Hey everyone, would appreciate your opinions about this piece of creative writing:
Imagine a world where you could converse with inanimate objects
As John walked into the room, he felt extremely self-conscious. He had always been an introvert, and he felt especially shy around walls and chairs. Despite attending numerous lectures about the importance of self-esteem, he often found himself the most victimised member of his classroom, constantly bullied by his pencil case. As he sat down at his trendy oak wood desk, he managed to let out a whisper, “Hi table, what’s your name?” The table, who was an overly extroverted individual, sneered at John, “You may as well get your protective equipment ready now, you are going to be annihilated by my mates at the gym next period.”
John tried his hardest in an attempt to prevent himself from bawling his eyes out, but ultimately his emotions got the better of him, and a trickle of water gushed down his cheek. The four tiles beneath him laughed with satisfaction, “You are ludicrous John, it’s alright baby.” John, who was now in a state of internal fury, felt a sudden wave of conflagration emerge through his body. Testosterone was flowing through his veins, and he felt like he had the gusto and strength of Superman. Standing tall and upright, he lifted his right leg and stomped on one of the tiles with all his might, unleashing all his years of torment and belittlement in one action.
The tile screamed in anguish, “Owwwwww! Let me go you silly human!” John laughed maliciously, as if his anger had completely consumed him. As he lined his leg up against the adjacent tile, the oak wood table screamed in despair, “Do not do it John! He has a chronic crack on his left side, please leave him alone”. John smirked, and his eyes flashed in various shades of crimson red.
I am no English teacher nor am I in a position to accurately critique your use of language in this piece but I will give it my best shot.
1) the characters name is not something the examiners really care about but I has the potential to add depth to your protagonist and can separate you from other pieces. A name like John is fine but examiners will probably go through a lot of main characters called John when marking their essays. It is one of those names that pop straight into our head when we are about to write up a piece. It also the very first thing we take in from the text, that your main character is called John. This is not a huge issues but try something a bit more unique like Jeffrey or maybe even have a foreign name just to give your piece some flavour. You shouldn't really get to worried over this though.
2) As I said, I am in no place to judge your use of language but a few words seem really out of place. I am assuming you may have extracted these words right out of your thesaurus which can be beneficial at times. However, words work differently for each other and personally a few of the words used , like conflagration, don't necessarily fit the context. I am also someone who abuses their thesaurus and as a consequence , I know a lot of words but I don't know how to use them ( for example , conflagration is used more on geographical and scientific terms so it seems really out of place in your work ( can any year 12's back me up on that?)) as a result I constantly bombarded my writing with words that didn't even make sense within the context. Don't be afraid to use new words but some of he best words to use are ones you already know. For example, "sprang" is such a descriptive and overall fun word to use, my English teachers loves the word and everyone knows it. Those are the words that you need to search for when writing your piece.
3) Your story was quite entertaining and I felt sorry for poor John. Your ending was a bit abrupt, I think your were going for one of those dramatic cliff hanger endings but you have to be careful with those endings since you need to make them STRONG! I didn't really find this one strong but it was enough to make me care for what happened next. I suggest using shorter sentences and strong vocabulary for the endings of a piece because it is not only the last thing your examine reads but it can really be the deciding factor on wether your story was an A+ or an A.
4) Ahh, this is something I can really talk about. Complexity and maturity. The only reason I have got to where I am in English is because of complexity and maturity. Not all pieces need to be mature to be good but if you can add sophistication to your pieces, the top marks will be in your grasp. Themes are very important as you don't want to be blabbering over nothing. A story more then just a serious of events, they represent something and come together to form a bigger picture. The story you came up with is not really complex in themes but it is more mature then writing I would expect off someone your age.
Personally, I suggest you relate the topic to a real world problem. For example, I would relate this topic to the state of our youth and how materialistic we are. I would either write about a conversation between an iPhone and a teenage boy with comedic elements or a serious dark story about the social ramifications of consumerism with the items slowly seducing and controlling the masses.
Overall you produced an entertaining piece that got quite aggressive near the end. What really matters is that you can take all the advice you get on AN and focus on improving. Personally, I would suggest you focus on complexity and maturity as they are key element to a good piece.
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