Fast Cars

First love.

   

Poppa said I can’t see him. Said it’s because I’m too young, so I am under the pagoda at the park, waiting for him away from the house, where Poppa can’t see. 

   

   

I think it’s really because TJ has a fast car, the reason Poppa won’t let me see him. Daddy had a fast car once. I’ve seen pictures of it, “black and whites” of him and Momma when they were young, when they were my age in fact, fifteen and sixteen.

   

 

I hear the fast car before I can see it. It rumbles so that the pagoda shakes beneath me. I can feel it in my chest, that rumble. It is frightening, and thrilling.

   

 

He pulls the car up over the curb and into the grass, pulls it up to the very steps of the pagoda. He reaches across and pushes the door open. “Come on!” He is smiling. It is a wild smile. He is obviously a wild boy. I skitter down the steps and into the passenger seat.

   

   

The car smells of steel, gasoline and oil, of “boy things”. It smells like Poppa. Its 

 

exhaust is strong. It makes me light-headed until he pulls carefully off of the curb and 

 

onto the pavement before accelerating onto the highway.

   

 

 

Momma is dead. I have left my younger sister with my friend Celia. I am only hoping 

 

that Caroline won’t mention it to Poppa. I have threatened her with death in fact, but she 

 

will probably tell anyways, at which point I will kill her, as promised. Caroline is five years 

old. Momma died when she was born. Caroline is my life and my world. I won’t “really” 

 

kill her.

   

 

 

TJ is doing the 50 MPH speed limit, but the wind is whipping inside the car so that 

 

speaking is difficult. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I yell to him over the roars of engine 

 

and wind.

   

 

 

TJ smiles. “I can take you back.”

   

 

  

“No! I don’t want to go back! Say, I thought this car was supposed to be fast?”

 

 

TJ didn’t look over this time. These were the exact words he had been waiting to hear. 

 

He pushed the accelerator closer to the floor. The Coupe did what it does. The rough, 

 

slow idle smoothed out as firing pistons machine-gunned the car forward. Inertia 

 

pushes me back into my seat. I glance nervously over at TJ. He is still smiling, his eyes 

 

on the road, elbows bent, his left hand easy on the steering wheel. A glance at the 

 

speedometer shows 85 MPH. TJ looks over at me. I wish he would look at the road, 

 

instead. “You good?” He asks.

   

 

   

I give him my most wicked smile, “YES!” I am wild too.

   

 

 

TJ slams the accelerator to the floor this time. I close my eyes and shout with delight, 

 

“WOOOOHOOOOOO!” It is like TJ is Aladdin, and we are on a magic ride. We fly over hills, 

butterflies tickling nervous stomachs that are never quite sure what is over the next rise. 

There is danger in the speed, and there is freedom in the danger. For the first time in my 

 

life there is no adult to tell me to slow down, no little sister crying beside me, calling my 

 

name. Eyes closed, hands gripping the dash, roaring engines and hot, whipping winds 

 

whirling around me, I feel an exhilaration I have never experienced. I want to hold on to 

 

this feeling, this euphoria forever. At this moment I do not care if the car crashes. I do 

 

not care about anything but the thrill of being young, and unafraid. TJ is taking the 

 

sharpest turns at incredible speeds. I hold tight to the dash to keep from being thrown 

 

into his lap. Finally he lets off the throttle. I sense his body relaxing. His downshifting 

 

pushes me to the front of my seat. I remembered the same sensation, the same 

 

forgotten disappointment I had felt as a young girl when the carnival ride was winding 

 

down, the excitement ending.

 

 

 

And I felt something else for the first time... a hunger from somewhere other than 

my stomach. I wondered, was this new thrill I felt for the boy, or was it for his fast car?

Author's Note

Thick skin... I am ok with criticism. I appreciate your time spent reading.

Reviews

[JayG]

• Poppa said I can’t see him.

Because you know the backstory; because you know the speaker is an underage female; because you know “him” is a boy she’s interested it; because you know where we are in time and space, this line makes perfect sense…to you.

Not knowing ANY of that, or your intent, my initial impression was of a child being told why they won’t see the tooth fairy. Other possibilities were a farm boy talking about the warning the head of the family gave regarding the fox who’s raiding the chicken house.

Does it become clear if we read on? Sure. But who wants to be confused and then have it explained, later? After all, in the reader’s view, there’s no assurance you will explain. So it’s best to be certain the reader has context for what’s being said as they read.

But, the approach you’re taking, that of telling the reader a story in the voice of the narrator, has that confusion as an inherent problem. What you see as being so obvious there’s no need to mention it—and don’t—is, all too often, something the reader needs. But since you know it all before you read the first word, you automatically fill in the missing data and don’t notice any problem.

• Said it’s because I’m too young,

Might be meaningful if we know the protagonist’s age…background…gender…situation...and…

Remember, at this point the reader doesn’t even know if we’re on the planet Earth, or the year, or the country, or....

You write well, and have a good feel for imagery. But you’re trying to make this immediate to the reader via two things. First is using first person. But who cares if the narrator is the author as narrator or the author pretending to have once been the one who experienced the events? You change only the personal pronouns the NARRATOR uses. And telling is telling, no matter the pronouns or tense used. With neither way is the narrator on the scene. They’re just talking about the action as if they’re a camera strapped to the protagonist’s forehead, observing and explaining (which is the second trick you’re using: being the voice of the director’s cut on a DVD of the story’s video.). But this is not the protagonist living the story in real time, it’s a play-by-play announcer, reporting the events and explaining the significance to the reader as-a-report.

I see what you’re trying to do, and applaud your effort and ingenuity. But there are more effective ways—part of the body of knowledge we call the craft of the fiction writer.

The problem you, and pretty much every hopeful writer faces is that because we think we learned to write in school, and know the story before we read it back, it works perfectly. And since we can't use the tool we don't know exists, or fix the problem we don't see as being one...

Remember how many reports and essays you were assigned in school, and how few stories? Remember how little time you spent on how to use tags, how to make dialog seem real, and why a scene on the page ends with disaster for the protagonist—and must?

That came about because the goal of public education is to ready us for employment by providing a set of skills employers find useful, like writing reports. In other words, we learned nonfiction writing skills—skills meant to inform clearly, effectively, and, dispassionately. But does a reader want to learn what happens, or to feel that it’s happening to them in real-time?

To your credit, you do more than most hopeful writers toward providing that. But again, with more effective techniques at your service you can multiply that effect, dramatically.

For that reason, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It will not only answer the questions you might have about writing, it will also provide answers to the ones you SHOULD be asking. The book has over 200 five star reviews, and reading no more than the titles of those reviews will tell you all you need to know. As an alternative, and for books that you might find in the local library system’s Fiction-Writing section, look for James Scott Bell’s series of books on writing fiction.

Those books won’t make a pro of you, but they will give you the tools and knowledge needed to become one. Used well, those techniques can make the writing so deeply immersive that if the protagonist falls and skins a knee the reader bleeds (figuratively, of course 🤪)

So have at it. I think you’ll find those books fun.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[Huckleberry Hoo]

Hello Jay,

Thank you, my friend, for taking the time and effort to read, and to help make my writing better! I am a beginning writer with little formal education, so ALL help is welcome. With that said, I am a grandfather, am mostly self-educated, and am an avid reader, particularly of Southern literature, wherein may lie some of my problems.

I will get, and read, the mentioned book. I thank you for the tip.

Also, I am aware of my struggles with grammatical tense, and personal points of view. I find myself flopping around sometimes with these. I am working on it, but if the books you mentioned can help with that, doubly awesome!. It is difficult to see the errors sometimes when the feedback you get is from people who know even less about it than you do.

I am going to post another story shortly, and hope you will give it a look as well. I am new to the site, and do not yet know if I can "tag" someone with a post.

Thank you again for your time and effort!

Chuck

[JayG]

• Also, I am aware of my struggles with grammatical tense, and personal points of view.
read more• Also, I am aware of my struggles with grammatical tense, and personal points of view.

It’s not a failing in you. You’re doing exactly what you’ve been taught to do so far as presentation. All your schooldays training was to write reports, in which you carefully and accurately described the situation. Fact-based and author-centric. EVERY hopeful writer starts out that way because it’s what we know.

And almost universally, we forget that all professions are learned IN ADDITION to that schooldays knowledge. We forget that eating doesn’t teach us to cook and so assume that reading fiction teaches us to write it.

I wrote six unsold novels and thought I was pretty close to publication when I learned I had not a clue of how to write fiction. And that was emotionally devastating. But armed with the knowledge of what I needed to do, and after a year of work (including my discovery of that Swain book) I submitted my next novel and was offered a contract. And if I, who is the last to get anything, can sell a few novels and shorts, anyone can.

And if age and education is a problem, I, who left school in the tenth grade, and am currently 82, am in big trouble. 🙄

[Indra's Child]

I totally understood this!!!! Not just your writing technique, but also the feelings resonated deeply with me. I love the way it ended too. Sometimes fast cars are way more exciting than any potential.... mates..... lol

100/100

[Huckleberry Hoo]

Thanks for reading and commenting. I got tickled by the flip-flop comment on your Bio. Will post a poem for you in a few minutes... hope you will check it out.

[Indra's Child]

Boop ok for sure I will. 👍 Love your stuff