What do think of my story? Are there dialog errors?
For an english project I wrote a story based in Myanmar(Burma). So what do you think of it? PLEASE TELL ME ANY MISTAKES!!!! I am only 12.
Lights
The lights of Maha Bandula bridge were never as bright as they were the night my father died. He was only 33 the night he took his last breaths. I looked into his eyes. I held him like he was the baby and I was the mother, a baby who couldn’t point Buddha’s hand in the direction of his destiny. I was alone. Malaria burned into his system and took over the person who I called father. He was not my father anymore. He was not the strong man that held me when I cried, not the man who supported, and cared for me. Our roles were switched. He was Theingi Nyunt. I don’t know why I thought of lights, but I guess our souls are like lights, bursts of energy scattered around earth. My name is Sonswe Nyunt, and this is the story of how I died.
My mother’s eyes hardened.
“Why have you put in my vase?” She moaned as she reached into the cracked China. She brought out a handful of slimy, smelly cane frogs and dropped them on the floor. I looked down.
“Um they are…,” I said as I was trying to think of an excuse. What would she think if told her I was collecting them for fun? I paused.“…a collection, and I thought that vase would be perfect for their living conditions. I mean you weren’t using it!”
I was toast, she hates when I use her things. I was an odd 13 year old I had to say, and collecting frogs one of those reasons. I looked nothing like my mothers small, stout frame, I was like a sprouting bean that just kept on getting taller and taller. I towered over all the local women with my 5’10 frame. My coal, black hair reached my waist, and a portion of it covered my weirdest feature. My eyes. One was the color of the finest black tea, the kind that warms down to your soul and makes you feel as peaceful as a sleeping tiger. The other was blue. The clearest blue, the sky of Myanmar that hid the vaults of heaven. The kind that you imagine birds of paradise sweeping over collecting the fragrant nectar of kiwi trees swaying in the cool ocean breeze. I hated it. I was the only person in Yangon with this mutation, though my mother thought it was beautiful. Mothers, I thought, think everything that their child does is amazing. Even if that child is as ugly as the back-end of a horse. I smiled. My mother’s burning gaze lifted. She forgot about our insignificant conversation, and hurriedly grabbed her sandals and rushed out the door. I was confused. She shouted something as she closed the door to our condo.
“I forgot about the town meeting, don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone. And no more frogs!”
There was an edge of humor in voice and I knew she forgave me. My mother was a government representative in Yangon, and when someone needed her she had to go.
Yangon was like a dead fly. It was arid, dry, and crusty and the people we called leaders were like the maggots that dug into the flesh and destroyed so that they were able to come home with their bellies full of other peoples pain. I wandered out of the simple room, and out of Pyay Garden condos, to Yangon. I was on the hunt for oranges to sell in the market in my handwoven basket made of dried bamboo leaves. It was fun to have a little extra kyat in my pocket on days where a nice lahpet was necessary. It was an acquired taste, it was pickled tea. "A thee ma, thayet; a thar ma, wet; a ywet ma, lahpet,” I sung to myself. “Mangos are good, Beef is great, but none is better than lahpet!” I laughed. Someone heard.
I turned around. A shrunken pile of rags about 5 ft high that smelled of rotten fish slithered before me. That thing, I thought, was human! The smelly pile pulled out a bruised, dirty hand and smoothed across the upper rags to reveal a shock to me. The face behind the rags was simply stunning. It was a girl, about my age, with a face that looked as if it was chiseled by the greatest potter out of the most beautiful mahogany clay.
“Hello, I heard your voice over here, and I wanted to see who it was. Not many people walk around these areas you know. My name is Nadii,” she said as she nervously swayed on the spot. Her neck was abnormally long, it was covered in gold rings as was the tradition of the Kayan people. It was beautiful, in this minority, to have the longest neck as possible and it started at a young age. The women would stack gold rings on their neck until it slowly stretched and if they took them off they would surely die because their neck was so weak. She was from the nearby village, I could tell from the rings. Their village was terrorized by our government so that they could clear yet another piece of land for lumber. It was horrible. I couldn’t imagine being in her situation. I often ranted about these things as my mother obediently listened, normally focusing on something else, and chanted about how bad the government is. This probably was not smart considering the fact that
Ohhh it left out some…sorry. she dies in the end
0_o wow that’s good! 
January 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am
0_o wow that’s good!
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January 14th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Sorry, I lost motivation after reading through the first paragraph and part of the next one, though I quick-scanned the rest.
That was not smart – starting it with the story of your dying father and then trying to shock the reader with the phrase "story of how I died" – no reasonable link at all between the scenario set-up and your overwhelmingly confusing tag line. And where did you get that line about "point(ing) Buddha’s hand" – malarky.
You have some talent putting words together in effective sentences but your knowledge of Life is inadequate. For example, how are we to believe that you are 5′10" being born in such a short ethnic group, to a short woman and an undescribed man, probably not large since you were holding him like a baby. And I seriously doubt that a mother from a basically animist cultural background would be proud of a physical abnormality like you described. More likely she would have hid you from the rest of society. And though she MIGHT have handled the frogs with the aplomb you describe, it’s hard to really believe in it. Your attempts at vivid imagery are uncontrolled and thus lose their effectiveness – you can’t go from "maggots that dug into flesh" to "bellies full of other people’s pain." Not sure about all those foreign language references – they’re overdone and confusing for an English reader. Potters don’t chisel.
Sorry, but you need quite a bit more education before you can tap that wellspring of talent and enthusiasm. You might also want to consider planning your stories in more depth before geting to the words, as there is little or no sign of plot development, even early stages. It’s almost as if you’re writing stream-of-consciousness and that will never work. (minor point: Check again whether one can use flimsy bamboo "leaves" (which are relatively short and not of uniform width) to weave a basket.) And mothers, particularly Asian motheres do not "listen obediently" to one of their children – they expect their children to do that for THEM – and how does one listen obediently while not paying attention. Piles of clothese do not "slither" There are just too many small glitches in logic and reality (and a few – not too many -grammatical faults) to list here.
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