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English Creative Piece

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studybuddy7777:
That is no problems jelin_queen
(PS You have enough posts to get an essay marked :))

elysepopplewell:

--- Quote from: jelin_queen on August 06, 2016, 06:06:01 pm ---elysepopplewell I have reached 15 posts :)

--- End quote ---

Super happy to give you proper feedback! Just let Jamon or I know if you'd prefer your essay marked first or the creative. If one is more pressing, choose that one :)

jelin_queen:
Hi elysepopplewell
I would like my creative to be marked first thank you  :D

elysepopplewell:

--- Quote from: jelin_queen on August 05, 2016, 08:32:00 pm ---Hey guys!, I have a prepared creative piece already for my upcoming exams but my teacher hinted the creative writing stimulus will be about a place and mines about a personal experience! I reaaaaaally need someone's help to give me ideas on how to change mine so I will be able to link the stimulus into it thanks heaps in advanced!  :D :)

--- End quote ---

Great! I'll take a look at this one now :)

The comments are in the spoiler in bold font :)
SpoilerFear sits heavy in your gut like an anchor pinning you down to? a sinking? vessel. Your mind tries to ignore this feeling, but your stomach refuses to settle. Suddenly, you are disturbed by violent screams coming from your much-loved mother. Consider using "mum" instead of mother. Mother is rigid, quite sophisticated, borderline pompous. If you want to create a more fun and casual (relatable) relationship between mum and the reader, then mum is a better option than mother. If you want to keep that distance, then by all means stay with mother.Fear renders you rigid.The door of your room bursts open and before you know it you have been picked up by strange men in uniform and are being aggressively dragged out of your house and thrown into a corroded truck with several other terrified teenagers. You roar out to your mother until your voice is hoarse. I really love your use of "roar" here - super powerful :)She is weeping on the floor, her head buried into the dirt. All you could do is watch; watch your life change irrevocably in the click of a rifle reload. Gone. Your family is now a memory. I think you should bring this down by dropping a line. Maybe put "gone" and "your family is just a memory" on two different lines, with considerable spacing between to emphasise the drama. Eg:

..your life change irrevocably in the click of a rifle reload.



Gone.
Your family is just a memory.


*story continues...

I think pairing the two sentences in the middle there works really well, but spacing between them could work too. It's just about playing with your form to enhance the suspense and emotion that the reader is experiencing. And trust me, right now I am really engaged!
Tears burn down your cheeks, streaking the dirt. You hear a boy across from you ask why we are captured. An official speaks for you. New line for new dialogue. “you are now one of us, fighting in war, and you will do as we say otherwise you will be killed”. You only heard stories of these events; little did you know you would experience this at such a young age. You are forced to accept your reality, death otherwise awaits. The truck stops and your heart sinks into your stomach and can’t believe your eyes. Thousands and thousands of adolescent children are being prepared to battle in war for a cause that is not known.  You are about to become a child soldier. Maybe we could break this up, again with the purpose of heightening the drama? Perhaps something like: "You are a child. Now you are too, a soldier." I think that this way you're giving the reader the respect to connect the two themselves, which I think has more of a meaning than just feeding it to them. Let the reader come to their own conclusion and it will be more impacting!
Lumps choke your throat the moment an intense grip embraces onto your arm. An officer injects a syringe into your bloodstream and through panicked breaths, you question while panicking what this was. and he He whispers “nothing to worry about, I have chosen you to be all mine”. Dialogue needs to be on a new line. Blankness descends, breathing quickens. I like that you don't identify the breathing here as being my breathing. It adds a more universal adrenaline to it! Feeling lightheaded, you collapse into the soldiers arms, carrying you into a confined, dark room. your Your mind is hazy and oblivious of what this man is about to do to your sacred, untouched temple. He enters, while forcefully digging himself into you, although you lay in complete paralysation. Your temple has been dramatically vandalized and deprived of purity and goodness which will never be able to repair itself from this horrid occurrence. Several hours have past and you gradually wake up to agonizing pain and maps of blood pattern the ground and your head a fog from the drugs. you then come to a realization that your transition has transpired. Get ready for duty, child soldier.  This section confused me because I thought temple was the head, then I started thinking that temple was a euphemism for a genitalia and I'm being assaulted...then I think it's the head again? The "enter" part really threw me here. Consider rephrasing this :)
Months have passed and the persistent consumption of illegal substances has you addicted and day by day desensitized to the severity of the civil war. You have fallen pregnant since the incident and have been robbed of your childhood. Ok now she's pregnant, I don't know if the temple is a temple on the head or if it is a euphemism? One of the officers forces you to trek an exceedingly arduous journey with desert like circumstances in exploration of nearby water springs. You were on the verge of death. Your mouth was so parched that you could barely swallow saliva. The harsh conditions are too extreme for you to continue and arrive back empty-handed, trembling with fear awaiting your punishment for not accomplishing your duty. You begin to suffer stomach pains and plead the father of your child to lead you to hospital. He intends on taking you to receive hospitalised treatment. Drop a line here for a change of scene.Upon arrival, you are requested by the nurse to lie down and as her complexion whitens with alarm you hear "your baby is dead". the nurse speaks in urgent tones to a cluster of doctors. Like synchronised swimmers they swivel their heads in unison to look at you. Lifted. Wheeled. Airborne. This short succession deserves its own line I think! Before next nightfall you've been de-tubed, cocooned in sheets and covertly transported to an airbase. 
Arriving in a new shiny land where you will encounter your unfamiliar family for the first time. The moment you paced into their home, you envision flashbacks of your biological parents before all these catastrophic events unfolded. Like a bungee rope, your heartbeat yo-yo's in your chest I think the heart itself yo-yoing is stronger than the heartbeat doing it!and it snaps when you realise you've farewelled your relatives. 
Your foster mother is in the pristine kitchen preparing food upon your arrival. Your heart skips a beat the moment she turns around. You stare in disbelief. You cannot comprehend with what your eyes are witnessing. “MUM!” you shriek out as you frantically sprint and firmly latch your arms around her as if informing her to never let go. Dialogue = new line.“Oh, my baby” she sobs gripping onto you so tightly. New line for new speaker. “How did you get here?”  You ask her, confused. New line for mum again.'I couldn't continue living life there with my only child missing with in the civil war making the living conditions appalling, I decided to begin a new chapter here'.  Oh mum, I believed I would never see you again, I'm so grateful we found each other. Me too my sweet daughter.
Rediscovering my family in this new land makes my soul soar. Hello Australia, goodbye child soldier.
I'm just going to comment on the story as a whole now, and point out which bits I enjoyed and which areas can be improved. I've gone over and edited a few grammatical things, as simple as adding in an extra word here or there so that it all makes more sense. Each time a new person speaks in dialogue, you need to start a new line (a grammatical thing, not something I've made up).

Your writing is really lovely in terms of expression and revealing the story. I was very engaged, the second person involvement was very effective and I was super engaged the entire time.

As I mentioned, the temple thing was confusing. In hindsight, I now think it is a euphemism, which is great. But it needs a bit more work to make that more clear, but at the same time, still strong in imagery (without being too full on). It also makes me wonder about this girl's experience in the resistance army. Was she just a sex slave? Or was she also on the front line? I'd like to know about this just so that I can empathise with the experience a bit more. I expected lots of guns and fighting, but there wasn't a lot of that. Which isn't at all unpleasant, I think the story took a much greater turn, but I'm still curious about her being assaulted because that was her place in the army, or if it was on top of daily fighting/training.

The only other thing that confused me was the description of the foster mum, and then suddenly the biological mum appears. I just didn't quite make that connection. I'm going to propose a few alternate endings for you, just for the purpose of enhancing the discovery a bit. Could you fast forward, and suddenly I'm a humanitarian aid worker? I'll discover ethnographically, politically, emotionally, physically, etc. And I'll be on the front line as a nurse, helping a young woman who has been impregnated by the LRA? Or, I could be brought to Australia, studying diplomacy, human rights, or social work - and then there are more discoveries there about breaking a cycle. The reason I'm suggesting these is because I'm so engaged the entire way through the story, and then the ending becomes convenient? As though a perfect circle is made that is almost too perfect for realism. I'm sure this kind of thing happens, I have no doubt. But I think a story that ends with the victim channelling her trauma into power offers more opportunities for discovery, and provides a tiny little extra segment that might be easily adapted to the syllabus. What do you think?

Overall, this is a really awesome piece. I think the "you" narration is extremely engaging and well thought out. I also think that, at the beginning especially, you rock the expression! I am truly transported, immediately. This story is great!

jelin_queen:
thank you so much for your help! Elysepopplewell

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