Hey all
I would appreciate any feedback given on this Context piece! Please criticise as much as you can
Sure, though I wasn't a creative piece person and have never really marked any before, and don’t know the text, so we'll see how I go 
P.S. I was real harsh in places, your writing is good but I find it easier to pick holes in English than compliment people. Apologies. It's good stuff.It is for the film 'A Seperation' so I'm also not sure if I need to include any quotes...
No, no you don't. BUT, if your links are pretty shaky or very very well hidden (I can't say at all since I don't know the text), an overt quote or two would point out more clearly to the examiner what you're getting at.Any help would mean a lot!
Thanks
Coming back home from the court room could not have been a more miserable experience. I cannot even begin to explain the darkness that is creeping inside of me; like I’m dead, but I can still feel. I never thought that lying to protect my father would turn my heart inside out, sagging down into an empty pit of darkness
; but it did exactly that.
“Termeh are you home?” my father’s voice echoed through the house as he locked the door behind him. His voice is normally warm and flowing, like hot chocolate; and I always seemed to relax when he had something to say. But today was different; his voice was
sad and it became a cool waterfall in the middle of nowhere, avoid blatantly saying ‘his voice was sad’, try to show it not state it. Also the ‘cool waterfall’ metaphor doesn’t quite fit, it sounds soothing and cooling alone and small. His footsteps sent shivers through my spine
as I could hear him walk closer they crunched towards my bedroom; but I decided I was not going to turn around to face him as I usually do when he comes back home from work. He knocked on my bedroom door twice before he came in, as he normally does.
The last couple of sentences are a bit ‘boring’ – I can’t explain quite what I mean, but they don’t quite fit in...“Termeh, we need to talk” he let out
in the most apologetic way apologetically, as though he doesn’t
tense? even need to say “I’m sorry” as the pain is clear enough through his tone of voice. But I turned my whole body away to face the wall of my bedroom, as there is nothing to say to the person who has betrayed me in the most painful way, making the rage boil further inside my heart.
Here’s a quick revision of these lines.
His footsteps sent shivers down my spine as they crunched towards my bedroom door. Two knocks, as always. I turned rigidly away, staring at his black shadow imprinted in the growing wedge of light on the wall.
‘Termeh. We need to talk.’
Almost as if the note of apology in his voice removed the need to say sorry.
But there was nothing to say. Nothing to say to the person who had betrayed me, beaten me, broken me.He took a seat
in creative writing, using strong, powerful verbs is really important; they make the story move faster and have more impact. Like, here you say 'took a seat' - quite a 'passive' sort of verb, even just saying 'sat' would improve it by getting to the point faster, though it's a boring verb that doesn't show much. You could try 'collapsed' or something. It's easy to get caught up thinking that adjectives and adverbs are the important things to make your writing descriptive and powerful, but often focusing on more descriptive verbs actually conveys just as much (e.g. 'sat' is totally neutral - doesn't at all suggest his emotions; 'collapsed' gives more of a sense of weakness or exhaustion, so you see it can shed light on how he's feeling). And it doesn't sound flowery and over-the-top like binging on adjectives can. beside me on the soft, cushion
ed couch, underneath the cool air conditioner which made the dust particles swirl like fireflies across the room. Although the bright ray of light lit up the whole room through the windowsill, it was unable to soothe the anxiousness
that was trapped inside
of me, turning everything around to become a gloomy, dark shadow.
My father has always been the one person who I thought I could trust and look up to during any situation. But after all that has happened, this could not be further from the truth. After witnessing him lying to me for a week straight, and then giving me no choice but to lie to the judge to protect him, it has turned me into a victim of a conflict that I have no involvement in.
The anxiety of the whole situation makes
stick to past tense my stomach curl and my throat choke, letting the words I had practiced over and over again in the mirror of my bedroom be dragged back down my throat and dissolve into the acid of my belly.
Make it a bit faster-paced – try the active voice; you’ve got ‘letting… be dragged’, try ‘dragging’. Or, cut out the bit about ‘the anxiety of the whole situation’; that’s obvious, you want to avoid telling people obvious stuff. Like: ‘Those words I’d practiced over and over again in my bedroom mirror, words written like fire in my heart, suddenly choked in my throat and dissolved in the acid of my belly.’ I couldn’t hold the pain inside me anymore.
“I just can’t trust you anymore!” I screamed, with my back still faced to him, eyes
glued rigidly on my bedroom wall.
“I thought you would never lie to me, but you did. Over and over again. I just feel so guilty for going against what you have taught me was wrong all these years”
I said as a warm tear fell across my left cheek dunno, talking about warm tears feels a bit clunky – don’t tell us directly that you’re crying, aim to show it. Like: ‘… what you have taught me was wrong all these years.’ The bitter taste of salt trickling into the corner of my mouth, I ... I could not bear the sadness of the whole situation and needed to look into his warm, comforting eyes to make me feel safe again.
But I turned to see a face which I could barely recognise. He fell silent as though he knew I was analysing his unshaven face,
which allowed the dark circles under his eyes to stand out even more.
Again, 'allowed... to stand out' is quite ‘passive’ and long-winded, and you could make it more powerful with a strong verb: underscoring, darkening, highlighting or something. His blood shot eyes made me pity him. I’ve never seen him like this before and I had forgotten how hard he must be struggling with the whole situation.
a) a bit too explicit - 'made me pity him'; aim to show this, not tell it directly. b) I think you need to think about it a bit deeper; why is he struggling? in what way is he a victim? it's his fault, right, (or is it...?), so why would she feel sorry for him? I'll give you a list of questions to ask later, pretty much you need to be unpacking the prompt a bit more.“I know what I made you do was wrong and I don’t expect you to forgive. In fact, I will understand if you never do.” He breathed hard.
“I would have never made you lie to the judge unless it was completely necessary. And it will forever break my heart that I made you do what I know you’re not comfortable to do. I am guilty for this horrible crime, and I cannot string enough words together to express how sorry I am for making you a victim when you’ve done nothing wrong.”
Could go a bit more into how he feels like a victim, and why, etc. etc. Or maybe suggest that the 'innocent' main character actually has done something wrong in some way. A bit more thought about the ideas in the prompt could make this deeper.He gulped hard, expecting a response. But I had nothing to say but look deeper into his unwashed face.
Nice ending.
I really really beg your pardon - I've purely criticised in here. Especially in places, your voice and writing is really really strong; I like it. I just find it easier to pick holes than say what's good, that's why I couldn't write creative. Really great effort, some bits of it are great.Major stuff to improve:
• Shaky tenses throughout the piece; your second sentence is present tense, after that it’s (mostly) past. Pick one and stick with it, absolutely.
• A bit more ‘show, don’t tell’ – avoid using overt words like ‘conflict’, ‘felt sad’ etc. (see
here).
• A bit of variation in your sentence length would be good – have a couple of really short sentences thrown in here and there, like 1-5 word sentences.
Read this thing which I pinched from one of Ned Nerb's posts
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
• The context of this isn’t very clear. Sure, it’s a short story, we don’t need to know the background of their lives – but I didn’t really get what’s going on. What had this dad actually done? Yeah, it’d be a bit clunky to explicitly state what’s happening, but still, trying to weave in details of what’s actually happened will make it easier for the readers.
• Some verb practice would be good - focus on using powerful verbs to show emotions and keep your piece moving.
Finally: How much did you unpack the prompt first? When writing a creative piece, pretend for the first five minutes that you’re doing an expository; think about what your ideas would be, etc. etc. Ask lots of questions:
• Are the innocent or the guilty more the victims? Which ones suffer more? And why?
• Is there
anyone involved in conflict who’s innocent?
• Who decides which is innocent and which is guilty?
• Are all guilty people victims? Or only some? And why?
• Victims in what way, anyway?
• Sure, the guilty may be victims, but is that their fault? Should we be sorry for them or not?
• Didn’t the guilty bring it on themselves? So, are they the victims of the
conflict?
• What sort of conflict? Internal, interpersonal, national…? etc.
The more you try to come up with a piece that addresses multiple facets, the better it’ll be. Rather than just a story that shows both the innocent and guilty as victims. Think about some of this stuff, and try to come up with other questions, and then see how you can address them in your piece. Another thing – the link to ‘conflict’ as such isn’t very evident in the piece; you just show that in a given situation, the guilty person and the innocent person both feel bad.
In other words, don’t get so wrapped up a story that you don’t think about challenging the prompt – a creative piece that just shows an example of one single thing about the prompt isn’t going to score too great.
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