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Free AOS Creative Writing Marking!

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jamonwindeyer:

--- Quote from: Iminschool on October 05, 2017, 09:43:00 pm ---Hey guys, here's my creative writing piece. Any constructive criticism would be appreciated  :)
Thanks

--- End quote ---

Hey friend! My spreadsheet says you'll need to reach 65 posts to qualify for this creative to be marked, the requirement is currently 50 posts and you had something marked for 15 posts at the start of the year ;D

Iminschool:

--- Quote from: jamonwindeyer on October 05, 2017, 10:27:54 pm ---Hey friend! My spreadsheet says you'll need to reach 65 posts to qualify for this creative to be marked, the requirement is currently 50 posts and you had something marked for 15 posts at the start of the year ;D

--- End quote ---
Ok mb. Thanks

theofficialsabrina:
I was wondering if you could read my Creative piece and give me some pointers on how to improve it as well as whether it is adaptable to a any HSC stimulus. Thank you!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What would you do if you had a blank slate, a fresh start, and no-one expecting anything in particular of you? If you knew your friends, family and those who you admire were guaranteed to be impressed and encouraging?

First off, it sounds like there’s a catch...and of course there is, what did you expect? And secondly, are you disappointed?

But fret not! The domineering influence of expectation has always been widespread. Our actions are often swayed by what others think we should and should not do. Expectations will continue to be - because, by human nature, we all naturally and instinctively carry judgement and hence, live in a complex society in which WE are being constantly judged by others. When we reach expectations already set out for us, we are rewarded and when we do not, we are punished - we may not know it, but others sure are thinking it.

Expectation initially presents itself as an external force that drives meaning, order and prosperity - especially for those who favour the thoughts of others, which would rightfully include you, dear reader, otherwise, what would be the mystery that lies behind your ever-presence?

Hardly groundbreaking for you, but expectation is a demanding god. Speak ill of the god of expectation and others will speak ill of you. This is often best justified in many studies that there is a strong correlation with the development of self-efficacy and the attitudes and beliefs of others. In schools, excellence in achievement tends to be influenced by high parental and cultural expectations. At the workplace, performance is influenced by the presence of a manager. In sporting teams, the expectations of a coach in, perhaps the intensity and frequency of training, can influence success at the big game.

It is therefore, not unworldly to say that expectations are often associated with positive outcomes, success and excellence. However, outcomes such as these are treated as limited resource. One where competition is central, one where only the fittest will reign supreme and one where survival within society is key this way. There is general acceptance within society that not everybody can excel yet still, these expectations are apparent. Not everybody can become an athlete, just as not everybody can be tall - otherwise, there would be no distinction of being so. Indeed, if to excel means to ‘stand out’ from the crowd, then by definition, only some can excel.

So it seems that the god of expectation should be our ally as it provides countless benefits of fame, success and most of all, the respect of others - but only after achieving what a small proportion of our society is able to. Talk about unrealistic standards!

Often, expectations and reality are ridiculed for the sake of comedy - but, what they truly showcase is that expectations are warped ideas of a reality. After all, they are abstract, vague concepts that we choose to put faith in. No? Too rich and embarrassing an image? Would you prefer me to define expectation by what it does, rather than by what it is?

However, often many cross the line between living up to expectations and a loss of oneself.

Let’s try another way. Consider this - with a sense of prosperity gained, is a true sense of happiness achieved? You may (and probably have) followed expectations all your life and achieved what the world approves of - climbing the corporate ladder, going to university and getting a degree, not wearing that mini skirt you’ve always wanted to wear, starving yourself to become the ‘perfect’ body shape perceived in the media, giving the press what they want to hear and not what you want to say - roll up, roll up, witness the almighty power of the god of expectation.

So with these expectations come the pressures, the anxiety and ultimately, the fear of not being able to fulfil them. Sometimes, in an effort to impress those who have burdened us, we often try to exceed their conjectures and do more than we are promised. We get tied up in knots about how best to rise up to the challenge set before us, that we often forget about what’s truly important - ourselves.

You see, when you spend most of your time running around obsessed with the idea of being loved and approved by others, wearing all kinds of masks and costumes based on the role you are expected to be playing, not only should you be recognised as an accredited actor...but you begin to lose yourself. You get lost in the crowd, becoming one of the millions, if not billions, of people who have no idea who they are and what they stand for - just a side effect to the addictive drug of expectation.

In the end, who are we to blame? The baby boomers for enforcing their teachings? God himself, for crafting judgement into the essence of human nature? No. We are only to blame ourselves.

After all, we all know that kid who would always sit at the back of the class, doodling till no end. He did not care the slightest about the world around him, and frankly, nor the world to him after some time.

But now you do. Being disappointed, you admire him. I mean, what did you expect?

fantasticbeasts3:

--- Quote from: theofficialsabrina on October 06, 2017, 06:51:14 pm ---I was wondering if you could read my Creative piece and give me some pointers on how to improve it as well as whether it is adaptable to a any HSC stimulus. Thank you!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SpoilerWhat would you do if you had a blank slate, a fresh start, and no-one expecting anything in particular of you? If you knew your friends, family and those who you admire were guaranteed to be impressed and encouraging?

First off, it sounds like there’s a catch...and of course there is, what did you expect? And secondly, are you disappointed?

But fret not! The domineering influence of expectation has always been widespread. Our actions are often swayed by what others think we should and should not do. Expectations will continue to be - because, by human nature, we all naturally and instinctively carry judgement and hence, live in a complex society in which WE are being constantly judged by others. When we reach expectations already set out for us, we are rewarded and when we do not, we are punished - we may not know it, but others sure are thinking it.

Expectation initially presents itself as an external force that drives meaning, order and prosperity - especially for those who favour the thoughts of others, which would rightfully include you, dear reader, otherwise, what would be the mystery that lies behind your ever-presence?

Hardly groundbreaking for you, but expectation is a demanding god. Speak ill of the god of expectation and others will speak ill of you. This is often best justified in many studies that there is a strong correlation with the development of self-efficacy and the attitudes and beliefs of others. In schools, excellence in achievement tends to be influenced by high parental and cultural expectations. At the workplace, performance is influenced by the presence of a manager. In sporting teams, the expectations of a coach in, perhaps the intensity and frequency of training, can influence success at the big game.

It is therefore, not unworldly to say that expectations are often associated with positive outcomes, success and excellence. However, outcomes such as these are treated as limited resource. One where competition is central, one where only the fittest will reign supreme and one where survival within society is key this way. There is general acceptance within society that not everybody can excel yet still, these expectations are apparent. Not everybody can become an athlete, just as not everybody can be tall - otherwise, there would be no distinction of being so. Indeed, if to excel means to ‘stand out’ from the crowd, then by definition, only some can excel.

So it seems that the god of expectation should be our ally as it provides countless benefits of fame, success and most of all, the respect of others - but only after achieving what a small proportion of our society is able to. Talk about unrealistic standards!

Often, expectations and reality are ridiculed for the sake of comedy - but, what they truly showcase is that expectations are warped ideas of a reality. After all, they are abstract, vague concepts that we choose to put faith in. No? Too rich and embarrassing an image? Would you prefer me to define expectation by what it does, rather than by what it is?

However, often many cross the line between living up to expectations and a loss of oneself.

Let’s try another way. Consider this - with a sense of prosperity gained, is a true sense of happiness achieved? You may (and probably have) followed expectations all your life and achieved what the world approves of - climbing the corporate ladder, going to university and getting a degree, not wearing that mini skirt you’ve always wanted to wear, starving yourself to become the ‘perfect’ body shape perceived in the media, giving the press what they want to hear and not what you want to say - roll up, roll up, witness the almighty power of the god of expectation.

So with these expectations come the pressures, the anxiety and ultimately, the fear of not being able to fulfil them. Sometimes, in an effort to impress those who have burdened us, we often try to exceed their conjectures and do more than we are promised. We get tied up in knots about how best to rise up to the challenge set before us, that we often forget about what’s truly important - ourselves.

You see, when you spend most of your time running around obsessed with the idea of being loved and approved by others, wearing all kinds of masks and costumes based on the role you are expected to be playing, not only should you be recognised as an accredited actor...but you begin to lose yourself. You get lost in the crowd, becoming one of the millions, if not billions, of people who have no idea who they are and what they stand for - just a side effect to the addictive drug of expectation.

In the end, who are we to blame? The baby boomers for enforcing their teachings? God himself, for crafting judgement into the essence of human nature? No. We are only to blame ourselves.

After all, we all know that kid who would always sit at the back of the class, doodling till no end. He did not care the slightest about the world around him, and frankly, nor the world to him after some time.

But now you do. Being disappointed, you admire him. I mean, what did you expect?


--- End quote ---

hi, welcome to the forums! sorry to burst your bubble but you need 50 posts to get an essay or creative marked! sounds like a lot, but if you stick around here for a bit, you'll find your posts accumulate quickly. best of luck with your hsc! :-)

justwannawish:

--- Quote from: elysepopplewell on October 02, 2017, 04:01:49 pm ---Hey there!! Happy to sit down and read this :)

Spoiler
Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to be you, the hero of the Manhattan Project, the star on their spangled banner. Absorbed in your scattered sketches and sheets of calculations, you’re consumed by your attempts to defeat the enemy, to build a weapon deadlier than the atomic bomb. And what better way than destroying commies, hey?


Sometimes I think of you and wonder what it’s like to be a murderer.


Once upon a time, not so long ago, a desperate nation dropped two bombs on another. We all know how this story ends.


Cracking your neck, you recalculate the ionisation power required to ignite the fusion fuel, carefully plotting deaths like the madman we all know you are. I’ve seen a lot of them in my time, but you, rational, intelligent you, sipping your Tang frightened or frightens* me more than a psychopath.

 (It was war, they excuse it as a one-off. It’s humanity, I reply. You can’t trust them)

Extension: I hope you make a mistake and give up. I hope that you change your mind and give up. I hope the world ends before you end it's because you don’t want to be death, the destroyer of the world. Trust me. I pray and pray, but God doesn’t exist much nowadays. People have better reasons to die than religion.

Whistling Ain’t I Right, you scribble the last lines and let your shaking hands drop the pen. The numbers don’t make sense to me, but I can tell by your wide-eyed grin that you did it.

Congratulations. You’ve just made a hydrogen bomb, one more powerful than the atomic bomb, one without fissione that’s just going to make more work for me. I’ve already overworked and understaffed.

(One death, two deaths, what more is another million? Tell me, have you ever seen a corpse?)

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I can’t! You’re going to end the world and I’m the only one who cares.

And they say Death is heartless. I'll add at this point that I've read everything out loud so far to make sure that your grammar is stopping and starting the story in the flow that you want. So far, VERY good!

***
As you cradle the papers to your chest, your smile slowly combusts into a cheer. Months of testing. Mocking smiles from the other scientists. Failure after failure. It all paid off! You have to tell Eva.

Throwing open the door, you skid to a halt behind her silhouette, illuminated by a candle stub. Eva’s reading glasses slip from her exasperated sigh, as she reads the papers. You pity her- small print is the bane of your life as well.

You scan the article she’s reading, grinning at the photo of the mushroom cloud. You’ll make that look like a peace pipe. “Darling, I didn’t know…” you read, you like to do things besides your hair. “You like politics.” This sentence here, I just don't think I'm reading it the way you intended. It's almost like that middle bit there, the part outside of the quotation marks, is part of the quote? and I'm not sure if it's being read from the paper of it these are the words the person is saying? I think the thing that makes me think it's on the paper is, "you read," but then the "you like politics" is mixing the voice of the person and the narration and it's just not quite clear for me.

Eva starts, covering the paper with her body.  Extension: After kind John Smith next door got taken away by the Committee, you’ve both been more jumpy, more frown lines decorating your foreheads. But you have nothing to fear, making bombs is not un-American at all. *shudders* YES. THIS.

Taking her hand, you laugh “We can have conversations again.”

She loosens her shoulders, smile flickering like a candle in the wind. It’s nothing like the steady glow of the girl you married and you wonder where she went. “I don’t think we share the same views.”

You kneel in front of her, “Try me, Eva.” You miss her wince- you’ve been forgetting since your new job that she’s your ‘Evie’. You’ve been ignoring a lot about her- her new bouffant, her pretty dress, her calls for dinner.

And maybe thinking about all of this, she spits out, “I think the Americans are murderers for the Japanese bombings.”

Murderer- you a murderer? She’s gone mad. This italicised bit can be stronger, I think. I'm not sure about the exact way you're intending for me to read this.

Extension: Eva continues, her words more blazing than the flames. “I don’t think communists are bad. For god’s sake, I’m a communist! I don’t want to end American society. I think the only bad people out there are our government.”

“Those murderers went to Hiroshima under the guise of freeing Western democracy. Was our democracy worth the deaths of innocent kids? What did they ever do to us? What did the civilians do?” Eva’s eyes flash and her bitter curses start echoing in your mind.  Murderer.

“And you know what’s really tragic? They’re planning another set of bombings. Bigger and better! Do they know what they’re doing?” Extinguished, she stops, bringing her hand to her mouth. “I think a lot of terrible things.”

“They didn’t kill anyone directly,” you whisper, fixating your eyes on her wedding ring.  What if she knew that your high-earning fancy job in the city, the one that paid for her pretty dresses and ring, was earned by the blood of innocents?

Eva scoffs, and you wonder when the sweet housewife you married left. Did she ever exist? I love this bit. I like that it's not WHERE is she, but just recognises she has left by wondering WHEN - it shows a preoccupation of the husband for a long time.

“The bombs didn’t magically transport themselves. People dropped it. People created it. Nothing is made evil. People- I don’t know if you can call those scum humans really-make things evil.”

She quietens, quivering in the vulnerable way fire does when it’s burnt out.  “Are you going to call the Committee on me?” You shake your head, knees giving out, and collapse into the seat next to her. She flinches, perhaps disgusted by the blood surrounding you. “I’ll bring your dinner.”

Staring in silence at the food, you tremblingly hold your gravy filled spoon above the peas.
Over Japan, an aircraft had held the bombs above the people.
Somewhere, someday, someone’s going to do the same with your hydrogen bomb. OMLLLL YESSS. Love this imagery - so domestic, yet so global.

You drop it. They drop the bomb. They’re going to drop the bomb.
The peas are covered. The people are buried. They’re going to die.
By your hands. By your hands. By your hands.

Is that tomato or blood on your hands? Just a small thing which I'll leave up to you, I'd put a comma after "blood" so the "on your hands" rings with greater salience to tie into the repetition of "by your hands" above.

***
At night, you glower at the ceiling, uncomfortable in your soft bed. Thoughts of the bomb, your bomb, run through your nightmares. You don’t know what it felt like, of course, you’re not dead. But it comes alive whenever you close your eyes. Hot and blinding, red as blood. Black and cold, a silent killer. Explosive. Screams. Corpses. Dead by your hands.
 
Is this what it feels to be a murderer?

No. NO! You scream into your duvet and struggle to free yourself from the blankets, nearly tripping over the bedside table.
 
Eva furrows her brows, “What’s wrong?” Killer.
 
You bite your lip, “Just have to do something.” Slaughterer.

Walking into your study, you run a hand through your hair and find the blueprints again, examining it under the candlelight. Hours and hours of dedication, you’ve spent so long on it. It’s such a pity. You clutch the sheets, the words wrapping themselves around your fingers, tethering you. Murderer.

The flames burn and you wonder if all those people you killed burned as well. Closing your eyes, you let the candle digest your recipe for death and watch the ashes fall for the last time.


***

On the other side of the world, I let out a sob as the familiar twinges of pain, the suffering of souls you were going to create, finally leave. The girl I was waiting for straightens her crying mother’s kimono and kisses her goodbye, attempting to memorise every touch, every glance. As she takes my hand, I thank you for not making more people die like she did.


Extension: (Once the country asked you to do something and you did the right thing brilliantly. Thank you for not letting it break you.)

Sometimes, I think of you and wonder what’s it like to be a hero.

Wonderful. Brilliant. Incredible.

How do I articulate how much I enjoy this piece? It's clean AF. I read it verbally to make sure it lulled and sung the way it should, and it did. The wording is JUST enough every time - crisp, and clean, and never too much. You've thought so carefully about the techniques, I can see it especially in the gravy/bomb scenario. Who would've thought??

In terms of plot, I love love love the ending. The two people, so significantly connected, but never meet. The only thing that I think we could probably do away with in order to give the reader a little more work to do, a little more respect for their ability to put the pieces together, is the holiday thing.

You go back to bed and kiss your wife for the first time in months. “You looked beautiful today, Evie.” She gapes at you, because you finally remembered. Wrapping an arm around her, you smile, “Let’s go on a holiday.”

Evie laughs but her eyes sparkle in agreement.
 
Tomorrow you’ll tell your employers it’s impossible and ignore your colleagues’ taunts at the fact the wonder-boy couldn’t do it. You’ll finally use up that vacation on your paycheck and take Evie away for a weekend.
 
A break will do you both good.

This here, could in fact just be, "You went to sleep that night in debt to Evie. You nodded off thinking about the taunts of your employers when you tell them it's impossible, and yes, even the wonder-boy himself couldn't do it. So nobody could."

Sometttthing like this, brings all of the above into just two sentences and it leaves stuff to the imagination. So because we look at Evie with debt and gratitude, the reader can assume that Evie has swayed his opinion. This is then confirmed in a very short manner in the next sentence, rather than leaving the "oh my god he changed his mind" experience of the reader as an experience of a few sentences, distracted by a holiday. I think it's more cutting this way. Then, moving on to the person in Japan - BRILLIANT. The You + I of the story is wonderful. A very clever technique. The discovery is strong, and it works on multiple layers at multiple points.

In terms of Extension - you've also ticked all the boxes. Ways of thinking, yes. The religion at the beginning is subtle but strong, the war, the gender roles, the science, the world order - it all works together so seamlessly. Are you extending on this version for extension or just presenting it like this?

For discovery - this is strong, cutting, very clean, and I would surely give this a band 6, hinging on the fact that it is developed to the stimulus of course!


--- End quote ---

It's me again! Sorry, but I was wondering if you could work out a few issues I have with adapting the piece? I've tried fitting it to each of the syllabus dot points and this is what I've come up with:



First time discovery: finding the bomb, changing his perception
Rediscovering something lost, concealed or forgotten: not really sure if it counts, but indirectly, a reconnection with his wife?
Sudden or unexpected: didn't expect Evie to come up with such a confronting argument that shook the foundations of his assumptions
Deliberate planning: the bomb was one created out of his personal wonder and necessity from the government
Emotional, spiritual: his realisation of the damage the bomb caused
Creative and intellectual: not sure about these ones either
Confronting and provocative: hope that's apparent ;)
New understandings and renewed perceptions of ourselves and others: not sure of this is communicated very well either
Personal, cultural, historical, social contexts: historical and social, I would say yes? Not sure about personal and cultural
Far reaching and transformative for the individual and broader society: the ending scene with the Japanese girl, and I think it was implicitly threaded throughout the piece
Ramifications: was the discovery and his own feelings about it enough to suit this dotpoint
Different perspectives/worth can be reassessed over time: Evie vs Protagonist at the start, protagonist throughout the piece
Challenge/affirm widely held assumptions and beliefs about aspects of human experience and the world: I feel like I'm being biased towards this but I find myself agreeing haha
New discoveries about: place-not at all, people-vaguely yes, relationships- wife and husband??, societies-American society in the 1950s was a bad place for one's conscience, events-not sure about this either
Generate new ideas: morals vs societal aims,

Do you think that these themes fit the story? Or alternatively, have any idea how to change the story to fit to another stimulus? Thank you so much!

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