4.10.13
Someone on Tumblr asked me about how to do well in creative writing because they're always getting single digit marks out of 15 and the only thing I do okay in is creative writing but I don't do anything? Oh God I have no idea if this makes sense but the only reason I do well in creative writing is because of my language? Like I'm best at this 'show not tell thing' and metaphors/personification/similes are my best friends and basically that's what drags my marks up even though my belonging ideas are shitty for the stimulus?To be honest I've never prepared an essay for creative writing because the risk of it not matching (even though people tell you to manipulate it) is still quite high (you never know what they're going to give you). For this year, I've only written one creative writing essay and that was because I was so sick of Romulus, My Father that I wanted to do something different.
- I based it around the idea of a boy who's lonered at school and only enjoys books. Don't nail down a specific idea i.e. intricately writing out your complication, resolution and all the other parts. The reason why I have such a broad idea is because if the stimulus required 'the individual to enrich others', I could say that the boy would give advice to the other school kids when they are troubled (and that advice would be from the knowledge he gained from reading books). People would then start accepting him and talking to him and therefore he enriches the community by providing moral support and that. For trials, the stimulus was three quotes and one of them was something along the lines of 'He patted on the seat next to him'. I basically shat out 4 pages (only, I know) of how the boy was always in solitude n daht and one day after a rainy day (best scene for conveying a sense of not belonging) he was waiting for a bus but because he always stayed behind at school, it was peak hour (aka all the business people got off work and the bus was filled). He got onto the bus, glanced around and everyone was just staring at him (because that's what you do on buses) but there was another boy and a free seat next to him and *insert quote* "patted the seat next to him etc;'. This was the start of friendship, acceptance and belonging.
- The 4 pages took me 15-20 minutes and I got 13/15 so I thought that was pree decent
- So if you do want to manipulate something prepared, don't over prepare it? Like I knew my general idea beforehand and that saved time on thinking for new ideas/stressing over the fact that my creative didn't match the stimulus/not sure which prepared essay I should choose
- I know I shouldn't really be talking how to do well in creative when I only get 13/15 but in the past years when marking has been hard (like even for trials, the lowest was 4/15 and if you got over 11 or something that meant you did well) and in the exams where everyone did bad, I still maintained my A so I guess I have some knowledge on how to do okay?
- If you want to prepare, focus on surroundings that will convey a sense of belonging/not belonging. I don't know if I'm expressing myself well enough here crey. This is mainly because of the fact that when you describe surroundings, it is the best time to employ all your techniques and enhance that alienation/whatever you're trying to express (because dialogue does jack shit)
- Like in the past year I've only remembered certain sentences where I've wholeheartedly made (as in one sentence took half an hour of thought) and it basically ended up pretty sophisticated and that's what grabs the marker's attention? E.g. for the loner boy story, I wrote a paragraph on how the night winds conveyed a sense of 'not belonging'. Yeah, shitting out a paragraph just about wind. But hey, they liked it. Mrs Miller also complimented my writing and said how markers really like this stuff so I advise you guys to just write a paragraph or two about the main character's location (because you can manipulate any idea to a location) and the vomit it out on the day if you want. It also guarantees another page of writing and that won't hurt.
- I remember for my first semester creative writing feedback, Mr Anderson wrote 'sparkling with wit, mixed metaphors' hahaha it made my day
- Don't over complicate your ideas!
- Earlier in the year I shat out an essay about personifying myself as a raindrop (I wanted to do it cos it was challenging) and then it was way too complicated and people couldn't really tell that it was about belonging because it was so hard to convey.
- I think it was also because of the fact that it was a really angsty period for me so my sentences were legit 50000% filled with emotion and even reading it today I'm like holy shit dat sophistication
- I don't know about you guys, but I hate dialogue
- In all my past creative writing essays, I've only had 5 phrases max of dialogue. Not even sentences, just 4 worded sentences. In trials, the only dialogue I employed was the stimulus itself and that was it. Dialogue is a cockblock for me and I refrain from using it (but it's a personal preference thing anyway)
Wow that was a lot of word vomit that could have been dedicated to my module essays
I've asked a few friends and most of them
- Prepare creative essays
- One of them wrote 3, most do 2-1
- Get them marked by tutors
Man idk just do what floats your boat
I also apologise for any grammatical/spelling mistakes because I don't read over what I post and in all that word vomit there's bound to be a solid 400 mistakes.
