I looked out the window of the kitchen as I paused from my math homework for a second, and saw the nicest Sunday I think I had ever seen before. I couldn't go outside though because my mom said I couldn't watch the football game that night unless I finished all my homework. I don't know why she cared about my homework anyway, I had good grades in all my classes. So I tried to get back to my homework but the cool air and green grass was calling me through the window. I had to do something other than homework! I looked into the living room and saw that my mom was sleeping, so I decided to make my move. I slowly got up and snuck out the back door without making a peep. As soon as I was in the clear I bolted for the forest behind my house and made my way along the trail, if you could call it a trail. My friend Dave and I made little marks on trees and tried clearing a ground from the sticks and twigs at the beginning of summer as to show ourselves to our secret spot we had found walking around one day. The secret Spot was the best place to get away from your parent ever. It was the pond in the middle of the forest that no one knew about. You could swim in it, skip rocks in it, basically do what ever you wanted. This was definitely what I needed after doing all that math homework.As I went along the trail, something seemed a little different that day. The woods were a little quieter, like I was the only person around for 5 miles in every direction. As I walked over leaves and fallen branches it sounded like I was walking over a million firecrackers scattered all over the ground.
I finally reached the pond after a good 10 minute walk though the forest. It was so still that day. There was nothing moving around the pond either everything just seemed still. The silence was creeping me out a little bit so I so I began to through some rocks in the pond to try and liven the forest up a little bit. But it didn't work. It almost made it seem more quiet the way the plops in the water echoed. I decided to just sit down and try to take a nap.
I was laying there with my eyes closed when I heard I huge PLOP cut through the silence. I immediately shot up to see just ripples in the middle of the pond. I looked around but saw nothing. My mind immediately thought of the story Jimmy Daniels told me down the street of the monster that lived in this pond. I knew that the story wasn't true and he was just trying to scare us away because we was jealous of our amazing spot, but for some reason I couldn't get the thought out of my head.
Then I heard another, louder PLOP, and this time I saw that something didn't fall into the water but it was something in the water itself. Then another different noise came from the water, it was the sound of bubbling, and it wasn't staying in one spot. It was coming right for me! Terror shot up my spine as I jumped up immediately. Then all of the sudden something surfaced. It was blue all around with what looked like skin for a face. Its eyes bulged out of its head like an iguana's would. Then its mouth...this was the most horrifying of all. Its mouth had huge lips that stuck out. They where black probably from eating all of the other people that had once thought of the pond as a cool secret spot. The creature started to emerge more from the water. Its body was also blue, with 2 arms and the biggest claws I had ever seen at the end of them.
That was all I had to see. I screamed so loud I don't think the forest will be quiet for another week. I turned and ran so fast home, that I think I backed out and teleported there. When I got to the back door I didn't even worry about waking Mom up and just threw the door open. I locked the door behind me and sat at the kitchen table in a cold sweat. After probably a half an hour of staring at the forest I figured I was OK. I got up and got a glass of milk. As I was up I realized that I didn't even wake my mom up. At least something good came out of that.
I decided from that point on that every Sunday from now on, I am to do my homework, watch football, and nothing else. I also decided that Jimmy Daniels was right, and I will never go back to the secret spot ever again.
1 comment:
You did a good job building up the suspense. But the climax (when the narrator sees “it”) could have been more descriptive. And the end is downright boring. No offense. You could have come up with something way more interesting for the narrator to do or think about at the end besides feeling relieved and resolving never to go to the secret spot again. For example, you might have had him call up Jimmy Daniels, and end the story right as the conversation begins (perhaps with a line like, “Holy ****, you’re not gonna believe what just happened”) – not very creative, I know, but you get the point. Make the reader think. Or leave them to wonder. Or teach them an important life lesson. Something.
Overall, it reads kind of like a fable. If you incorporate a theme (the “moral of the story”), the story becomes valuable to the reader. It’s no longer just a plain account of what happened. It has become the embodiment of a big idea. It relates to issues that are important to the reader.
Your style of writing suggests to me that you would be good at using humor to get your point across. Never underestimate the power of satire.
One last thing. You have some awkward sentence structures in here. For example, “They where black probably from eating all of the other people that had once thought of the pond as a cool secret spot.” (As a side note… I don’t know how eating people would make its lips black. I would think red. But, whatever.) (And another side note. You probably know this, but it’s “were,” not “where.” It’s always good to proofread, even if not very fun.) To make this sound better, you could rewrite it as: “They were black, which was probably due to its diet of human flesh. Unsuspecting visitors, who *thought* they were here for the cool secret spot, were actually here for dinner – and they’d be sitting on the proverbial table rather than at it. Now, to them, the secret spot doesn’t seem so cool anymore.” Expound a little. Have fun with it. Don’t just leave it off with a dull, simple explanation.
Another one: “I turned and ran so fast home, that I think I backed out and teleported there.” You can do better than that. How about… “I whirled around and bolted off like a bat out of hell, headed straight home. I went so fast, I was actually confused later as to whether I ran or just teleported out of there like some dude from Star Trek.”
Figurative language and allusions almost always make for a more interesting sentence.
All right, that’s it. Thanks for hearing me out.
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