Here is some feedback for you (post requirement is 30 now so definitely eligible
Spoiler
Winding roads, coconut husks and the fury of dusty avenues, this is exploited beauty. The see-sawing hills of greenery silhouette the horizon, and they will be hardened once more in the name of a tea-garden, as the village men and women hoe the ground resolutely. Their carob-coloured skin darkens in the sunlight, as they breathe in the clouds that they are surrounded in and I am envious, for where I stand, the air is thick and grey and refuses to go down with the sun. Really nice opening paragraph, sets the scene and the mood nicely. That last sentence, the "and I am envious" joiner, that feels a tad strange. If it was a deliberate rhythmic thing fair enough but it does break the natural flow of things.
Jamie taps me on the shoulder, stirring me from my musings.
“That one, over there - the one wearing that god-awful orange dress? Let’s just grab her and get this over with!” Nice dialogue, realistic. Good stuff!
I follow Jamie’s stocky index finger up the green hills, and my eyes rest upon a small woman, who wears an apricot coloured osariya, her hair in a long, pendulous plait. She squats aside a shrub, plucking leaves, placing them inside her woven basket and moving to the next in a sure, but slow movement. I can already tell from her timid demeanour and gentle movements that she will give us exactly what we want, from the way her head bows as our eyes meet, respectfully, an underwater spirit trapped in a bold sky. She will tell Jamie what he wants to hear.
“Okay. Set up over on the pathway, I’ll bring her round.”
And with that, I make my way through ivory limbs and rustling leaves that brush against my ankles, prickly, and the fragrance of the loam is heavy and woody, the soil is damp beneath my boots. My soles are wearing thin – I have walked this path so many times- but I cannot tire of this place, this forest. I may live in a tower of concrete but my heart will always be here. Here, in the Pearl they once called it, then Ceylon as I grew up, now Sri Lanka. I wonder what name it shall be given next. I like that you are revealing plot/setting details naturally, doesn't feel forced at all and I'm getting just enough to maintain intrigue and want to keep reading.
“Hello?” I call out, towards the woman. I feel like this could be more dramatic - Maybe put hello on its own line, without explaining that you called it out? The audience can do some work themselves to assist in establishing tension and drama.
She is sharp, and turns her head towards me, curious. “Yes?”
I am taken aback by her eyes, hickory like the earths soil, a rim of thick lashes bordering her doe eyes that remind me of my Mamu, my grandmothers’, kiri toffees. Are we close to the woman at this stage? Or still far away - How are we seeing her eyes at this distance? Just a little nitpick.
“My name is Allison. I’m head of Marketing at Taylors of Harrogate Tea, the representative from Australia. I’d like to ask you a few questions about working here, if you don’t mind.” Feels just a tiny bit forced. Perhaps just say the first line, then have a bit about how the woman reacts to that line. Having this all spurted in one go feels a little manufactured.
She raises a thin eyebrow, dubious. “How long will this take? And what exactly are you asking me?” She reaches down to her basket, and covers the tea leaves with a blanket to stop them from dispersing in the wind. Ditto here, dialogue feels a little unnatural here.
“No longer than twenty minutes, and just some questions about working conditions, wage, hours, that sort of thing.” I search for any inclination in her face, and add “it’s totally anonymous as well.”
She considers my words. “I’m sorry, I must leave at 6pm. My children need me.”
The words leave my lips before I can fully think about them. “We can do the interview at your house,” I blurt. “So that you can be with your kids as well?”
She looks me up and down as she mulls over the genuinity of my proposition, and I can see her lips purse, hesitant.
“Fine. On one condition.”
“And that is?
“I must make you all a cup of tea.” She laughs.
*****
It’s like stepping back in time.
The viridescent banana leaves convulse in the breeze, filtering through rays of sunlight that illuminate the clay path I walk upon. A stone well stands on my left, surrounded by axlewood shrub and a modest kitchen adjacent. The house itself, made of veining plasterboards, stands proudly despite crumbling bit-by-bit by the equatorial sun, and I am reminded of my Mamu, who withstood the silvering of her hair and the demise of her kidneys all the same, in a house just like this one. More great descriptive language - Try incorporating other forms of imagery. Lots of visual and a bit of tactile, what about aural? Olfactory?
“Please, come in.”
Jamie and I enter her home, taking our shoes off as a sign of respect. I place mine alongside pairs upon pairs of worn-out shoes, different sizes and frayed. I catch my reflection in my Oscar Tiyes, wondering if they’d be on my feet had my mother not left here all those years ago.
The woman comes in, holding a tray of short-eats and two cups of tea. I thank her, and take one warm, glazed cup, and a fish-bun. Jamie takes his, and jokes, “this is Taylor’s of Harrogate tea, of course?” laughingly.
Her eyes uneasily flicker between our gazes, blushing invisibly beneath her chocolate skin. “It’s um, it’s not.” Her cheeks tighten in discomfort. “980 rupees, it’s just so hard for us to muster that amount of money, especially when there’s this for less. It’s been difficult for us lately. I apologize about that,” she mutters. Nice little bit of character development here. Really like this.
***
I am eight, and Mamu is recounting as she brushes my hair slowly. She has made an air conditioner out of a glass of water and the ceiling fan. She can create a plate out of duct tape. She once, before me, made a house out of a car. Tinkered an apartment out of a garage. Found a shelter that would take five kids, three girls, two boys, one bed, 3 years, 5 houses, one mother, four jobs, six mouths, one income. Home, no house. Parent, no father. Just need, need, need, no want. I really think this flashback should be longer. I love the adjustment of language, I reckon you could make the story even more powerful by having more of these flashbacks or making this one longer. Really establish the history and the background.
**
“I hope that’s okay,” she says apologetically.
I want to tell her that no, it’s not okay.
It is not okay that I sip luxuriously six thousand kilometers away from you while you, you who plucks for hours upon hours in the unforgiving daylight, have never even owned a box of your labor.
It is not right that your house slowly granulates as the wind blows, while I, selfishly, chase after a beach-house with an ocean-front breeze.
It is not fair that my shined shoes clash so harshly against the dusty-red of your frayed slippers, as they sit atop your wooden shoe-rack. Powerful symbolism. Love.
But it still happens, and I know it all too well. Our profit margins come first and this woman, God I don’t even know her name, comes second, her soul worth no more than fifteen - twelve, haggled down to ten - no, eight dollars an hour, and no benefits. This mini-paragraph here I think is too obvious. We know this is the point and it feels this is coming across a tad too clearly. But really I just love the symbol just above - I reckon it should finish there and go straight to this last line...
This is exploited beauty.
Really, really like this creative. You do really clever things with language here, lots of subtle but powerful symbolism and figurative language as dancing phalanges was getting at above. I agree that the step back in time feels a little bit cliche, but I think that's because it is short and thus feels forced. If you let that idea flow through the piece I think that would work well for you, letting the Discovery at the end come more naturally out of several flashbacks.
You could definitely tweak this to match different Discovery concepts too. There is cultural discovery here, discovery of place, discovery of self, discovery of heritage - Lots of things to delve into depending on the stimulus in the exam room. What I'm a little shaky on is how you relate to the stimulus at the top - To me that image is about breaking down a wall/confine and letting that achieve personal growth. I see that in this creative, but I think it could definitely be stronger -
Mechanically the piece is near flawless - I feel the exchange in the middle was a tad forced, the dialogue became a tad unbelievable/over-manufactured. I think it could work better cutting back on the dialogue in the middle there ever so slightly, or breaking into shorter chunks even. But, dialogue is just one of my pet peeves so probably not worth worrying about
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Topic: English Advanced - Creative! (Read 2591 times)