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onehunna  ·  4352 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "Circle of Life" -Decided to write something tonight

Hey buddy, just read through this. Here is my feedback:

Your opening line is solid and it got my attention well enough, and that's important.

    After I free my line from itself, I dig my fingers in to the soil of the plastic container. The night crawlers dance to the top.

    "We're running low so tear them in two."

    I nod my head and take the worm between my two hands and rip. I whisper, "sorry pal" and throw half of it back in the soil.

    Andy nods approvingly. He loves to fish and he's good at it.

This right here is nice but I think you could have given us more. The story is short, 518 words, so I understand the need for brevity, but I think these two strong images (untangling yourself from fishing line, frustrating) and tearing the night crawler in two (gross) could be milked some more.

Halfway through the story here you change tenses--it ends up feeling awkward. You want to pick a tense and stick with it the entire way through. It begins here and continues in the past tense from then on (except in a few spots):

    The last strings of pink and violet danced across the water. I took my last cast. The bobber splashed, I slowly reeled my line in and BAM! The pull was unmistakable. I was stunned and forgot to set my hook. I yanked back on my pole and felt the weight. After a small struggle, I had him face to face with me, dangling and spinning, gills grasping.

    With my right hand I attempted to maneuver the hook free.

Again, go a little deeper here--attempted to maneuver the hook free by doing what? Get nasty. This is another image that will stick out in the reader's head. Milk that shit.

---

So this is a nice little story, I quite enjoy these 'vignettes of life'. I would fish with my old man a lot when I was younger and I have fond memories of the experience and some not-so-fond ones (I nearly drowned in the Wissahickon lake when I was nine, haha.) so I always appreciate a good fishing story.

The whole time I was reading, (to use a hip-hop term) I didn't feel like you went 'all the way in'. I wanted more. As I mentioned this is a very short and sweet story and it gets right to the point, so I can see if you were intending it to be bite-sized that you kept it sparse on the nitty-gritty descriptions. There are flashes of it (tearing the night crawlers in half), however I still believe some more in the right places (the two spots I mentioned in the beginning, the battle with the fish instead of just saying 'a small struggle') could really draw the reader in more. Think of it this way: when you've got a very short story, you've got to do more with less.

Keep writing.