Creative Writing - The Journey

Here's an example piece of writing for Year 11 students. I used this to prepare students for a piece of creative writing entitled 'The Journey'. I have also used it for travel writing too.

Twisted lines of ice snake across the windscreen, covering all sight. I scrape the silver slivers off. The early darkness smothers everything in sight. On the edges of my vision, I see the vacant houses’ eyes closed with curtains. There’s some life behind the ornate flowery curtains. Probably, cartoons for children. Probably, breakfast news for adults. Any minute now life will burst through the doors. Except at this ungodly hour it is me, a plastic ice scraper and a bag of work.

The car starts quickly without coughing or spluttering. The heater kicks on and steams up the window. It is as if the car doesn’t want us to move. Ice and fire combat to prevent me from going to school. The screen clears in patches like clouds of clarity. There are glimpses of the world outside like sunlight breaking through the rainy clouds. The irony being that there is no sun and I am waiting for the darkness to be seen. When the steamed up window clears, I drive the car off.

Cars, bikes and lorries all join the conveyor belt to work. Each one driving on to their place of work. Office. Shop. School. Hospital. Radios blare out different tunes: the misery of life punctuated by catchy songs sung by people that were born out of misery. The conveyor belt pulls me forward. The lights of the massive machine of life flash red, amber and, only occasionally, green.  The sky starts to lighten as my mood improves. At least, I have a few frees today. At least, I don’t have a parents' evening tonight. At least, I don’t have to teach Tom today. Every cloud has a silver lining. 

The solid, loyal and easily forgotten adjective

The humble adjective is often neglected when we teach creative writing to students. Literary techniques always sound better, because they have a name. Why put an adjective in when you can use something with a cool name? How many times have I groaned inside when a student, when analysing a poem, jumps to a piece of alliteration and neglects the fifty or so effective adjectives around it? Adjectives get a tough deal. They are the basic components of writing, yet the figurative devices sound so much cooler, like their older brother who smokes and drinks, and even has a girlfriend.

I am teaching creative writing to Year 11 and travel writing to Year 9 and it is amazing how I have to battle against a sea of clichés when dealing with creative writing. Things are always trapped like animals in a cage or a person is as slow as a snail. I want to leave the classroom like a thunderbolt, leopard and rocket when I hear these. Sadly, the way students write at times is devoid of thinking time, planning or exploration.  Apparently, we have to get them ready to write under pressure. They have to do it in the exam, so they may as well get used to writing like Charles Dickens in 20 minutes. Sadly students rarely get to craft a piece of writing. That’s why I am such a fan of ‘Slow Writing’. It is no surprise that students rush to produce work; we have subconsciously told them you must produce the real deal quickly from the start. This is why students default to their bank of clichés. I need to describe a scary room: cobwebs, shadows and lots of creaking. I often think that their writing neglects the humble adjective. A simple, effective word that can add so much to a plain, boring and uninteresting line.

This is something I often use in lessons. I get students to fill the gaps.

The room was __________, ______________, and _____________. Shadows flickered across the _________ and ____________ walls. In the centre of the ­_________ room there was a ___________ , ___________ table. Amongst the _____ items on the table there was a ___________ , ___________ and ___________ knife.  

It is amazing what they come up with. Usually, I suggest that they make it creepy. Soon as you mention that, the word ‘creepy’ appears that or ‘eerie’ (always spelt incorrectly) several times, leading to a discussion. Does using the word ‘creepy’ make something creepy? Most of them are clichés or at least predictable. This does, however, produce a lot of alternatives. A teacher then can tease the layers of meaning between different words.

 The room was dark, musty and cold.

The room was still, motionless and blank.

The room was cold, silent and lifeless.

So many possibilities, but often students pick the most obvious one. Why not use the second one? Doesn’t it make a point?  It does something different with the writing at least. Students get hung up with the idea of adding techniques (if I hear AFOREST again, I will shove it up someone’s…nose) that their writing becomes a collection of techniques that lacks any cohesion or continuity. I would never be an examiner because I think I would scream with every paper as students cling to the idea that good writing only relies on a shove-lots-of-techniques-in formula.

Anyway, I then get students to fill the gaps to make the room positive. Surprisingly, this always produces better results, as students have rarely been asked to describe a warm, pleasant and welcoming room – the knife always gets them. This simple cloze exercise has always generated a good level of understanding of how adjectives affect a piece of writing.

The exercise also helps them to look at how to use adjectives in a sentence. We now have developed a little mantra. They recite the following back to me every lesson. I find it useful, along with the naming different of grammar structures, to help students understand the variety of using adjectives in a sentence. If they can spot a noun, then they know where to add an adjective or adjectives.

adjective noun

adjective, adjective noun

adjective , adjective and adjective noun

adjective, adjective, adjective noun

adjective and adjective noun

Just giving the above to some of my C grade students has transformed their writing. Things just click. I find it much better than looking at copious amounts of examples as students are given a way to add and adapt rather than copy.

We then also look at how adjectives can be used to slow the pace of writing. It isn’t just long sentences that slows readers down but lots of adjectives too. We explore how we might change the use of adjectives throughout the piece of writing. We discuss where there is a need to describe things and where there might not be a need to describe things in great detail. As teachers we often tell students they need to show rather than tell in their writing, but actually it is about a balance between the two and knowing when to describe and when not to describe something.

I am always cautious of bombarding students with vocabulary lists for descriptive writing because you end up getting flowery writing as they put in words with a lack of thought for the overall impact and effect of a text. It sounds good and clever so I will put it in my writing. Never: I want to make the opening positive so they will help see that it is a friendly environment. I’d rather make a connection between parts of their existing knowledge rather than cram their brains with new things. Unlock the synapses in the brain rather than add new knowledge to the detriment of the old knowledge.  The vocabulary our students have in the brain is hidden, yet we insist that they don’t have enough words. Maybe, they haven’t had a bridge built between an adjective they know and a noun they know. That’s why they never come up with a ‘friendly vase’ or an ‘unforgiving table’. They have never been given the connection . And, if we constantly bombard then with new words, we are missing hundreds if not thousands of meaningful combinations of words.  And, along the way they get to use personification and it wasn’t even explicitly taught to them.  

Adjective                                                                                             Noun

sturdy                                                                                                   table

shining                                                                                                  window pane

delicate                                                                                                flower

deep                                                                                                     hole

What happens if we explore how adjectives can be mixed up?

The shining flower stood on the delicate table before the deep window, which was like a sturdy hole.

Yes, it isn’t brilliant, but it is effective. Do students normally associate flowers with shining? Do students normally describe windows as deep? They do, however, add texture and a new level of meaning. If more of my students wrote like this, I’d be really happy.

Right, before people start thinking of adjectives to describe this blog, I’ll end on this note:  I think if we spent double the time on the basics of verbs, adjectives and other things, than we do on the ‘whizzy things’ then our students will have good foundations to do some of the clever things naturally.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

P.S. I wrote about adverbs last year. If you would like to read that, it is here.

Creative Writing - a story inspired by Wilfred Owen's Futility

I didn't intend to blog this, but then I changed my mind as I was writing this. This isn't because I think it is amazing, but I thought people might find it useful when teaching the creative writing element of GCSE English. I am at that joyous stage of planning for a controlled conditions assessment.

I am going to use it to explore other perspectives which could be developed in their writing. Furthermore, I am going to use it to think about how to structure a story and how to build connections between sections and paragraphs. Hopefully, this will have 'legs' in the classroom and help some students to see what they can do with the story. The exam board pass on lots of examples, but, truthfully, I am never inspired by them. Hopefully, this will inspire some of my students to be a bit more creative than describing the act of killing someone.  

Futility

 

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

 

 

Move him into the sun…

 

The clouds snuggle against the sun causing splinters of sunlight across the fields of mud. Pools of brown water spread chaotically across the battlefield like the debris of a large weapon. Silence. No sound can be heard. Not a bird. Not a human cry. Not a gun. Not a bomb. Not a sign of life. Not a sign of help or rescue. Amongst all this he waits. Waiting for something or anything that would make this moment change. The clouds move and paint a speckled pattern across the field. Corporal Tom Griffin lies next to a man. A man silent like the world around him, but warm with life. A life that once worked hard in the fields of England. A man who worked so hard to make something of his life. His hands created so much. Tom holds the man’s hand, searching for a pulse.

It is perfect weather for drying clothes. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky. Perfect for drying the few clothes I have. That will change, won’t it, when he comes home? On the top of the hill I feel the most isolated I have ever felt. In a way, it is refreshing, it is almost how God might see things: tiny, small and insignificant. The wind breathes through my hair and the sun licks at may face. I close my eyes and enjoy.

I stop. The guilt.

I shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts; I should be thinking of others. Not myself and how secure, safe and warm I feel.

 

A shaft of sunlight falls on the man. It reveals a mud encrusted face. A face that is tired, worn and hungry. The face is a shadow of its former self. There is a twitch. Corporal Griffin sees this spark of life and shakes the body hard. Silently and unsurprisingly, the face is motionless like a statue of marble. Smooth, cold, yet perfect. If there was a moment to capture a man’s life, it was now. He looks strong, solid and indestructible. The battlefield to get here is full of weak bags of bones of soldiers that once could be described as a person. They look more fragile now than they ever were in life. It is as if at the moment of death they were dropped from a large building. Everything holding them together has snapped. Like the puppet master has cut all the strings. Yet the man next to the corporal looks the opposite. There are still strings holding him up. His limbs resemble a man alive.

 

I pause between the hanging of each sheet on the line Its brilliant whiteness contrasts with the thoughts in my head. Red. Burgundy. Dark shades of red. Keep looking at the sheet, I tell myself. That crisp and damp sheet will wipe away the thoughts. The snippets I have heard. The things he has told me. The things he will not tell me. Men dying, on their own, with friends, with strangers, in groups and in their hundreds. White blanks the thoughts out.  

 

A hole.
“Come on man. Stay with me,” Tom croaks. His voice has lost its power due to the endless shouting.
A hole that has flowered on his chest. Petals of flesh circle a dark hole of blackness.
“You idiot. What happened to the bet? The one about getting shot. The first one shot or injured buys the drinks for a whole night.”
 The blackness of the centre slowly spreads down across the leaves of the man’s clothes. It is the valuable nectar that keeps life going on.
“One more week. We only had one more week of this crap and we’d be home. Me: Brighton. You: Yorkshire.”
The blackish red liquid moves slowly down. It searches for a home, realising that its current home is not suitable.
“Look – just stay with me a few more minutes. There will be a paramedic here in a minute. Come you on sod. Don’t you dare leave me in this Hell!”
The liquid pools itself on to the ground, searching for cracks. Maybe it thinks it can plant a new life.

What’s she doing there? Not often my mother makes the journey out of town. Perhaps, she needs eggs. I bet she is making one of her special cakes. Maybe, I should be baking one. Instead I am washing sheets and making the home ready, making it fresh and clean.

I walk down to her. Her face looks odd. No longer a welcoming smile. The closer I get, the more I fear, the more I hold my breath. Her face is without emotion; it’s a statue. I drop the basket and collapse on my knees.

The clouds have dispersed. The sun now blankets the field with warm heat. The man is cold. He is no longer a man; he is a body. Empty of heat. Empty of life. The body soaks up the sun’s heat to no effect. Like a stone, it absorbs but doesn’t change. Tom doesn’t cry; he can’t. he has seen too much of this to cry. He feels a different emotion. Emptiness. Emotionally cold.

Tom says: ‘Goodbye, Sam.’

My mother hugs me like a child again, squeezing the emotion from me. She squeezes the maturity and years out of me to. She makes feel like a child. She will fix things. I feel warm and I am getting warmer.

The cold starts to bite Tom. Still nothing. Nobody to save him. A shot echoes across the field of muddy pools. Tom collapses.  

 

Nobody will save him.

Below is a little bit of a discussion I am intending to share with students. My very own interview. Very hard-hitting.
 

Questions with the writer

 Why two different perspectives?

I wanted to show two clear sides to a conflict: the solider and their family or relatives. I have always loved this poem and I liked the idea of the ‘whispering’ fields of home, so I used that to create the backstory of the loved one. She waits as he fights. I also wanted to have two contrasting voices. One devoid of emotion and one reflective. I think writing about the shock of war is too obvious for this kind of writing. It would be too easy to describe a horrible event or an act of violence so that’s why I took the story after the events, like the poem. It isn’t the act of violence that is awful; it is the reactions to it. How does a fellow soldier react? How does a wife react? How does a mother-in-law react?

Also, I wanted the dying to be incredibly descriptive and atmospheric and I felt if I told it from one person’s point of view I’d be too bogged down with emotions and thoughts the character was experiencing.

Why kill Tom at the end of the story?

 

It was a tough thing to do, as originally I played around with the idea of Tom arriving at the farm to inform the wife of Sam’s death. But, I decided Tom had to die. I think it is sad that Tom will have nobody to care for him when he dies. He cared for Tom and yet when he dies, there is no one to hold him. No one to keep him warm.  

What inspiration did you get from the poem?

The weather was an important part of the poem for me. It is the one constant in our lives. We live and we die, but the sun keeps rising every day. I wanted to show this constant part of our lives by referencing the sun throughout.

I also liked how the poem is constantly about two things. Two soldiers. Two stanzas. Death and life. Optimism and pessimism. Therefore, I wanted the structure of the story to be about two things. So, throughout the story, it is often featuring two things.

Furthermore, I wanted to carry on the imagery of plant life and things growing. As was Sam a farmer, he was also a part of nature. As he dies, his body reacts like a plant.  Like the religious imagery in the poem, the hope of bringing life to something cold.


Why did you limit the use of names?

I wanted this to be more about the person than their identity. This isn't about one person. It is about a lot of people, so I left the finer details about the names ambiguous. We only find the soldier's name at the end. And, to be honest, it isn't that important. Likewise, I didn't include a name for the wife or the mother-in-law as there are so many of these kind of people. Naming the characters made me think that this just happened to one particular person, when, in fact, it happened to a lot of people.


Thanks

Xris