Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Donald Yoakam Revised Story

Intro: This is my favorite story out of all of them because it is something that came from my life, I just tweaked it a little. I didn't have to tweak it much because I talked to my dad when I was writing the stroy and we both remember it differently. It is my favorite because it came from my "memory." The assignment was to make a map of hour home area and write a story from it. The problem I think I had was that I got my idea across but I don't think I really made the story flow. Sorry for the way the story is formatted, I can't figure out why it is doing that.

It was a warm summer afternoon in Delaware, Ohio as my father and I went riding on our
four- wheelers. I was five at the time and had the coolest little Yamaha fifty. It was fire engine
red and reeked of gas and rubber. It reflected my dad’s character, colorful but reeked from a
long day of work. We headed up to my grandfather’s woods to look for dear sheds. As we would
head through the woods I would speed ahead of Dad and look back at him. He would always yell,
“Keep your eyes on the road Don!” I looked ahead of me and acted like nothing happened.
We crossed my grandfather’s woods and headed to what we call the orchard. It is one of
my favorite places as a kid. It is an area of the woods that is all pine trees. It is beautiful with its
dark green color and strong pine smell. I never had to wear shoes back there because the floor
was covered in only dirt and soft pine needles.
After an hour of looking for deer sheds and being bored as hell, we decided to stop looking
for sheds and just rode through the woods. Dad and I were goofing off in the woods for hours.
Going at full speed, we cut each other off and weave in and out of trees.
Exhausted and covered in mud, we started to ride back home. As we got closer to home we
decided to ride around my aunt’s pond to see if we can notice any big fish in the pond. As we rode
around the pond I cut in front of dad and looked back at him. Dad with fear in his eyes yelled
“Look out Don!” I looked forward and saw that I was heading straight for the pond. Going forty
miles an hour, I went head first into the pond right with my four-wheeler.
Dad quickly jumped into the water to save me. The water was so shallow, that my seven
foot dad had no trouble walking over to me. He pulled me out of the water to see if I was ok. I
had no injuries and was perfectly fine besides the fact that I couldn’t stand up in the mushy
quicksand pond floor. After he saw that I was ok he looked forward and started laughing. I
looked back at the pond and couldn’t believe what I saw. My four -wheeler was upright and was
floating on its tires.

10 comments:

  1. This story seemed like a lot of it was true. A real like memory from when you were young and i think that your story is more believable because of this credablity. The convention that i want to analyze is the sense details. The part where you are talking about the orchard and the strong smell of pine needles was something that i could really relate to and i thought that it made your story easier to visualize.

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  2. This story was about a boy and some fun that he had with his dad riding 4-wheelers in the summer. We learn of a fun aspect to their relationship as they goof around and cut each other off as they are riding through the woods. As the boy is distracted by cutting his dad off, he goes hurling into the pines of the forrest. He is ultimately alright, and the 4-wheeler is found floating upright in the pond, so what could have been an awful situation was more comical than anything.

    I believe that the sense details used in this story were one of its strong points. An example of this is when he is describing the 4-wheeler and says: "It was fire engine red and reaked of gas and rubber. It reflected my dad's character, colorful but reeked from a long day of work."

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  3. The story is about a boy and his father riding along their land and the boy ends up falling into the lake.

    The Convention i would like to talk about is scene. you developed the scenes very well, they were very detailed. My favorite lines were "We crossed my grandfather’s woods and headed to what we call the orchard. It is one of
    my favorite places as a kid. It is an area of the woods that is all pine trees. It is beautiful with its
    dark green color and strong pine smell. I never had to wear shoes back there because the floor
    was covered in only dirt and soft pine needles." i could just see myself being there and standing in the same place you were.

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  4. In a nutshell - The father is always looking out for the son. Sometimes the son tries too hard to show off in front of the dad.

    I think this is a really good story. I could feel what the character was feeling, wanting to have a great time with dad and also trying to keep up. It needs further development I think in sentence structure making the details stronger like the beginning but I liked it.

    This story is very believable and I this actually happened to my brother only he hit a mailbox and did a few flips and landed in the grass. He was looking back too much too. lol

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  5. Loved the place details. It felt like I was there, or wanted to be there anyways.

    "We crossed my grandfather’s woods and headed to what we call the orchard. It is one of
    my favorite places as a kid. It is an area of the woods that is all pine trees. It is beautiful with its
    dark green color and strong pine smell. I never had to wear shoes back there because the floor
    was covered in only dirt and soft pine needles."

    this is one of my favorite descriptive passages and you made it sound very real like you've been there time and time again. Which I'm sure you have because you said it came from your life.

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  6. This story is about Don and his father having a good time riding around on there four- wheelers.

    You had really good scense details. This was my favorite part.
    It is an area of the woods that is all pine trees. It is beautiful with its
    dark green color and strong pine smell. I never had to wear shoes back there because the floor
    was covered in only dirt and soft pine needles.

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  7. This seems like the story is very true. Its a story about a boy and his father bonding. The father is constantly making sure his son is okay and looking out for him.

    The convention I would like to talk about is sense details. I really liked when you used scent sense details, for example when you talk about the smell of burnt rubber and then later on in the story when you talk about the smell of pine. Those are both scents that I can really imagine. I do however feel that you should try paying attention to the other senses as well.

    Good story!

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  8. Pretty good details and the dialogue kept it moving.

    You have a lot of really quick sentences, though. To me it felt a little chopped up. I think if you combined some descriptions, such as

    "It is an area of the woods that is all pine trees. It is beautiful with its
    dark green color and strong pine smell."

    becoming

    "It is an area of the woods that is all pine trees, beautiful with its
    dark green color and strong pine smell."

    Or something like that because I don't think my revision is grammatically correct but you get the point.

    Interesting plot, nice story.

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  9. (Sorry if I posted twice...I wrote a response to this but I don't see it on here. I was having some major issues with Google and YouTube last week...)

    I think the scene details were great...I thought the foreshadowing of the father's warning was a great way to set up the scene for trouble. I sensed that something was going to happen as soon as this part came. I was really able to visualize the nature scenes and the fun that the characters were having. Good story!

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  10. In a nutshell this story is about a father and son having a good time riding some four-wheelers. I thought that this story did a good job with sense details, describing the settings around the characters as they are riding the four wheelers. I also thought this story just had a plain fun element to it. i could visualize myself having fun doing this activity.

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