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English Advanced- Creative Writing

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angewina_naguen:
This is my creative writing piece I intend to use for the Area of Study. My teachers and tutor have gave it the all-good-to-go but I'd like one or two more opinions to fine tune it! I'd love any feedback or suggestions for where to take it!

Angelina  :)

Opengangs:
Hey,
Had a gander at the piece, and I think it's moulding into something that can work very well in the HSC. One thing I picked up, though, is that the atmosphere you're trying to create isn't as clear as it could be -- this can be fixed the more you play with the other senses. Show us what she's feeling, don't just say it. A prime example is: A motor car trailed lazily behind and she arrived at the cigarette smoked district. It doesn't leave anything to our imagination, which is one of the most powerful tools we have.

Make us feel like we're Elle because right now, I'm not really feeling it, if you catch my drift.
Also, I noted the creative piece is 1196 words long; do you think you'll be able to write that much in 30-40 minutes? Be careful with time constraints, cut back on some things you find unnecessary. Make sure every sentence either: drives the plot forward, or becomes important to the story later down the track. If it doesn't do anything, leave it out.

I'll have another read sometime tomorrow, and I'll give a more detailed feedback then.

angewina_naguen:

--- Quote from: Opengangs on February 02, 2018, 10:26:16 pm ---Hey,
Had a gander at the piece, and I think it's moulding into something that can work very well in the HSC. One thing I picked up, though, is that the atmosphere you're trying to create isn't as clear as it could be -- this can be fixed the more you play with the other senses. Show us what she's feeling, don't just say it. A prime example is: A motor car trailed lazily behind and she arrived at the cigarette smoked district. It doesn't leave anything to our imagination, which is one of the most powerful tools we have.

Make us feel like we're Elle because right now, I'm not really feeling it, if you catch my drift.
Also, I noted the creative piece is 1196 words long; do you think you'll be able to write that much in 30-40 minutes? Be careful with time constraints, cut back on some things you find unnecessary. Make sure every sentence either: drives the plot forward, or becomes important to the story later down the track. If it doesn't do anything, leave it out.

I'll have another read sometime tomorrow, and I'll give a more detailed feedback then.

--- End quote ---

Thank you for responding so quickly!

I'm looking forward to seeing what suggestions you have to offer! In regards to the word count, I wrote 1200 words in my Preliminary AOS exam which I designated 40 minutes for so it's definitely doable! If I can memorise it and adapt it to past stimuli like I did for Journeys last year with practice papers, I can certainly do the same for Discovery. I'm not too concerned about that aspect and if there's things I need to expand on, I can just take out some adjectives to lessen the load  :)

Angelina  :D

Opengangs:
Hey, angewina_naguen!

The creative with comments can be found inside the spoiler tag!

Creative (marked)It was another evening in the neighbourhood but she insisted to be the Harlem dawn, always ahead of the time. Her steps had an air to them, lifting her up an invisible staircase that was parallel to the pavements stained with drying puddles. She swept past each pool with grace as the ripples undulated. Her heels broke the rhythm of the streets to race onwards and she was enraptured by her surroundings more tonight. It was a new sensation, of seeing these familiar buildings with a heightened vision. (I love the imagery you’re invoking here; there is definitely a sense of emotional discovery and a discovery of something for the first time)

Ladders were suspended mid-air, hidden behind Soda shop noticeboards. The awnings of the accompanying stores were splattered with cups, filled to the brim with steaming long blacks. Flashes of signs walked through her, as did the leather trench coats with pork pies, derbies and asymmetrical flat caps atop bald men. A light pole snuck a smile. (Nice control of sentence length. Effective.) She imagined arms sprouting out of its post to tip the canopy like a fedora as she curtsied. Its dust acted as vectors, drawing her to a freshly-painted bench in front of the local laundromat.

She took arpeggio strides around the block and was greeted by a line of uniform apartments. Each had arched windows aligned like desks in a classroom -- carved with silhouettes of cabaret amateurs, philosophical cats and pastel frocks concealed with aprons. The rows and columns moved as if they were frames of film in procession but she was unsure if they were animating themselves, or if they appeared to be as she passed them. She crossed towards the corner of Lenox Avenue, her pleated skirt following in an effortless twirl. A motor car trailed lazily behind and she arrived at the cigarette smoked district. (A bit more description could really heighten the atmosphere you’re trying to make)

She stood before the greetings of 142nd. The letters were all capitalised and distributed with space between the next, lit and boldly presenting themselves to passersby.

C O T T O N  C L U B . 

It was seemingly inviting to all but it was to none that mattered. It welcomed only the accepted audience, and a limited one at that.
-
When Elle had first visited, she was disillusioned by the irony of it all. (You could definitely show this more.) A club of black entertainers seemed to be fitting for the attempts of innovators to integrate the migrant artists into Harlem. It seemed to be fitting, for the New Negro Movement, as word had come around, had become evident in the way the city presented itself. (Think about the sentence structure here; it’s very fragmented and doesn’t follow a consistent train of thought. Consider clarifying what you mean here.) In rebirth, she expected a welcome.

She had quickly been disappointed. (Doesn’t really make sense?) Elle was prohibited from and dismissed by security because she was not a member of the “exclusive” and “distinguished” guests they had been given authorization to enter the club. She knew the code; that “exclusive” was connotative to “rich males” and “distinguished” translated to “white.” (I think you could definitely convey this more subtly; it makes the build up very lacklustre from the paragraph before.)

She was the stark contrast.

The entertainers were hardly even entertainers, Elle believed. The musicians had been reduced merely to entertainment- they were patronised like zoo animals being fed to perform tricks. The round of applause from the audience was obligatory. They were left amused, thinking “how exotic, those savages are.” She had not returned since its opening.

Yet, she was compelled to the sounds of the jazz. They called for her.
-
Quickly flicking her eyes across the streets to make sure she was not being watched, Elle turned back vis-a-vis to the window. What she was to see next was unprecedented. (I think the tension here could be a bit more seamless; this line feels a tad forced, and so the whole tension doesn’t live up as well as it could be).

Peering through a crevice in the curtains, Elle saw, and heard, the universe. Brass instruments were shrilling in distortion; the lead trumpeter rocked his head in time with the pressed valves. The mutes had muffled the sounds to mumbles and she found herself struggling to differentiate between the instruments as they were scatting away. The saxophonists enthusiastically glided in chromatics, their eyelids shut and coaxing them all into a trance. Further to the back, a double bass almost a head taller than its master was shimmying to a mellow riff, its body plucked and pulled but continued to swing. (Nice mixture between direct and indirect language.)

Finally, there he was at the grand- Duke Ellington. Oh, how handsome he was in the flesh.

He made ebony envious.

She had constructed apparitions of him from listening to the weekly broadcasts on the radio that now hardly did justice to the showman that was there in the centre of it all. His posture remained upright, quite unlike his hands that oscillated up and down. They were trembling with power and yet entirely pleased to be. The bass crept to the top of her shoulders and she shivered as the drone dropped down her spine.

Finally, Elle examined the jungle jamboree as an entity. (Just a personal thing: I don’t like “Finally” just because it breaks the atmosphere you’re trying to create; it’s essentially a filler when used ineffectively.) Every player was independently swaying, unhindered from individual expressions, but the palpitated rhythms somehow strung themselves together. The ever-present pulse was an adventure packaged into syncopated boxes.

All the men were opening them.

This was what made Ellington’s music as refreshing as any other. Elle was inexplicably drawn to its dichotomy: its bounce and its liveliness, overshadowing its underlying blues.

But blues was visceral. It was ruminative in essence, poignant in delivery and instinctive in the movement of the music. She believed that Negroes were all the embodiments of blues. Negroes reacted to upcoming disdain with equivalent depression in their songs. Blues was the reprise of an unfinished melody doomed to forever be sung as a broken mosaic but this may be what made it raw.

Elle had finally overcame (overcome) the self-imposed displacement between her and the musicians she failed to understand. It was not that she resented their successes because she knew that there was still long to go before they could truly be so. Instead, she had never, with her own eyes, immersed herself in their intricate, harmonic world and now that she had, she had nowhere else she would rather be. There was far more to the moaning of the jazz. It was sensual, invasive and yet comforting. Elle had seen how Ellington embraced it- blues had slowly, but fundamentally, brought humanity together, from segregated shades and tints to the monochromatic metaphysics of the musical man. (I love this imagery you’re creating.)

It occurred to Elle that there was darkness in all music but this was not a weakness. It was about harnessing it and manipulating it to be a strength. One day, the music of her people and theirs will merge and the most marvelous of a fusion will be born- a world where white and black keys on the pianoforte of the world will find a gray space area to dance. (omg, yess) This was what Elle needed to unravel- that someday, changes in thought were how greater changes would be made.

Smiling, Elle clapped as the men bowed, blowing kisses that penetrated the glass pane to the band. She replayed the scene and she was overridden by his husky warbles once more. Her world was far from wonderful- and she was sure his was even further- but this was the world. It was strophic. It repeated. It was constant and history swirled in concentric circles that never end, but never truly began at all.

This was the threshold. Delays and mindfulness encouraged anticipation- and she was anticipating illuminated colours.

For the moment, Elle was Harlem’s evening gem and she may have preferred it.Mark: 12/15
General feedback:
I think it's a very solid band 5, but it can definitely lift into the band 6 region. It's got potential.

I think the area you need to work on the most is your ability to control your language. You do it well in some areas, but then some other areas lack your flair of writing. I don't really have much to say because it's a well-knitted piece with multiple layers of discovery strewn about.

You also have the tendency to using just two senses, leading the audience to a rather fragmented view on the world Elle inhabits. I'm not given a strong character profile and who Elle really is, and because of this, I can't really relate to her or have sympathy for her. Definitely broaden the mood by playing around with the other senses and capture Elle's world stronger than you are doing at the moment.

What to do next:
I think the biggest killer for this piece is the use of a stimulus. Are you prepared to mould this to the stimulus given on the day? What if the stimulus was a quote that you need to incorporate? Are you prepared for the unexpected?

On top of this, just keep working on the realism of her world by appealing to the other senses (taste, smell, touch). Work on this piece every other day, and I think you could really have a 15/15 piece.

Overall, good job on the piece!

angewina_naguen:
Hey, Opengangs!

Thank you for the detailed feedback! It's given me lots of direction that I was looking for  ;D Where you identified areas of strength also helped me realise the standard I needed the rest of the piece to be so I know exactly what I need to do now to push it up to that band 6 range.

I'll start practising with past papers once I finalise my draft and hopefully I'll be prepared enough for any stimulus thrown my way when the HSC comes around  :D :D Once again, thank you for taking the time to mark and provide me feedback  ;D Have a nice day!

Angelina  ;D ;D

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