Creative Writing post 3: Character

     The scene I chose was another scene from Act of Valor, and it is near the beginning of the movie. What happens is one of the navy Seals (Mikey) gets shot in the eye! Lucky for him the bullet didn't do any brain damge, and he had friends who made sure that he didn't die in the middle of the mission.
   
     The scene shows good character, because it shows how Mikey doesn't give up, and his friends don't give up on him. Also while Mikey and his friends try to keep him alive they are still trying to get a CIA agent out of a house, and she isn't able to walk due to several days of torture. Above that they are dodging bullets left and right.

Still reading Doctor Sleep

     Yes, thats right, I'm still reading Stephen King's monstrous book Doctor Sleep. If one good thing came out of reading this book besides the fact that it isn't really that bad, it is that I'm never reading a Stephen King book ever again! If you are someone like me who doesnt like extensive reading, or reading really really long books, than please don't read this book, the book is bigger than the bricks that were used to build my house!
    
     Besides the fact that I could use this book to start the foundation for my dream house, it isn't terrible. I have read books that are better,m and I have read books that are worse. The only thing that you as a reader need to get past is the incredible size of the thing and be able to focus and read it without daydreaming while still skimming along to the book. The one thing I don;t like about the book so far is that it is really slow. Stephen seemed to put all of the cool intense dramatic stuff in the beginning and make up some boring slow stuff for the rest of the book.

Introduction and ending: Doctor Sleep

     In the current book I am reading, Doctor Sleep, Dan Torrance has to make his way through life with a thing called "The Shining." I am now on chapter three entitled "Spoons" I have no idea what kind of role spoons would play in this kind of book, but my assumption is that they are going to be used as a tool for some kind of hypnosis. So far Dan has been doing fairly well at the sobriety classes he has been going to, everyone in his group has received a book with weird chapter titles and even weirder sub-chapter titles, like "To Wives" whatever that's supposed to mean, I have no idea.

     Nothing really exciting or mind boggling has yet to happen in the story for quite a while, so I am still waiting for that moment to come. Since the beginning the story has actually been pretty boring and I would have expected Stephen to have thrown in a another crazy scene here or there since the first chapter. For right now, I would recommend the beginning of this book to someone who likes Stephen Kings books, but I wouldn't recommend the part where I'm at unless you like slow boring books. The question in my mind is "what and when will Dan's next major encounter with 'The Shiing' be?"

Still reading Doctor Sleep

     So far in Doctor Sleep Dan hasexperienced the shining obviously. He has also gotten a jobat Teenytown and has been fired for drinking and smoking in attempt to numb the Shining. At this point he is in a hospital and was just attending a meeting for people who have addictions, Dan's obviously being brinking. He also keeps having Shinings of Deenie, and even had a dream where she found a baseball cap fille with blood in the tub which is where Deenie died in her apartment, he also saw, written in blood, the word "Red Rum" as of now I don't know what this means, but I have a feeling I will find out soon.

     So far my predictions have not been right, Dan sadly has not been in any physical altercation. My new prediction is that Dan will be doing good in his attempt to stop drinking and be able to control the Shining, but then the "True Knot" comes along and he starts having the Shining again. i also think that the word on Dan's bathroom wall in his dream (Red Rum) has something to do with Deeni's death and the Shining, because there was also that bloody hat in the bathtub, and when people found Deenie she was found dead in her bath tub. I don't know what the hat has to do with anything (probably something to do with her kid) or the blood since she died of an overdoose then drowned.

More on Doctor Sleep

     Doctor Sleep has continued to be very interesting, and has kept a descriptive track on Dan's life. Dan at this point has gotten a Job as a maintenance man in an amusement park in a place called Teenytown. He has had one or two more experiences with the Shining, but none have been deadly or scary, just him talking to dead people. Dan has also been able to live a more alcholhol free life with the occasional smoking here and there.

     One thing that I have been getting a little upset about in the book at this point is that there isn't any action or suspense. I am a very slow part in Dan's life in my opinion. However one thing that I do like that Stephen King does is continue to show his strong vocabulary. For now this is one of the best books I have read, but it isn't one of the most exciting, or the most suspenseful. I predict that one day when Dan is in the middle of his work cleaning the park he is going to be attacked by someone throught the Shining and will want Dan to be dead afterwards. This obviously the most "school appropriate" prediction, but Stephen King has a way of coming out of no where and having some kind of fight.

Creative writing post 2: Specificity

     One scene that I really liked was one of the last scenes of Act of Valor. In the scene a man throws a grenade off a balcony in attempt to kill Navy Seals. To let his teammates survive and continue the mission one of the men, Roark, jumps on the grenade! The really sad part, aside from the fact that he died, is that his wife was about to have a baby, their first. I like what the director does in the scene by slowing everything down and having a slow heart beat in the background. The movie was based off of a true story and used real life Navy Seals so that fact intensifies the sadness factor by a lot knowing that it actually happened.

Doctor Sleep English 1-B

     Stephen King's Doctor Sleep is still one of the most interesting books I have ever read. Stephen does a good job showing Dan's life, I do not know of anyone personally who has an alcohol addiction, but what I have heard from people telling me it is just like Dan in the story. Drinks, stops finds a job, stops for a while, somehow gets dragged back in, repeat. To me the best thing about the book is how detailed Stephen king is, however this is also one of the bad things because Stephen paints a good image of whats going on, but some of the things aren't exactly "PG." The one major bad thing about the book is the length, I just don't like really long books, but so far Stephen has made me want to keep reading on.

     In this book Stephen King uses strong vocabulary, but not too strong to the point where I can't understand the book. Where I am is Dan has just decided to throw away a bottle of  "intoxicating liquids" so I think that he is going to drink again and is going to have to find another job and move to another place, but the difference is that this time somehow someone is going to try and drug his drink, someone that isn't alive. Also I predict that eventually he will find his way back the "The Knot."

An Ill-Advised Moment

A Destroyed Mailbox

It was the spring break of 2012, a warm cloudless Saturday afternoon. This was one of the only times where my spring break was at the same time as my cousin’s spring break. My two cousins (one was 15, the other was 14) and about three or four of their friends (the youngest was 14 and the oldest was 16) were all outside in one of the friends’ col-de-sacs shooting off firecrackers. We had already shot off all of the big ones and all we had were a few smaller ones.

“Hey, Drew, I dare you to tie these three together and see what happens,” One of the older friends said as they handed me three small firecrackers, one looked like a mini bottle rocket, one was in the shape of a tank even with a little army soldier inside, and the other one was one of those that looks like a plate of baby-back ribs. Him being the older and myself being the youngest, I did. I ripped out the little army dude in the cockpit of the tank, put the bottle rocket-looking one in and wrapped the rib-like one around the two and tied the fuses together. I lit it, and then I threw it as hard as I could down the road. As my creation sailed through the air, it was heading towards an old retired man’s house, and he was one of those people where no matter what was going on outside, he always had his mailbox opened.

Knowing what luck I had back then the firecracker did exactly what I didn’t want it to do, it landed in the old man’s mailbox! We all rushed to get it, but almost instantly, it exploded and left a giant hole in the mailbox. We instantly felt the heat of the small embers sitting on the mailbox. Being the boys that we were and still are to this day, we ran away as fast as we could trying to get as far away from the mailbox before the old guy woke up. Surprisingly we actually did get away, which kind of shocked me because the firecracker explosion wasn’t all that quiet, and for an old man, he wasn’t in terrible shape. The air by the mailbox smelled like melted metal as we tried to make our escape shouting out things like…

“Dude I can’t believe you actually did it!”

“That son of a b**** is going to flip once he sees that.”

“He’s going to kill you.”

 We didn’t know what to do except just sit in my cousin’s garage and laugh it off. Later that day, the guy woke up from his nap and obviously flipped out when he saw his mailbox. This wasn’t the first time we’ve done something crazy loud and/or irresponsible so he kind of knew that we did it. That next day we still wanted to have some fun with bottle rockets, so the oldest friend goes out and bought a pack. That was a bad idea. He got back and we shot a couple off, when we got to one of the last ones the bottle tipped over as we lit the rocket. To our luck it shot off and hit a bird’s nest! Ever since that day we just decided that we are not good with pyrotechnics, so that was the last time we all got together to do something like this.

One of the things that I fixed from the rough draft was I stopped rambling on about the whole day and just got to the main points. Also I fixed some generic grammar and punctuation mistakes. One last thing that I fixed from my rough draft is that I replaced some "boring" words with synonyms that sound better.