward phrase is:
“Life is always going to change from the sitting rock, Jules,” she said suddenly.
...
“Well then you wasted a wish,” she said sharply and suddenly.
Two things, first is the use of “she said … suddenly”, which is repetitive. I would just ax the second “suddenly” entirely. The use of “sharply and suddenly” is redundant anyway, so it would be best just to remove it entirely.
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