Burning Man Part 2 What if...?

My dad and I arrived at Burning Man on Wednesday in the later afternoon. The festival had been going on since Monday but the earliest time my dad could get off of his work as a fourth grade teacher was Wednesday. The camp we were staying with was still setting up though, and continued to be in a state of constant renovation throughout the entire time I was there. We went on a bike ride around the city just exploring and looking around. The next morning my dad woke me up around 8:30, although the heat would have awoken me soon. I knew my friend and his mom should be getting there on that day so as we went around exploring more I kept my eyes open for him. I wrote that I was looking for him on every bulletin board I saw but with no luck. He knew where we were camping because we were with a theme camp and he and his mom were on their own. Still, it’s difficult to find people in a city of fifty thousand and no phones or any other useful technology to speak of. By Friday I was getting more and more discouraged. My dad told me that I had to stop dwelling on finding him. I might never find him and he wanted to me to have a good time and not worry about it. I knew he was right and so I let it go. If I didn’t see him here I would surely see him back at home in the bay area. One of the three main themes of Burning Man is radical self reliance. This goes from everything to being responsible for your own hydration and sun protection to making your own fun. I realized that you get only what you put into Burning Man and I really would not have fun if I spent the week looking for my friend. After all, there were fifty thousand other people there who I had yet to meet. I spent the rest of the week spending quality time with my dad, meeting amazing people, dancing and exploring. It was the most amazing and transformative week of my life.

This still feels like plot summary. I'm not sure where you are with the assignment, but how you finally "let it go" needs to be described in order for the premise to matter at all. If it was so easy to let go of, then why not let go sooner, for example. Also, you begin to tell your reader a little bit about Burning Man, radical self-reliance, but you don't really work this into your story. What are the other two themes? Back up and explain the festival, give context, so that we recognize the size of the crowd and how it arises out of nothing (the desert), before you give the actual number. Let us feel the scene more intensely. Many possibilities here. Think of you and your father and your friend as characters in your story, and introduce accordingly.