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Glory On the Court



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Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:36 pm
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ShootingStars says...



Glory On the Court

The lights beat down on my neck. The sneakers squeak. The crowd roars. The clock ticks. The basketball hits the ground with a soft thud before it bounces back up to meet my hand again. I stare ahead at the line of defenders guarding the goal, hands in the air to block any attempts of my team making a basket. Player number twelve sprints toward me, crouching down as I continue to dribble in place. I glance at the scoreboard mounted high on the huge gymnasium's wall. 60-62, fourth quarter, thirty seconds on the clock. We're only down two points, now twenty-seven seconds left to go. It's now or nothing.
The defender directly in front of me surveys my movements very carefully, waiting for me to make a mistake. Another second passes and I hear the coach screaming in his booming voice, "Find an open player, Michael!" I get distracted for a moment, but it was enough for number twelve to have a chance to reach for the basketball. My reflexes take over and I switch the ball to my opposite hand, dodging his steal with ease.
I take off dribbling down the court, faking out defenders, spinning, jumping, and sprinting. Sweat trickles down my bald head as I break through a line of players from the other team, the ten second countdown already beginning.
"Ten! Nine! Eight!" the crowds on the bleachers chant. I feel everyone's attention directed on me, every eye watching and waiting. Time slows down as I reach the three point line. Quickly adjusting my feet I leap high in the air, muscles rippling, taking the shot. The orange basketball leaves my hands, hurtling toward the basket.
"Four! Three! Two!"
My feet reunite with the court floor once more.
"One!"
The loud buzzer rings throughout the air, everyone silent now in the gymnasium. They wait. The fate of this entire game rests on one shot. My shot. The ball lands on the rim of the basket before rolling around on the thin metal. My heart flutters as I realize it's not going to make it in the net. I close my brown eyes and turn away. Suddenly the entire room is rumbling with shouts and cheers and screaming. I reopen my eyes slowly, nervously and glance back at the goal. The basket ball falls through the net. It took me a second to realize that I had won for the team! My teammates swarm over to me, hugging and patting each other on the backs. A smile of victory flashes across my awed face. Cameras click. People scream with excitement. Reporters ramble on. Fans flood around us.
This is what basketball's about. This is glory on the court.
Last edited by ShootingStars on Thu Jan 26, 2012 1:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. -Jiminy Cricket

Don't be afraid to jump, to leap, to fly too far and don't be scared to touch the stars!
  





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Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:32 pm
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eldEr says...



Hey ShootingStars! Isha here to review. :3

I'm just going to say that I was rather impressed by the writing itself in this piece. It was descriptive, it flowed, and I couldn't find repetitious words or phrases, except for where it was necessary. It worked for a narrative, and was easy to read to boot!

However, it did remind me a bit of those set-up English assignment, in which you're forced to use perfect grammar (don't get me wrong, perfect grammar is good, but reading an entire story like that is just a little... dull. Don't take that out of context, however. xD What I'm saying is that writing, especially in the first person, has to sound natural and flowing, and it needs a certain originality and uniqueness, or you don't have a very effective character-voice), a certain style, etc... one of those English-book exercises. That's fine, of course, but it's a bit... bland, more often than not. ... you know, this is just a little irrelevant for this particular piece, so you can just ignore it if you want. xD *clears throat* Aanyways...

There was one thing that I was iffy about. Now, if you're standing in front of a group of people who know who you are/who the narrator is, then the piece is absolutely fine. They don't need to be reminded about your hair, skin or eye color, or of what your uniform looks like or any of that sort of thing. However, we don't know anything about the narrator, other than that he/she plays basketball (not even if he/she is a he or a she or neither! Le gasp!). If there is any way possible to incorporate it, it would be rather nice to at least know if he/she is on a men's or women's team, or what his/her name is when the coach starts yelling at him/her to DO SOMETHING, BLAST IT. It's obviously not the focus of the story, so don't make it such. Just sprinkle in little, subtle details wherever you can to give us an idea.

And really, that's all I can think of to say here! It was a nice read, overall, it really was!

Keep writing,
~~Ish.
Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurl.

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Fri Jan 20, 2012 2:41 am
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Kafkaescence says...



Huh. Well.

Flash-fic sport stories, in my experience, invariably end in the same way. I am for this reason inclined to dismiss this as hackneyed and only review it as such; but, you know, there are other things worth mentioning, and I doubt telling you to, to put it frankly, trash this, would kindle any warm feelings or help you in the least in the process of revising it.

Despite its predictability, I guess this was fairly well written. As Isha mentioned, the grammar was fine. You displayed a fairly adept sense of pacing, if not so much vocabulary. Pacing is an important part of orchestrating a story. So that's good.

What I want to talk to you about is the fluency. Fluency (or flow, if you prefer) can be defined as variation in sentence structure; this means that the writer utilizes both single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences, arranging them in a pattern that is easy to read and "flows" in an appealing manner.

I think you're underestimating the authority that the period possesses in terms of the manner in which a piece of writing is interpreted.
The lights beat down on my neck. The sneakers squeak. The crowd roars. The clock ticks. The basketball hits the ground with a soft thud before it bounces back up to meet my hand again. I stare ahead at the line of defenders guarding the goal, hands in the air to block any attempts of my team making a basket. Player number twelve sprints toward me, crouching down as I continue to dribble in place. I glance at the scoreboard mounted high on the huge gymnasium's wall. 60-62, fourth quarter, thirty seconds on the clock. We're only down two points, now twenty-seven seconds left to go. It was now or nothing.

See what you've done here? You're shooting yourself in the foot. Where is the fluency between sentences, that atmospheric glue? This is boring to read; I don't play basketball, but I doubt it kindles so little excitement as is demonstrated here. Isha called it being overly grammatically perfect; indeed, you strike me as being a bit tentative in exploring our language's arsenal of conventions. I suppose that's not unnatural, but I would encourage you not to worry so much about the grammatical clenliness of your story as how it sounds.

Read. Reading will help you become more comfortable.

-Kafka
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Sun Jan 22, 2012 5:55 pm
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ShootingStars says...



Huh. Well. You're a happy camper, aren't you? :? Just kidding.
Thanks for the replies and Isha, I added a bit more about the main character so thank you! :D
---Shooting Stars
When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. -Jiminy Cricket

Don't be afraid to jump, to leap, to fly too far and don't be scared to touch the stars!
  





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Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:46 am
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thetraveler says...



Hey, here's a review for you, whether you want it or not...

Wow, what a fun read! I really thought that you captured the feel of the tense air and the way the character blocked it all out to focus. I'm not normally one for basketball, but I thought that this one was well thought out and detailed but short and sweet all in one.
If I had to criticize you on something, I suppose I thought that your plot was a little text-book. The usual story with a game is that there is very little time left on the clock, the main character is in control of the winning/losing of the team, and they make the point(s) needed to win. It could have been more interesting if you were to have the character score a tie, and go into overtime before winning or having them lose and meet again against that team ten years later and win.

All in all, I thought that you did a great job but it could have been a little more unusual :D
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Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:48 am
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Carlito says...



Hey ShootingStars!

Nitpicks:
It was now or nothing.

You switched tenses here. "It's now or nothing."

The orange basketball leaves my hands, hurtling toward the basket.

You probably don't need to include "orange" just cause I think 95% of basketballs are orange :)

The things I really liked:
I'm not very athletically gifted and I know next to nothing about sports so I was apprehensive when I first started reading because it's about basketball. However, I really liked that you were able to hold my interest with the descriptions. I also really liked that you used realistic terminology. The narrator actually sounded like someone that spends a lot of time playing basket ball and knows what he's doing rather than someone pretending he knows what he talks about. I was also pleasantly surprised that this kind of language wasn't overdone (and therefore hard to follow for us non-athletic folk) which could be easy to do.

I also liked how you threw in descriptions of what the narrator looks like so the reader has a general sense of who this guy is but there isn't a big time-wasting info dump of what he looks like.

What I wasn't so crazy about:
The ending. I don't know, it didn't do much for me. I think I would have preferred more of the narrators thought's as the final seconds ticked down to add to the suspense and anticipation. The ending felt a little rushed to me and I think I would have preferred it if he didn't make the shot just to show that basketball isn't just about winning, it's about the suspense and working hard and the love of the game.

As a whole, I thought you did a nice job of capturing my interest for the short time that I read this piece. I thought it was an interesting topic and an interesting take and I liked the emotion and detail that was added to the piece.

Keep Writing! :)
-Carly
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Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:53 am
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ShootingStars says...



Thank you all! I will keep these things in mind for my next story!
---Shooting Stars
When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. -Jiminy Cricket

Don't be afraid to jump, to leap, to fly too far and don't be scared to touch the stars!
  





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Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:15 am
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Dragonette says...



I like it. You know, you're so lucky that you have the ability to write short stories. I've personally never been able to write one, I just can't get all of the ideas in my head to squeaze into a couple pages. But maybe with your short stories to influence me, I might be able to! :D (hopefully)

But about the story, it was pretty good. The one thing that I would like to say, is that you should give more feeling to your character when he finds that he wins the game. I mean, is this a first time that he's accomplished such a feat? Then he should be WAAY more excited, I mean, who knows? Jumping up and down? Grinning like a dork? Imagining himself in college basketball?

Or maybe he's a star player and he's done this a lot of times before and he's fortelling the glory that is to come. The fan's cheers are an expected rutine, but he's still enjoying the attention. I mean give the guy a personality.

But besides that small fact, I think the story was good. Keep writing! :D
~Dragonette
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