Young Writers Society

Peter had never liked green beans, nor did he particularly like Sundays, which had always made Sunday roasts somewhat difficult. Sundays smelled like bread and were dreadfully dull; in fact this Sunday was the dullest there had ever been, if you asked him. Peter couldn’t find his baseball cap again. But it was just in the lounge room where he left it.

One day when Peter was small he broke his arm. He climbed on to the roof of his sister’s cubby house and was taller than anything. He yelled and yelled for his Ma, who would most definitely be an ant now. Peter loved to climb things, and he also loved his Ma. Sometimes at night his arm still ached like it remembered the time it fell for a very long time and then landed all wrong. His mother did not come outside; she was probably busy inside yelling at the phone or sleeping. Peter was trying to get a better footing, but his foot slipped and then he was upside down looking at the sky. For a few seconds he just lay there, feeling as though he would vomit, waiting for his heart to beat again. It did.

Late at night Peter lay in bed and his thoughts swum around him like big fish in a small pond. The biggest fish were always mean, and the small fish went to school and ate porridge for breakfast. Peter did not eat fish and his bed sheets were made from the same material as his t-shirt.

Peter’s first day of high school was very confusing. His home room was called T12, but no such room appeared to exist. His locker wouldn’t open, and he didn’t want to do Australian History again. Peter’s English teacher had a lazy eye and a Scottish accent, and Peter thought he looked like a villain, not an English teacher. Aside from which, his lazy eye made it difficult to tell where he was looking and this made Peter uncomfortable. Peter did not have a lot of friends here, and he discovered quite soon that the people were not very nice. But sport class was fun, and chemistry class was easy.

Peter’s sister was two years older than him, and her name was Mandy. Peter and Mandy got on very well, but they were very different. Mandy wore lipstick, but Peter didn’t. Peter liked to ride his bike, but Mandy loved to run. Mandy and Peter looked a lot like their Mother, who liked to curl her hair and drink gin. Their biggest fight ever was over the television, because Peter wanted to watch the news and Mandy wanted to watch a DVD. He told her that she could watch a DVD anytime, and she said that the news came in the paper.

It was called Infrastructure House, and Peter was not sure what they did there. The windows were large, plate glass and squeaky clean like big mirrors or car windscreens. Peter stared at his reflection for a long time, he stared at his baseball cap and his big nose, and thought that reflections were a very funny thing, and that really, they didn’t make a whole lot of sense. How did you know which was the real man, and which was the mirror man? He later said that what he did next was just an impulse, but that was a lie. The rock had come from the park down the block, just on the side of a little creek that bubbled along through the middle. It had no fish or ducks and was an unpleasant shade of brown. With a grunt Peter threw the rock at the fake mirror man. He didn’t even bother to run.

Although new in here I am very well known as a prose writer amongst lot of societies and blogs so I think it will not seem outwards if I review your work =) Bear with me ahem

Excellent starting. Makes the reader really read than just skim over the stuff. Although the repetition of 'Peter' again and again may either point out a style of writing or you'd rather check it.

It was a cool read with excellent sentence composition, something I always look forward to. Great scene descriptions. Cool job keep it up!

This reminds me of dadaism. It feels like you're going out of your way to not make sense. The words themselves are good and interesting and varied...but you're here then there and everywhere at once. The first sentence is green beans, then Sunday, then his lost baseball cap, then his broken arm. It's like you took a list of sentences about Peter, clipped them all up with scissors, tossed them in the air, and rewrote them as they landed. There's nothing wrong with wanting to tell us about all these facets of Peter, but none of them have to do with the one that came before it and there isn't a single transition between any of them.

Add in the fact that there's no discernible story or plot, and we have a stew made up of leftovers...or perhaps a small pond crammed with as many big fish as you can possibly cram in it.

Perhaps in a piece as short as this, it's okay to get away with having a hodge-podge of facts...but if there were a story or a plot or a larger something, such scattered pointillism would render it unreadable because you're pulling the reader's attention in every direction and eventually it will come apart completely.

But, like I said, the words themselves are interesting. Like this passage here:

Sometimes at night his arm still ached like it remembered the time it fell for a very long time and then landed all wrong. His mother did not come outside; she was probably busy inside yelling at the phone or sleeping. Peter was trying to get a better footing, but his foot slipped and then he was upside down looking at the sky.

I like the flow of it and how it feels. Just don't go so far with it that it comes apart at the joints.

-sarg