It must have been about midnight when I rolled out of Auburndale. As I reached the city limits, I could see a panorama of the land and sky outside of the small village. Clouds hung over the earth, obscuring the moon and covering everything that lay before me in near-absolute darkness. In a flash, I received second thoughts about what I was doing, about leaving the place I had known for so long as "home". Almost as instantly as my doubts had come, they left me, leaving in it's place an extraordinary lust for adventure. After about thirty minutes of driving, the clouds that previously governed the landscape started to clear, revealing a full autumn moon. With this, the unilluminated gloom around me gave way to a vague countryside. The dark, two lane road I had at one time been following was, at that moment, dwarfed by the vast amount of nature surrounding it. The moonlit vale around me put me into a surreal mystical world, filling my senses with awe and bewilderment. I pulled the car over and climbed out and looked around. The short thirty minute drive that I had taken from town took me to a place in which I was completely unfamiliar. I was in a different world, and my mind was just starting to wrap around the wonder of it. Without the sound of the engine or car's radio, the deafening silence of the dell set in. I felt completely alone. The sliver of doubt that I had felt before came back at me like a freight train. I started to wonder why I had left my home, my only place of comfort. I had been only truly happy with the company of other people. Now, alone, in the darkness, I had nobody by my side. I had let this stupid, romantic notion of charging out into "unknown" consume me. I leaned against the hood of the car for a while. I don't remember exactly how long I sat there, but the time seemed endless. I looked around; I got more acquainted with my surroundings. I noticed a small house far across the dale, noticeable only by a small light that must have been accidentally left on. Up ahead, further along as the road sloped up into a hill, I saw the beginning of a small wooden fence that ran along the road leading away from me, so small it didn't seem like it could keep anything in, or anything out, for that matter. I looked back the opposite direction, the direction I came from. I noticed a sign that I hadn't before, even though it was no more than fifteen feet away. It was barely visible in the weak light: Auburndale 42 miles I stared a the sign for a few seconds as my mouth curved into a grin. Turning around, I climbed back in the car and started the ignition. I drove ahead, over the hill and along the small wooden fence.
I'm sure the moderator or other Thought Police will catch up to me for this posting and say I can criticize style but not content. On the other hand, maybe Samhain is on vacation and I can say what I think on this "Free Speech Forum". Like hell. Your narrator has "left my home, my only place of comfort", leaving the place he had known so long as home. Breathtaking. Now he has found darkness, a small house, and a wooden fence. Stop the presses. Hemingway, move over.
It's a little cliched... I'm not so big into 'road trip' stories, if only because it's such a common subject and phenomenon that it's almost impossible to make it original. The only way a story like this could actually work is on the strength of the prose-- so I would work on crafting some more compelling sentences. I can definitely see glimmers of promise here-- I suppose there's a certain amount of irony or satirical potential in something like this, but all the overwrought nature-worship prevents it from ever working as such. AND, as dirtydog was alluding to, nothing really happens here. There's a good sense of grammar, but the adjectives are frequently redundant and overused-- ie: 'bewilderment AND awe'? 'obscuring the moon' AND 'covering everything'?, even worse 'unilluminated gloom'-- gloom definitely implies a lack of illumination on its own. Also, 'endless amounts of time'... it's such an obvious way to describe a moment! I'm really not convinced that the protagonists' 'lust for adventure' is all that extraordinary-- everyone wants adventure, and a short drive down the road could hardly be called an adventure... I suppose you could argue that that was the point, but if it is, it's really not much of one. So ultimately, I think it has potential as a road trip satire-- but the lead character needs to come off as more sympathetic, and we need to know more about WHY he felt the need to get away for a while...
I wouldn't really call this a "road trip" story. It's pretty much a recreation of something I did one night. I didn't try to recreate a Hemingway or Kerouac... I just wrote about my life. I'm sorry if "dirtydog" finds my life cliche. Oh well, can't please everyone.
No, you can't please everyone, and neither can I. If I ever please Heywood it might cause heart failure, but I'm not holding my breath worrying about it. So, try making a point with your story. You drove out into the night, you saw the stars, you felt good. Grip the reader! Knock his socks off! Make him think he's doing a mountain snowfield traverse on 50 degree ice with 1,000 feet of steep icefall beneath his left boot, and he's just lost a crampon! Failing that, do an erotic narrative that would make Henry Miller squirm!
I see where you're coming from with the simplicity Namaste. I think what makes this hard is that it's writing about a meaningful experience you had. When you re-read this story you have memories that fill in the gaps and add extra meaning for you. I've never driven out of auburndale, I've never seen any of the things you're describing I've never had that experience. For this to be meaningful to an anonymous reader you need to add pieces that make my mind CREATE these memories that you have, and that goes beyond just adjectives and descriptions.
