If at first you don't succeed, try something else.

[wordwhacker]

So, I'm still working on "Splintered Soul". Honest. I have it open in the background, right now.

In the meantime, however, I was smacked upside the head with an idea for dvandva's challenge. It's a short drabble, but I think it turned out okay^*.


Wet Sand


They tell me it was hot that day, that the sun had beaten down on my shoulders so hard that I was red for weeks. I'd been swimming earlier, they say, but Nan was watching me now, helping me dig in deep with my plastic toys, her silky hands shaking with every shovel full of wet sand that found its way clumsily into my bucket. They say I loved making castles, that I jabbered on about towers and moats while meticulously tending my slumping masterpieces.

I don't remember the castles; I remember the wet sand and how it felt between my toes, how it stuck between my fingers and crawled up my shorts as I toiled away. They would periodically pick me up and dust me off, they say, muttering all the while about how hard it was to keep their children clean. They hadn't that day. I clawed into the sand with my bare hands, the coolness of it grinding against my skin.

I was sent home with Nan that night; she wrapped me in a blanket, a pouch of warmth and softness and sand buckled in tightly in the back seat. She carried me inside, letting me sleep next to her on her bed, still enveloped in my cocoon and her arms. She couldn't bathe me, she says. She couldn't bring herself to.

They tell me my brother drowned that day, and all I can remember is the feeling of wet sand.



Comments, criticism, questions and rabid weasels are welcome and encouraged.


* "Okay" meaning "I don't quite want to jab out my eyes as penance for having written this piece of shlock."

Comments

[chibiakki.livejournal.com]

*blink* Short, but an unexpected ending. Nice POV piece. I like.

Wow, I do suck at constructive criticism, don't I? :p

[cassaclyzm.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks. I posted it on red_n_ruthless, too. May do some community pimpage in the near future to see if there are any other C&C crazed lunatics abound on LJ.

No Rabid Weasles for You!!

[dvandva.livejournal.com]

Since you're kind of sitting beside me, you've seen my immediate reaction to my first-time reading of this piece.

It works very effectively as an encapsulated moment; it defines itself beautifully, and you have a great sense of where to begin and end it for maximum impact. I like the progression from "they tell me" to "I statement" back to "they tell me", it forms a nice contrast between "their" overall memories of "that day", and the narrator's filter of the time in question. Forgive the "overuse" of "quotes".

Comments on word choice: Firstly, great use of strong image words like "beaten" and "hard" right from the first sentence, and the gradual softening of the adjectives to the feeling of words like "warmth and softness and sand" works perfectly to build to the ending paragraph.

I like the use of "silky" in the first paragraph, but I found that it almost slowed the narrative because it took my brain a second to connect the adjective to the image. Exquisite imagery though; you build the moment and the time-frame perfectly.

They would periodically pick me up and dust me off, they say, muttering all the while about how hard it was to keep their children clean. They hadn't that day.

I find myself losing time-sense here; I'm not entirely sure why. I think it's the fact that you use present tense for "They would periodically pick me up [...]" and then switch to "They hadn't that day." The multiple uses of present tense across different times is a bit awkward, and again breaks the flow of the piece.

[...] coolness of it grinding against my skin.

I find that "coolness" is too vague to be attached to such strong descriptive verbs like "clawed" and "grinding"; it doesn't hold up as the focal point of the sentence. It would have a more concrete feeling if you added another descriptor, for example: "I clawed into the sand with my bare hands, the cool roughness of it grinding against my skin." Just another adjective to further define the physicality of the moment.

a pouch of warmth and softness and sand buckled in tightly in the back seat.

Firstly: Love. I adore the description here. It really gets the feeling of "sleepy child" acoss - but more on that in a sec, since we're dealing with word choice right now. I find that the repeated use of the word "in" breaks up the sentence once again - the first one is a bit redundant, in my opinion. The two "in"s break up the sentence, when you're trying to create one coherant image, thus rendering the whole thing less effective.

still enveloped in my cocoon and her arms.

Once again, lovely warm and sweet imagery going on here, but nit-pick!me feels the need to point out that "in her arms" seems a bit too literal here. "Cocoon" is wonderfully abstract and connotative; you might want to change it to something like "enveloped in my cocoon and her warmth." If you want to keep the phrase "...her arms," it might be better to add another in, making the sentence "in my cocoon and in her arms." Really, the difference is stylistic more than anything, either one works in the situation, at least to me.

She couldn't bathe me, she says. She couldn't bring herself to.

I know, and you know what the problem is here, since we're discussing it right now, so :P Do I need to add anything? I didn't think so.

Okay, we've dealt with word choice...*whew* Moving on to narrative, and feeling rather silly for writing all this for 250 words. Talk about "review longer than drabble". Arg arg headdesk.

See you in Part 2.

*sob sob*

[dvandva.livejournal.com]

Part Two: The narrative.

Thankfully, this part will be a lot shorter. Like I said above, I like the transition from hard adjectives to softer tones as the piece progresses. It really conveys the vividness of the day in the mind of the narrator, and the progression toward more hazy memories as fatigue starts to kick in.

Digression: muttering all the while about how hard it was to keep their children clean,

I understand the sentence-hate you have with this one. It needs to be said, but that's perhaps not the most effective way to do it. Maybe you could try, "On other days, they had periodically picked me up to dust me off, muttering all the while about how hard it was to keep their children clean. They didn't that day."

End Digression.

The time and the place is set perfectly, your word choices give the feel of a dreamlike vividness, as seen in: "[...]had beaten down on my shoulders so hard that I was red for weeks." It's made plain right away that this is a memory, both through the imagery and the omnipotent present tense of the narrative style, and that at least some time has passed for the degree of visible emotional detachment, vis a vis, "They tell me my brother drowned that day," to set in.

You detach nicely from the first-person narrative as the third paragraph starts, and the transition from remembered events to described ones flows seamlessly. In fact, it stays smooth and even in tone through the entire piece, with very little to break up the flow. This is what a drabble is supposed to be. I like.

I also like the inclusion of details that the child wouldn't necessarily have understood at the time, but would have remembered regardless, like "Nan's" hands shaking. Like you had said, she drives the narrator home, so her hands are presumably stable to some degree. The gesture while building the castle is indicative of some emotional distress that the narrator wouldn't have understood at the time, but which comes across clearly to the reader.

And, of course, the strength of the imagery really sets the reader up for the eventual revelation in the fourth paragraph...Well, that's not the exact word, but since we're both drawing a blank here, well, you know what I mean. Grr.

Moving on to characterization. I know it's a little bit odd to mention it with a piece like this, but I feel compelled to mention it, since these characters have such vivid "voices".

The narrator is very gender-ambiguous, which is a very key point, I think, in making him or her such a readily available cypher for the reader to "jump into" and empathize with. I also like his reaction to his brother's death; it seems very human to fixate on a strong sense-memory, like the wet sand, and to almost-equate the sensation with the lack of emotion at the time. That is this piece, in a nutshell.

I like the emphasis on the stability of this family, as evidenced by the number of "they said"s. Obviously, these people are relatively stable if they're able to talk about such a traumatic event to such a degree, (sunburn on shoulders, sand castles, driving a young child home and putting them to bed) with such clarity, even after time has passed. It's a nice counterpoint to the overdrawn "grief" that a lot of people try to convey. This family is obviously upset, to the point that the other child is left alone while the brother is drowning/immediately after his death (end of second paragraph), but leaving such important events to be conveyed through subtle gestures gives the piece a poignancy that it would be lacking if you pushed the point across to the reader, as do the little events, like Nan's tenderness toward the narrator.

1258 words. This, children, is what we call "excessive." You wanted detail, you got detail.

I'm gonna go cry now. But in a poignant, understated sort of way, because you kick all kinds of ass. Have I mentioned that I liked this a lot yet?

He's a GIRL?!

[cassaclyzm.livejournal.com]

I bow down to your awesomeness. Your C&C is divine. Rawkage.

"Your kind can't satisfy my thirst."

[dvandva.livejournal.com]

Consider it repayment. For a little something like, well...Nine comments of Doom.