Tangled, a mess. Mattered tumbles of locks fall either side of my face shaping a fragile framework I like the creativity in your language here, but too many colourful metaphors can weigh down a sentence. In this case, caling a face a 'framework' sounds a bit odd. Dark, prevalent melancholy that stalks my every move is prevalent, I fight to overcome it but it consumes me. Frantically flipping through magazines – faces streaming past, faces that look nothing like mine. Thin and pale – light. Light like the sun glowing, illuminating the pages – perfection. Back to the mirror now. Slumped shoulders extend to a native face, beautiful but this view not shared by all. This is worth expanding upon - this character can aknowledge her own aesthetic beauty, and yet still feels inferior compared to the glossy magazines' ideas of perfection. The decision to have a character with that kind of awareness, as opposed to one who simply thinks 'I don't look like them, therefore I'm not perfect like them' is interesting, but warrants more discussion. It doesn't have to be here exactly, but it'd be good to expound on this at some point. Nothing like those models in those magazines. Nothing like those girls at school. No silky golden locks, no long limbs – nothing, nothing like them. Adjusting my top, tighter here looser there. Not much better but it’ll do. Coping is a struggle. I‘ve learnt not to ask why these days. Nice opening, and some really nice, resonant lines at the end here 
The TV is on and the room is buzzing, reminding me of the busy day that lays lies ahead. Sunshine fills the room with a warmth that is followed with an irresistible smell. Mum’s in the kitchen washing dishes that I should probably should be helping with. She has time now though, it’s not like she’s going to get a job any time soon.<--will talk about this in the end comments, but v. good job! I pour more syrup soaking the steaming damper you need a comma in this phrase. Notice how if you read it all in one go without pauses or inflections, it's a bit hard to follow? You're allowed to have shorter or even slightly ungrammatical sentences in Context, especially for the creative style, but you still have to make clarity your first priority. It actually took me a few reads to work out what was going on, and the assessors don't usually afford you that luxury. Try to make things as clear as can be all the way through, even for little throw away lines like this that just add a bit of colour to the story, the sweet nectar is addictive. Volume increases and my eyes are focused on the screen. Familiar figures bring joy to the room, laughter and jokes follow. The typical headlines follow then I hear the words Australia Day. Mum looks at the screen and demands I turn the screen off. Blackness fills the screen. She always acted strange around this time of the year, almost frustrated at the world. Australia day a day to enjoy similar to the above re: commas. This might've just been a typo, but without a comma after Australia Day, this sounds a bit weird. Again, it'll only take a few seconds for your reader to work out what you mean, but every single time they have to pause and think 'wait, what?' is something you have to try and counter. It's not the kind of thing you'd instantly lose marks for, but it could potentially impact your overall score because it pulls you out of the storyour culture, Australia’s culture. What is our culture? Is it possible to share two cultures and belong to the one country? More explanation needed here. In particular, working in the idea of 'outsider-ness' would be ideal, given the prompt's focus. So many questions bustle word check. Maybe 'float around,' 'bounce around,' 'churn,' 'echo' etc. in my mind, distracted I’m reminded of the time need a comma here too; this should probably be a separate sentence, but as a general indicator, follow the rhythm of your own speech and place commas where you would naturally pause or shift tones, i.e. you wouldn't say the-ideas-rattle-around-in-my-mind-[PAUSE]-distracted-I'm-reminded... there has to be a pause after distracted as well for this to make sense by the clock constantly at work clocks don't really 'work' ...well, they do in the sense of 'functioning' but not in terms of 'putting in effort to achieve a desired result.' For the sake of setting the scene and showcasing your writing ability, focus on some more sensory information. You talk about the smell of steaming damper earlier, so perhaps now describe the sounds of the ticking clock in a stylised way in the corner. With one last taste of the fragment word check. 'fragment' means 'piece,' as in, the broken fragments of a mirror, or, more symbolicaly, the fragments of someone's identity... stuff like that. I'm not quite sure how a breakfast can be fragmented, unless you know something about damper that I don't(?) breakfast I skip out of the kitchen content that I will never be able to answer any of these questions I pose about the world. again, this is a pretty impactful paragraph conclusion, but I feel like this goes against some of what you establish in the first bit. You've got a character obsessing over looks and continually comparing her perceived imperfections to the standards of beauty magazines and other people in her life, which seems to weigh heavily on her given the whole opening of her as a tangled mess who struggles to cope. To then have her, by the end of this paragraph, 'content' enough not to bother with answers seems like a pretty drastic shift in characterisation.
Running, feet stumbling. Where did they go? Turning around they’re all missing. Eyes darting frantically searching for a familiar face – anyone. Maybe they had to go to the bathroom – were they looking for me? No I was with them, that can’t be it. I’ll just sit here and wait, finish tying up my shoe lace. Chattering children everywhere nearly all of them except one. Balls thrown from across the court rolling. One's gone rogue and makes it way towards me. I easily pick it up and consider playing with those boys over there. But there their cheery faces morph into unwelcoming snarls. Words – they’re just words. Tears stream falling into the breeze as I run. A small hand wipes away a big tear. There’s no time to catch my breath, no time to think about what just happened. Shade and foliage cover me. Giggles from behind the shed follow. Tears wiped away now I’ve found the girls. They say they lost me and were looking around. More uncontrollable laughing none of which is mine. Eyes puffy and red now, I nod and sit with them. It’s uncomfortable and I don’t understand what’s so funny but I don’t ask questions I don’t ask why anymore. Typical childish discussion follows – I don’t care. Thoughts about a far off place occupy my mind, comforting voices and soothing scenes of dust and red terrain. Good para. There are some elements of this I'm unsure of, like why her friends don't acknowledge the fact that she was crying... unless you're implying that they're "friends" in the high-school-bitchy-bullies sense and were ditching her to torment her, in which case, why would they come back? And is the laughter at her expense, or is this just unrelated? Not too important here, but some more details could really help you expand on these points and get more credit for the breadth of your ideas.
Gum nut scent tickles my nose as I skip across the old man’s yard. Stones and vibrant earth in-between my toes – its warmth inviting. Trails of dust act as my shadow. The sun shines and dances next to me to the hearty beat of a strumming instrument. He wears his grey beard as if it were a medallion that covers his welcoming grin as he hands over some yams. Fresh from the soil, home grown. Home. That’s where I should be.
Strolling the isles. Up and down repeated. phrasing is a bit clunky here. Same old music that numbs the mind. Decorations fill the walls and racks. Blue, red and white. Green and gold. There’s flags, clothing and various other amusing things that might be considered fit at a celebration. Mum comments on there not being any of ‘our’ colours. What’s ‘our’ mean? love this bit!!! She hurries off down to fresh produce. The flags seemed so fun, I always wanted one for myself. Blue, red and white. Having a flag, it means you’re part of something. A day to celebrate your country, our country. Why isn’t Mum happy, isn't it her country too?
Her hand is so soft across my forehead. I snuggle deeper beneath the sheets. She starts, a soothing voice that calms me each dusk. Her lips pursed on top of my head as she whispers. May your dreams follow the breeze and let your mind reconnect with those who we've lost. Breath steady now, inhale deep and exhale slowly. Mind’s at rest – home is where I belong. Also a decent paragraph, but I feel like you could do more to tie the whole story together here. There are quite a few threads (i.e. body image, national identity, racial intolerance, etc.) so you wouldn't have to tick all of them off, but it'd be good to have a more holistic focus for your concluding lines. In particular, I think you need to revisit the kind of turmoil you were depicting in the opening section, as this seems to have been neglected in later paragraphs. More on this in the end comments...
I definitely think you should keep working on your creative skills even if you do end up deciding that expository writing suits you better. You may also find a kind of hybrid style that combines both of these skill sets. Your teacher will probably have some say in this too, though. If they're totally against creative pieces and believe them to be too risky, then it'd be best to stick with expository writing for SACs and
maybe keep this up on the side as an option for the exam. On the flip side, if they tell you expository writing is boring or just straight out force you to write creatively for a SAC, then you can keep the expository stuff in your back pocket just in case.
The sentence structure created a couple of problems, but nothing too severe, and what you did with the character's voice overall outweighed any minor grammatical confusion.
But perhaps the biggest strength of this piece is that
you're not just making one solitary straightforward point about the prompt! You say you're more experienced in expository writing and honestly, I can tell - and that's a good thing! It means that you've trained your brain to unpack prompts and look at ideas from a variety of angles, AND you're able to successfully integrate this exploration in a creative way, which is a rare combination indeed.
What I mean by this is that you haven't simply told the story of a girl who feels like she's an outsider in terms of her physical appearance. By mentioning the fact that her mother is unlikely to find a job and feels uncomfortable with the idea of Australia Day (--> is an 'outsider,' but not in the same way as your protagonist) or having her slip into her fantasies of 'home' (--> suggesting that a person being an outsider in some situations doesn't mean they do not belong
somewhere), you're automatically extending your arguments beyond the basic response of 'yes, people can be outsiders' which is what I guarantee ~80% of responses to a prompt like this would be.
Moreover, you have moments where you're explicitly questioning the terms of the prompts (i.e. "what's 'our' mean?" --> which group do we consider ourselves a part of, or an outsider from?) in a way that doesn't detract from the overall believability of the story. Compare this to a piece that said something like: 'Walking down the supermarket aisles, I say nothing but other people's colours... never my own colours. I felt like an outsider in my own country. But what did that really mean? Well, I suppose being an outsider is...'
...super clunky, right? Whereas you manage to do it in a way that still suits your character's voice, but injects a really complex facet of discussion into your piece.
The main thing that needs work here is the shifts between paragraphs and what they mean for the character. I love that you've got all these threads of exploration, but
they need to tie together! You kind of do this at the beginning, and you kind of do this at the end, but each time it's in a different way. At the start, I'm thinking 'okay, here's a character who doesn't belong, is aware of her un-belonging, struggles to cope, and is probably going to be plagued by these issues throughout the story' but then by the end I'm left thinking 'she seems unusually content for someone who struggles to cope.' I'm inferring that you meant to suggest that her outsider status in some regards doesn't preclude her from feeling a sense of belonging in other circumstances, but you need to reconcile these two ideas.
Simply put, is your character happy, or not?
It might seem too simplistic to boil down your whole story to that, but keeping it consistent would help make your contention a bit more precise. It'd also let you have a common thread linking your opening and ending, if you wanted, which'd be especially powerful given that this piece seems to do a kind of 'day in the life' thing, so that cyclical start-to-end thing can work really well.
In terms of where to take things from here:
1) Iron out the details of your story, and link each of them up with your intended sub-argument (e.g. mother will feel as though she doesn't belong and attempts to shield her daughter from potentially harmful questions about racial identity, but will occasionally betray herself by referring to 'us/our' & 'them,' forcing the daughter to question things anyway --> sometimes outsider-ness is unavoidable, but our reactions to this can differ greatly, and may even affect others in our lives; plus, refusing to acknowledge outsider-ness openly can lead to cognitive dissonance or feelings of suppressed hostility.) You seem to be doing this really well already, intentionally or otherwise
but make it super explicit for yourself, and this will make the construction of your plot a lot simpler.
2) Make sure there aren't too many 'loose ends,' so to speak. It's fine to leave some parts open-ended or ambiguous, but you want your core argumentative (
side note: not in the sense of highly persuasive, rigid 'arguments,' but rather in terms of a clear and relevant contention that doesn't take a totally definitive view of abstract concepts like 'belonging' and 'other-ness') parts to be pretty solid. Bits like her interactions with her social group felt like they had crucial details left out, and I got to the end of the paragraph unsure of what you were trying to suggest.
3) Just watch out for word choice and sentence structure things - not a huge issue, but it's good to take a heap of risks and test this stuff out now so that by the time you hit the exam, your writing style is watertight.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions about this stuff
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