You are right, I wrote this in this way just to suit myself. It is more of a prose than a short story, but I did not see a catagory for prose here. The lapses are just the way it came out, and I like it this way. Thanks for your critique.
Short Story / "The Stone!"
The Stone.
Wandering about upon a windswept hillside resting beside a great tree watching the world from this high place.
Puffy white clouds drifted slowly across the blue evening sky.
Warm currents of air passed before my eyes, wavering with the summer’s heat.
Gnats swarmed in delicate balance
Birds of all kind flapped off in every direction busily searching out food for themselves as well as their offspring, they glittered and swooped while chirping out nature’s beauty.
One old crow landed close to my resting place and began to sing and dance a little so I shared a bag of peanuts with him or her. “I could never tell the difference with crows.” They just seem to be comedians of bird species but I know they serve a very important part
I leaned back to stretch, placing my hands into the long green blades digging my hands into the rich soil, when I found an object that felt much like a tortiose shell, I became curious at my discovery.
Only to find a stone almost covered by the long blades of grass.
I was a bit disappointed but just for a bit, I began to think of all the possibilities.
Its shape was oval; unique to itself it was smooth and curved over its protruding surface.
I asked myself how it had come to be here.
I could see no others like it nearby.
Did it just form here some millennia ago?
On the other hand, could the ancients for some spiritual ritual have placed it here?
Perhaps it had been the cornerstone for a great hall filled with gallant banners heralding it’s kingdom to all the world flowing in the stiff wind while beautiful maidens danced with dashing gentlemen in the courtyards in an earlier time.
Might it have been a projectile launched from a trillion miles away in a cataclysmic collision in another galaxy, spinning through space its mass streaking toward a small blue star?
A thought occurred to me of words spoken once by someone great
“Upon this stone I will build”!
I am sure we all know the author of these words.
After pondering many more possibilities, I realized that I might never know what really happened.
I decided that it must have occurred this way.
A small seed had been carried on the wind, and it had come to rest here and from it sprang this magnificent tree. As the tree grew, its branches reaching out and up to touch the sky, below the earth its roots were growing sprawling beneath the earth searching out the stone and after many years it had pushed the stone to the surface so it could peer out at the clear blue sky and green fields.
One would think the stone would eventually roll down the hill to rest in the cool waters of the stream that lazily cut its way through the valley. It seemed a more fitting place for a stone. However, I believe the stone liked the tree so much, it was content to sit next to the great tree warming itself in the sun, waiting for the shade to fall.
I wanted to pull it from the earth, but I didn’t.
It occurred to me that if I moved it the tree would become sad to lose a friend it had worked so hard to bring here.
With the sun sinking, the sky turning burned orange to red and soon to black I stretched, stood and walked away, as I wandered away I turned to look in the stones direction.
I don’t know what I expected, perhaps the tree to wave goodbye, or the stone to say a few words.
Nevertheless, as one could guess neither happened, instead the stone just sat there nestled in the tall grass next to the great tree.
A fitting place for a stone.
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RedBelle reviewed Version 1 -
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The start of this piece struck me as very poetic. So much so I began to wonder if it hadn’t been submitted to the wrong catagory. However, the prose did begin to take on a more narrative voice.
Admittedly, I’m not certain what you hoped to achieve with this piece. It seemed to change from a lyrical description of a particular moment to exposition on a peculiar stone to anthropomorphizing a tree. I rather think there’s potential here, perhaps if you continued with the earlier timbre of the piece and remained less literal (just a thought; feel free to disregard). Its current state felt to me much like a train grinding to sluggish, coughing halt. But as I stated, there is room for improvement.
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momsgirl2 reviewed Version 1 -
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You are an excellent writer ,,but if this is a story it should be in paragraphs, not poetic lines.It should have indentation on each new paragraph and the lines run like in any book.
One_Man_Band reviewed Version 1 -
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Glum reviewed Version 1 -
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An interesting little tale with a ponderous tone. I liked it although there are several simple errors with grammar and punctuation. I won’t go to town, but here are a few I noticed while reading:
In the “Birds of all kinds…” paragraph I’d put a comma after ‘direction’ and change the one after ‘offspring’ to a full stop.
I wonder why one lone sentence, shortly after this, is wrapped in quotation marks? Perhaps there’s some importance to what is said there?
There’s a full stop missing after ‘part’.
‘it’s’ should only be used in place of ‘it is’.
Near the end ‘stones’ should be ‘stone’s’.
cdnsurfer reviewed Version 1 -
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Interesting exercise in prose-try. I like it. I wonder if you lose some of the impact of your imagery with the strong prose style? I think you might want to remove the clutter and get the images a bit sharper with a more poetry type approach? Overall, for what you’ve attempted here I give you high marks, but not quite as strong as it might have been with a sharper image. Still, I loved it. Thanks for sharing. Good luck!
bigdaddywrites reviewed Version 1 -
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Interesting concept. The arrangement of the paragraphs throws me a bit, it’s almost like a poem. I think it actually would work better as poetry. Subject matter is interesting though. A thinker for sure.
Hx reviewed Version 1 -
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I really like this format you’ve created – perfect for the musing you’re conveying. I suspect some might gig you for the rapid-fire descriptions in the first several lines, or the odd grammatical lapses (subject-verb agreement, that sort of thing). Not me. I think they were intentional, and utterly acceptable. This is a glimpse of a philosophical mind at work, in near real-time. If the occasional verb lacks a subject, well, I think that’s just par for the course.
There were a few other lapses, though, that I think were unintentional, and that you might want to clear up. In line 5, you refer to ‘birds of all kind’ (I think you meant ‘kinds’), and towards the end, during the description of the great hall/gallant banners, you’ve got an unwanted apostrophe in “it’s kingdoms.”
Aside from that – great stuff. Thanks for sharing this.
txblondie525 reviewed Version 1 -
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Interesting, I guess. It rambles a lot, and there are some very notable errors in grammar and punctuation that are a bit distracting. Also, “I could never tell the difference with crows.” should not be in quotations. It doesn’t make sense.
I enjoyed the relation, but I also get the feeling that you wrote it simply to be a descriptive piece rather than actually telling a story about sitting under a tree and finding a rock. Perhaps you could relieve that impression by not ending it so abruptly, by moving on to something else about the afternoon.
OneOldGoat reviewed Version 1 -
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First let me say I am a beginning writer. Therefore, please take what I say with a grain of salt.
That said, you paint a nice picture. Your use of words in describing what you see and think are very well done. This leads me to a puzzle. I do not understand how you formatted your piece. In many places there is just one sentence to a line; something like poetry. Does this mean you have some sort of subtle meaning, like poetry does? If so, does this explain some of your sentences that are not complete sentences, but just phrases? How about the comma splices? I cannot see how someone as good as you at making words flow smoothly could make so many mistakes in sentence structure, as well as other mistakes. If you do not have a hidden meaning that should be felt or puzzled out, then you need to learn good sentence structure, and a few other things about formatting. Do this, and with your ability to paint a word picture will be enhanced.
In conclusion, I would say that this is not a short story. It does not have the structure of a short story. In fact, you could use your submission as part of a description in a short story.
Like I said before, I am new at this critique stuff, so take what I say for whatever it is worth.
alfabet reviewed Version 1 -
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The content of the story is thoughtprovoking and seems heartfelt, yet the grammar and general language used to convey it is supremely distracting. Sentences begin and end without clear indication and punctuation, in many places, isn’t used correctly. Reread the piece aloud and use only the punctuation marks as breathing and pausing spaces and you will note this for yourself. Sentences like “I was a bit dissapointed but just for a bit” are very unbalanced. I usually try not to use the same word twice in consecutive sentences. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.
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