"Sophia, bed time" My Mum shouted to me from downstairs, "tomorrow is a big day, you need lots of sleep." Indeed tomorrow was a big day, it was my birthday tomorrow and I couldn't wait!
"Mum, do I have to go to bed now?" I moaned, slouching along out of my unusually tidy room and onto the landing to look at her."Yes you do, we still have lots of things to do and I need to get the party food ready for your party so of you trot" she said looking at me with a stern face.
"all right, I'll try to go to sleep but it's not my fault if I don't get any sleep."
I went downstairs and said good night to my parents and my dogs, Snoopy and Ella. As I walked upstairs my annoying 6 year-old brother sneaked up behind me and jumped on my back! "oi!! What on earth did you do that for you idiot!" I hollered at him, almost spitting in his face. I stormed up-stairs and slammed my bedroom door shut with a loud BANG.
When I was in my room I started to feel guilty for hurting his feelings. I started to think about apologising to him while I was getting my Hello kitty pyjamas on and while brushing my teeth.
When I got in bed I started to fell really exited about tomorrow and I thought about all the people coming to my party and me throwing up in the middle of the party. I turned over to try to get to sleep but ten minutes later I was still awake! I went downstairs and found my mum and dad lying on the sofa drinking wine and watching one of our romantic films .
I managed to go back upstairs without them hearing or seeing me. When I got into my room I turned on my bedside lamp and read my favourite book, The mystery of the vampire slayers for at least two hours. When I finished it I went downstairs to see what time it was and it was, wait for it, 11:55!!!! I had gone to bed at 9:55 but my parents where probably asleep by now so I thought to myself "why don't I have a midnight feast." So I went to the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a large chunk of chocolate, got a glass of milk and went back upstairs to eat and drink it.
By the time I had finished that I was really tired but I couldn't go to sleep!!!!! So I went downstairs and turned the TV on and went on the PlayStation - playing my favourite kind of game, horse racing. By this time it was 05:05am and it was starting to get lighter plus I was starting to get tired so I went upstairs and fell sleep.
5 comments:
good story icyblue but there is hardly any tension.you could have added something like "what was that... or something exciting.But anyway it's a good story!!!!
Hi IcyBlue98,
After reading through your last two tasks, I understand that you have a liking for prose writing set around family life. (Please correct me if I am wrong!) This is a great sub – genre to choose because, if at any point you are lost for ideas, just think back to your past experiences of a particular event. There is nothing more natural than extracting all the emotions you felt from a memory, as you can then go on to make characters and plots more realistic than if you weren’t writing from something you can relate to personally. Empathy (stepping into someone else’s shoes) is a very clever technique and although it might be hard to tackle through your writing now, it really does challenge the way you think – you don’t have to rely on your own judgement to create a good, solid piece of work. If you are already doing this, then the early experience will help you later in life and you will have become accustomed to the way you work it, over it working you. You are already doing a very good job of it so far. You have clear links connecting the relationships between mother and daughter – the reluctance for Sophia not to want to go to bed and her mother taking control of the situation (having the higher status) by giving reasons why she should do what she is being told. There is a mild argument between the two, as there would be in any family with older and younger members, but it is resolved through acceptance. We then have a very different bond between Sophia and her “annoying 6 – year old brother”, where Sophia reacts negatively to her brother’s actions, feels a sense of guilt, however becomes so overwhelmed with excitement due to her birthday that she completely forgets to apologise.
All these relationships are classic examples amongst families today and you have managed to back them up with realistic emotions felt by both of the protagonists. You have demonstrated brilliantly reactions and responses: a reaction (doing something naturally without thinking much about the consequences) can sometimes be negative, while a response (thinking before you act) can prevent arguments and settle agreements. You definitely have a strong understanding about how relationships are built and this really had to be the strongest feature of your work. Very, very well done!
I also like the interaction between the author and the reader. (Yet another relationship!) Particularly for a younger audience, the text needs to be light – hearted and funny to help them reach the end of a story. In the line: “When I finished I went downstairs to see what time it was and it was, wait for it, 11:55!!!!” is a perfect example because the conversational style of “wait for it” keeps us guessing shortly before the answer is revealed. Trademarks, such as Hello Kitty and PlayStation, are subtly handed to the reader and because almost everyone has heard of them, especially children, it doesn’t make the story seem too distant.
Next time, don’t just stick with what you expect the audience to believe will happen next – come up with new ideas and shock the reader. The ending of your story was almost like a diary than a piece of prose fiction, as it worked in a linear sequence, (linear meaning straight line) and everything Sophia did was written in chronological order (ordered by what happens first, then in the middle and at the end). As readers, we don’t want the plot to run smoothly and to be honest, we love the characters to experience problems throughout, but we also want a happy ending, too. The trick is to get the balance right. There is also one sentence that doesn’t make entire sense to me: “ . . . I thought about all the people coming to my party and me throwing up in the middle of the party.” Do you mean people throwing you up in the air in the middle of the party, or feeling ill and being sick?
Overall, great work – just watch your spellings occasionally and try not to use more than one exclamation mark after a sentence. One usually is enough!
Fantastic work, IcyBlue98!
Hi IcyBlue98!
I agree with what has been said before so I'm not really going to echo any of it.
Your piece was a really nice, feel good kind of story and a very good attempt at the task. I loved your description since it was highly original, especially the sentence when Sophia shouts at her brother. Well done!
To improve on it I suggest that when someone speaks after a description that you start a new paragraph and that each new sentence begins with a full stop. These careless mistakes are nothing that a bit of proof reading won't sort out. I also suggest that when you have a number that you write it in words so that it doesn't stick out and keeps the flow of your writing going.
All in all, fantastic read and I look forward to your next attempt.
Shiningstar :D
Hello! Just dropping in to let you know that I've got two rather large deadlines for my Masters this week, so I may not get my comments for this piece in on time. I'm really sorry! :( But I promise I'll get them done by the beginning of next week.
Hey there,
Sorry again for commenting late! I hope my delayed feedback is useful :)
This is another great effort. I’m really pleased to see you’ve taken on the moderators’ comments about producing a “polished” final draft; there’s only one spelling slip up that I can spot (‘I started to fell really excited…’). It’s fantastic that you’re responding so positively to feedback – well done!
This piece has a great opening. By introducing the idea of the party early, you give the reader something to looks forwards to. In other words, I saw a potential plot point, and got excited about how you, as the author, would develop it! You also introduce two conflicts in your opening paragraph (between sleeping and waking, and mother and daughter). Conflict drives narrative, so you’re laying some really effective groundwork for how your story can develop. As a reader, I wanted to know how these conflicts would change and be resolved. Your characterisation here is also good. Through dialogue (e.g. SHOWING, rather than TELLING – great work!) we get a feeling of the love between mother and daughter, but also their tendency to argue a bit!
This strong characterisation carries on throughout the piece; in just a few words we get a strong sense of Sophia’s feelings about her parents and her brother. However, I’d have liked to see those early plot points and conflicts developed more. The story currently takes the form of ‘and then… and then… and then…’ This isn’t a chain of causation; that is, early events don’t cause the later ones. Next time, you should think about getting this structure in your work, with one event causing the next. This would help engage your readers, as we’re often most interested in how and why things happen, rather than just what happens.
Next time, try playing around with poetic language, too! It might be fun :)
Sarah
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