The Forest
The Forest
As we pulled up to the labeled campground area that was at the entrance of the forest, we noticed that the appearance of the location was pretty desolate with only one other car being there. We started to wonder if we were in the right place. It looked almost abandoned with an old, rusty swing set that sat only a few feet from the parking lot. I was a little spooked when I saw one of the swings being pushed by the wind. However, our concerns were extinguished when we exited the vehicle and smelled the familiar aroma of a nearby campfire’s scent traveling through the calm breeze. We walked a few steps back to the truck and unloaded our backpacks, tent, and food. We then traveled a few minutes into the woods until we came to a big clearing that was given shade from the blazing hot sun with gigantic oak trees that towered over the friend group like giants among children.
Setting up our tent was very hard as none of us knew how to actually accomplish the task. The sun had set and darkness was upon us as time passed. There was the occasional wolf howl that we all admired while we were trying to plan to set the tent up properly. As we were pounding the metal stakes into the ground with light from the flashlight of my phone we heard a loud, non-human sounding scream that sliced through the normal silence of the forest like a sharpened knife. On top of this horrifying noise, the seemingly calm breeze from before turned into a harsh wind that felt like a tornado rushed through our bodies. All of us froze in horror as we had no idea what to do. The question “Should we run or should we investigate?” echoed throughout my head and bounced through my mind like a voice in a deep cavern. My friend Josh asked the rest of the group, “Should we go see what the hell just happened?”. No one responded, but we all slowly rose up off the ground and started to traverse further into the woods that seemed to get more rugged and dense the deeper that you went.
All of the sudden, the loud sound of a branch snapping caught all of our attention. We all whipped our heads around simultaneously to locate the source of the shocking noise. We felt paralyzed as we actually did discover the source of the sound, a man in a hockey mask staring right through us, but at the same time he pierced our souls with his wild, bloodshot eyes. I immediately snapped out of my trance and went into fight or flight mode, but one of my friends still remained immobilized. I grabbed his arm and tugged with all of my strength to get him to run with me. All four of us sprinted as fast as possible towards our car, jumping and hurdling over dead trees and debris that was in our way.
We ran out of the forest entrance that we had just entered a few hours ago and hopped into the car. As soon as my friend jumped into the driver’s seat, he slammed the car’s gear into reverse. Before he was able to slam on the gas pedal to escape the situation, we all looked up to see the deranged man sprinting to the car. The tires squealed as he stepped on the pedal so hard that it seemed to go through the floorboard of the old car.
We were all silent on the way back because of the pure fear and adrenaline that flooded our bodies. Out of nowhere, my friend started to laugh hard. He turned around to us in the backseat and said “Who else but us would go camping and almost get killed by some psycho?”. We all laughed and the tense atmosphere from the forest cleared.
There is so much to say about the forest, but the quickest explanation of it is that the forest is truly a mysterious thing. Once you are within the limits of the forest, you feel like you are truly a part of it. It’s filled with eerie silence and the occasional snap of a twig that you could never plan for the shocking sights you will see. The milky white fog rises up from the pine trees in the early morning like steam from a hot pot on the stove and the aura of fear that it sends through a person will haunt my memory forever. You'll never truly know what horrors reside within the heart of the forest.
Heyy. Even though Scalia said to use his rubric, I still decided to make my own to cater to your piece. However, before Scalia comes for me, it is still out of 25 points so it should be ok. The five categories I scored you on were imagery, structure, language, mystery, and eeriness.
ReplyDeleteLanguage: I give you a 3/5. While you did include some impressive diction in your writing, there were still components of your text that were too casually written. It is important to avoid this because when you make your writing sound educated and well put together (even just with a few different phrases), it will change the way your reader perceives your text for the better. Writing is like a jigsaw puzzle and you have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone so you can mold your ideas and sentences into what sounds the most logical. Some of the examples i have compiled of your writing being too casual: "as we pulled up," "I was a little spooked," and "setting up our tents was very hard." Substitutions I recommend are: "As my friend's old, rustic car screeched closer and closer to the labeled campground" (In this sentence, I not only improved your imagery content, but I also connected this idea of your friend's car being old from the second to last paragraph), "A small amount of fear echoed through my body" (I still got the same idea across while dressing it up with a figure of speech), and "assembling our tents proved to be a greater challenge than originally anticipated" (I swapped the phrase "setting up" for assemble because it sounded better and instead of taking the easier route by writing "harder," I decided to use challenge). Even though these errors were not a huge deal, do you see you swapping a few phrases out and adding more figurative language can truly make your text? A game changer for me was searching a phrase I wanted to use in my writing, but sounded too casual, and finding substitutions. After using this method for a short period of time, your brain will start to be able to convert and tailor these phrases on its own, so give it a shot!
Mystery content: 3/5. Even though your text had some mystery to it such as who the man in the mask was and what the non human screech was, however, it still was not enough. Since this piece had very little requirements, you have to make sure you are really hitting the mark. Your text would have been better if the storyline was expanded, such as a dreadful night in a forest with twists and turns instead of witnessing a couple scary incidents and leaving the scene. However, the sentence that saved your score was "loud, non human sounding scream that sliced through the normal silence of the forest like a sharpened knife". Even though i liked this sentence more for its language than its mystery, I still felt obligated to put it in this category; it was wonderfully written!
Eerie: 2/5. Disclaimer: I do not have any direct quotes for this category. To truly incorporate an eerie sense in your writing, it must be written with constant creepy details. After the first paragraph, where you wrote about the rustic swing, I was disappointed because I could not find any details that were eerie.
Imagery: 2/5. Again, one of the main tasks was to include a lot of imagery, which i felt like you fell short on. Because there were not too many requirements for this assignment, you had to really make sure you did a great job on the few things asked of you. In the beginning, you imagery was very nicely written. However, as the text kept going, I would see less and less imagery.
Structure: 4/5. Your sentences were easy to read and understand. Also, your writing was organized in a logical way.
14/25 (I did not do that on purpose Andrew).