STORY STARTER
Water is lapping between your chin and neck, each wave colliding to the beat of your heart...
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Mind Games
I can feel the water lapping at my neck, each wave sending a spray of water into my face. My eyes, nose and mouth burn with every assault of salty drips. My feet are kicking beneath me, tying to propel my head higher above the waves.
I can’t see a thing from this angle, the waves creating a mini wall around me. The thought that I can’t see past the waves and what lays beyond them is terrifying. The fact that I can’t see BENEATH the waves has me paralysed with fear. Now that my brain is set on that train of thought, there is nothing else I can think of.
I imagine a great white shark, lazily swimming towards my kicking legs, sensing my fear, knowing I’m prey. It circles me, out of range of the swirling waves, checking out its surroundings, not sensing anything else nearby and knowing that I am alone. It’s in no rush, there is no threat to it. It turns away, swims for a few metres before turning back. With one fast flick of its mighty tail, it darts forward, straight towards my legs.
I can almost feel the weight of its powerful jaws, closing around my thighs, crushing the muscle and bones. It tosses me this way and that, trying to rip off a piece — STOP THAT! I tell myself, my heart absolutely pounding through my chest. If there WAS a shark nearby, it would certainly sense the frenzied heartbeat of a prey animal.
Stop it, stop it. You’re fine, there’s nothing there, I say, in an attempt to calm myself. Breathe normally, breathe slowly, I tell myself. It’s a little difficult with the constant spraying my face but I manage to slow my breathing, slow my heart rate. I can feel myself relaxing a little, ready to face the situation logically. Calmer, calmer, no worries, breath, you’ve got th— Something brushes my leg.
Yikes! Just when I thought it was safe to go swimming … this is before your time I’m sure, but I remember when the original Jaws movie came out (I was just a kiddo, so only saw commercials and then read the book). Your piece reminds me a little of that terror.
Ha, yeah, a little before my time - but I do remember watching it as a kid and being terrified. I’m pretty sure that’s part of the reason why I don’t really like swimming at the beach and god forbid a piece of seaweed touches my leg or a cloud makes a shadow over the water! But living on the coast in Australia means many beach trips - I just tend to stay on land or in shallow water!
You did really good! The transitions between the imagination and reality were smooth, and I really like how you included that. It made it feel more real and added emotion to the scene, well, more emotion than if you hadn’t included it.
Something I really want to point out, I LOVE how you didn’t pause the scene to infodump exactly what happened and how your character got there. Because when you’re in a situation like that, your mind runs way too much for you to stop and think about something like that. You already know exactly what got you there and exactly how you feel about it because you’re feeling it in the moment and it’s causing you to imagine these things or your heart to go fast or you to start hyperventilating. Which is exactly what you showed us here, you focused on the character in THIS moment of the story, on how they would feel, on what they would think, without a random mountain of information that wouldn’t have given the reader any connection or feeling becuase you would have been telling, not showing. But you did show us, and gave yourself a hundred possibilities to (if you were to turn it into a story) give the readers as much connection to the character as possible for when it IS time to find out what happened, or perhaps you would have shown it before.
The only thing I would have done different is added the sky. Not only becuase it would have given the readers a better picture but because it would have added to the feeling. Like if it was night and they character saw a black sky, you wouldn’t have to say “and it’s night so I’m extra scared” because the reader would already feel that. Or if it were a sunset, the reader would feel the “impending doom” and it would have added more.
But aside from that, you did amazing! And of course, this is just feedback. ❤️
Awesome - thanks so much for that comprehensive feedback - appreciate it! Oh yeah, adding in the sky is a great idea - it’s pretty much the only other thing the character can look at apart from the water!
I very much enjoyed this, thank you Sarah! I think you did a great job capturing the thoughts of someone stranded at sea, I know it’d be hard to not consider a great white appearing from beneath you as you are just out there all alone. I don’t know if I ought to consider it a negative or positive thing, but I didn’t initially notice the shift from the what is actually happening to the what if of the situation; that is from in the water to “oh no, what if there’s a shark.” I did appreciate the inner dialogue that showed the narrator coming to their senses with telling themselves they are fine and trying to be calm, to the punchline of “something brushes my leg” got a genuine chuckle from me for that.
Thanks for the feedback Zane - yep, too many shark movies combined with living near the beach most of my life has let my imagination run wild!
