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Creative Writing

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Practise description

Many students want to write a complicated plot, which they get excited about and find it hard to get finished in the time given in the exam. Unfortunately, as there really isn’t enough time to write a long and complicated story, what often happens is that the piece just becomes a series of events: ‘and then, and then, and then…’. That isn’t very interesting for the reader and won’t get you many marks in the exam.

Instead, practise description. It can be of a place, a person, a feeling or an object.

Describing a place

You can start your story by describing the place where it is set.

Sensory description: Think about your 5 senses. What can you see and hear? Be more sparing about taste, touch and smell – they can help but only if it seems relevant. For example, if you’re at a restaurant, smelling the food can be a good touch. Or if you’re somewhere hot, feeling the rays of the sun on your skin can be a nice idea. Imagine yourself there. It always helps if it is a real place that you have been to.

Literary Techniques: This is your opportunity to show off your ability to use literary techniques: a couple of metaphors, a simile, some alliteration, even some repetition or a list.

Tone or Mood: Think about your emotions, or the emotions of your character, as they stand or sit in that place. This emotion should run through all of your choices of words and literary techniques. If you are trying to create a feeling of tension and fear, you could use pathetic fallacy of fog or storm, you could use sibilance to create a sinister atmosphere. If you are trying to create a feeling of warmth and coziness, then you could use imagery (metaphors and similes etc) relating to fires, hearths, light, calm, peace. Your comparisons and your techniques should match the mood you’re trying to create.

Let’s look at an example from Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black.

Here and there were clumps of reeds, bleached bone-pale, and now and again the faintest of winds caused them to rattle dryly. The sun at our backs reflected in the water all around so that everything shone and glistened like the surface of a mirror, and the sky had taken on a faint pinkish tinge at the edges, and this in turn became reflected in the marsh and the water.

Here Hill has focused on what you can see and what you can hear. She has chosen words like ‘bone-pale’, ‘bleached’ and ‘rattle’ to give a deathly atmosphere to her description; she has also chosen words like ‘shone’ and ‘glistened’ to suggest beauty. The simile ‘like the surface of a mirror’ emphasises the calmness and the stillness of the place. You can see that each word is carefully chosen, in this case to show the beauty but also the danger in the place.

Now, you could try and describe a place using the same techniques.

Describing a Person

Your story will have characters. Describing them so that the reader has a strong sense of who they are can make your story more interesting to read.

There are many ways to reveal your character to the reader.

  • You can write a paragraph of description telling the reader directly what they look like and what they are like as a person. Nineteenth century novels tend to do this. Dickens often introduces his characters in this way.
  • You can show the reader what the character is like by what they do. If they are kind, show them helping someone. If they are mean with money, show them avoiding paying their share.
  • You can show the reader what the character is like by what they say. They can show how mild mannered or how passionate or how thoughtful they are in what they say and how they say it.
  • You can show the reader what the character is like through what other characters say about them.

Physical Characteristics

At least some description of the physical aspects of your character can help the reader create a mental image. Often focusing on one particular element (their large nose and thin face, or their bouncy curly hair) can give enough of an idea, and the reader can fill in the rest.

How they look can give the reader some idea about what they are like as a person as well. It’s good to be cautious about this, though. Not all fat people are jolly. Not all thin people are grumpy. And having eyes too close together may bear no relation to how trustworthy you are.

(Some authors don’t use any physical description. For example, Jane Austen hardly mentioned Mr Darcy’s physical appearance, which allows us all to create our perfect image in our heads!)

Personal Characteristics

You many want to introduce some basic ideas about what your character is like as a person. Here, simile or metaphor can help a lot. Think which animal your character could be said to be like, or which natural feature (river, sea, flowers, trees etc), then base your simile on that. As well as direct description and using dialogue and action, to show what the character is like, you can use the setting to hint about what kind of person they are. Your elderly gentleman character might live in an enormous, cold, dark, imposing house; or they might live in a cosy cottage by the sea. This may cause your readers to feel differently about them.

Let’s look at Dickens’ description of Scrooge to see how a master does it:

Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.  A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.  He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

If you continue to read the rest of this passage, you will see that Dickens uses nearly every one of the techniques I have described, and quite a few others.

Why not have a go yourself and describe your character – how they look, how they behave and what they are like?

English Language, Exams, Revision, Uncategorized

How to Revise: English Language GCSE

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Revising for English Language GCSE

Students often say that either they can’t or they don’t know how to revise for their English Language GCSE. Of course, your teachers will all be telling you that you can, and showing you how. I thought I could add a few words of my own.

These are things that you can be doing all the time:

  • Read regularly – a quality newspaper, a short story, a comic, instructions, a novel, a blog. You couldn’t expect to run a marathon if you hadn’t been running for 2 years, and you can’t expect to read and understand your English paper if you don’t practice reading.
  • Think critically about what you read and watch. When you read a book for pleasure, or watch a TV programme or film, think about what you have read or watched and talk about it with your friends and family. What did you think of the characters? Did the plot add up? Was it exciting? What made the ending good? If you can think in these terms about the stories you see every day, then it will make the questions you come up against in the exam seem less unfamiliar.
  • Talk to those around you. Learn how to recount what has happened to you that day, what you learnt in a lesson or what you found annoying about what you watched on TV. The better you are at explaining, discussing and recounting, the better your writing will be.
  • Write things down – lists, explanations, descriptions, a diary, a story. The more familiar you are with writing, the better you get at it.

To specifically prepare for your exam:

  • Go through exercises in revision books like Edexcel’s Revision Workbook or Target 5/9 English Language Writing.
  • Watch videos on Youtube about how to do certain questions. There are some excellent ones. Just make sure the one you find refers to your exam board.
  • Do past paper questions. The best way to do this is to take one of the questions on the paper and do that. The first few times give yourself as long as you need. Then work towards timing yourself to do it in the time required. Work up to doing full exam papers only just before the exam or occasionally to test your timings. (You can get past papers from the exam websites, as long as you are sure which exam board you’re taking.)
  • Know the exam paper. The questions are of the same type every year. Learn what is expected of you from each question, how long to spend on each one and how many marks are awarded for each one.
  • Read exemplars – work done by previous students – to get a feel for how to improve and what you can avoid doing as well. (You can see these on the website for the exam boards too.)
  • Look at the mark scheme. If you know what the marker is looking for, you will have a better chance of producing it.
  • If possible, get your practice work marked. Learning from your mistakes is key!

General advice:

  • Get to know your own strengths and weaknesses. Knowing your strengths should give you a boost, realising that there are lots of things you do well! Knowing your weaknesses can help you know what to work on. For example, do you struggle with understanding the text? Do you find it hard to develop your answer when you’re analysing the language and structure of a text? Do you find it difficult to write description in your creative writing? Think about what you find tricky, then practice that!
  • Practice little and often. Better 30 minutes every week than 2 hours every month.

Remember – this is a skill you’re learning. You can’t cram a skill! You must practice it! Read, write and practice the key skills of analysis, evaluation, comparison, creative writing and transactional writing.

Good luck! You can do it!

Literature, Poetry, Reading, Uncategorized

Is Poetry Worth Reading? Footnotes

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  1. Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
    and some are treasured for their markings –

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

2.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there.

3.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita

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Boredom

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Boredom is a choice. Or so people say. I have often been irritated with students who find everything boring when there is interest in every subject if you have the curiosity or will to look for it. The world is full of fascinating things, from the natural world to the products of the human one. And now we have it all at our finger tips. In my childhood, if you wanted to know about something, you had to find a book about it. That meant going to a library or a bookshop, looking for a book that might be relevant, searching through indexes and scanning pages to tell you about the thing you wanted to know. It wasn’t easy. It took time and trouble. Now, with the wonders of the Internet, all you have to do is type a few words into Google and there it is. We can argue about the reliability of the information you might find on random websites on the web, but the amazing availability of information is incredible. You can become an expert on anything from the human body to ancient Greek literature. Strangely, this has not made us less bored. We seem more bored than ever.

Harking back to my childhood again, it was not always easy to find things to do. Genuinely, on a rainy day, I had the choice of playing with my toys, reading, writing, drawing or working. The TV was off-limits until the evening (Presbyterian mother), but in any case there was no children’s TV until the brief slot in the late afternoon on a week day, and some chaos that passed as entertainment in the morning on a Saturday. There was the radio too, of course, but there was only one set in the house, in the living room. I don’t imagine my parents would have wanted to listen to the same things as I did, but, to be honest, I never put that to the test. I was often bored. I had friends to visit, a huge back garden, lots of lovely toys and books, a field with horses and a pond at the end of the garden, and the sea only a few fields’ walk away. But I was often bored. I think it probably made me pick up a difficult book and read about other worlds to escape from my boring one. It probably made me write stories to create a world I would rather live in. I spent hours taping my singing on a little tape recorder, then recording my recorded voice and my live one onto the family’s tape recorder, thereby building up harmonised versions of hymns and songs. Am I arguing that boredom made me creative?

People now have YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix and so many other entertainment sources. How could anyone ever be bored again? There are people to find out about, locals and celebrities, places to discover, stories to watch, ideas to ponder. Yet here we are, in this world of every possible interest, and again I am bored. The lack of input in my childhood pushed me to do things that were valuable, I think. But the overload of input now may do the same to this generation.

In these pandemic times, I have a short attention span. Today, I could not watch the usual YouTube clips, read the usual snide, vitriolic, self-centred tweets, look at others’ perfect or banal lives on Facebook. I could not be bothered watching the series I have been into on Netflix. I could not be bothered to clean or tidy the house, read a book, do some work. Instead, I ponder boredom. It deadens, though the despair it brings can push you to do something worthwhile in the end.

It’s a bit of a pathetic enemy, to be frank. If we compare our situation to what people suffered in war time, being bored does not come close to the horror and fear that war inspires. And there was plenty of boredom around during the war as well. If all we have to suffer is being a bit bored, then surely that is a small price to pay for the safety of people in the community. We should be thanking God that it is boredom (and not death, disease, pain, suffering, grief) that we have to contend with. So many people in these times have so much more to bear.

So forgive me if my boredom has not this time led to creativity (unless you count this meaningless exposition). I come to no conclusions. I simply say that to rebel against it can produce amazing things, but to give in to it leaves you eating a whole packet of biscuits, drinking a bottle of wine before dinner, or whatever your chosen vice might be. I have to hope my creativity kicks in soon…

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The Lowest Common Denominator

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Stereotypes can be iniquitous. It may be said that we can’t live without them. They are a short-cut in a complicated world. And we need short-cuts to live. Stereotypes tell us what we should expect, and we find them particularly useful when they tell us when to be wary, when to be careful or cautious. But logically we must know that they are inherently false. It cannot be true that everyone in a particular group shares the same traits. There may be some truth in the original idea, but when we apply it too rigorously we have to realise it is a flawed way to see the world. For example, think of the stereotype of suburbia – quiet streets, neat lawns, twitching curtains, judgemental neighbours. Before long we have to add some of the uncomfortable truths, like the alcoholism and drug-taking going on behind respectable doors, like the swingers parties, like the prevalence of domestic violence. We have to admit there is some truth to the stereotype, but it should just be treated as a guide, not a rule book.

How dangerous they become, however, when we assign them to groups of people. The bigger the group, the more ridiculous it is. The assumption that all Jewish people, all young black men, all Chinese people, all women, behave in a homogeneous fashion is absurd. The millions of people in that group must be hugely varied, with varied needs, talents, likes, fears, desires and expectations. Nevertheless, despite the irrationality of it, society keeps on using stereotypes to the detriment of the people in the group it is talking of. We are so used to it, it has almost become hard to spot.

Think of the title of the film “What Women Want”. It is clear that each individual woman wants something different, being a unique person with a unique experience and history. How many videos have you seen on YouTube (or is it just suggested for me?!) asking similar questions? Today I saw one promising to translate, “What men mean when they say…”. I didn’t click on the link. But I would suggest that different men mean different things. Lumping half of the population into one group becomes anything from vague to offensive, and is not even close to accurate.

At the basis of stereotypes we have so many kinds of prejudice – racism, sexism, homophobia, religious hate and so many more. We may feel we can avoid the more obviously offensive and brutal stereotypes which fuel those kinds of prejudice. I hope we can, though it is shown over and again how many people seem unable to sort the individual from the crowd. We still live in a world where people can condemn ‘the poor’ because they can’t feed their children, condemn the immigrant because they arrive at our shores, condemn the struggle to ensure Black Lives Matter, all because of an idea that is associated with that group.

The idea of the undeserving poor has been with us for centuries, but it may have had its heyday in the Victorian era when the industrial revolution brought the poor out of the fields and under the noses of the rich. Dickens fought against it in many of his novels, the one which most readily springs to mind is A Christmas Carol. Scrooge refuses charity to the poor because he says the state already provides for them (‘Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?) And he suggests that he works hard for his money, it is his, and what are these people to do with him? But Dickens tries to remind us that the poor have faces, are real people with loves and hopes and fears. They are our ‘fellow-passengers to the grave’ as he says. We are linked with them and they with us. Essentially, he is breaking down the stereotype to the real person. I hope you can see the link with the discussion over Free School Meals as clearly as I can.

But even less iniquitous stereotypes still cause damage. The idea of the irresponsible student, who gets up in the afternoon after partying all night, who does no work and cares nothing at all about the people in the community around them, this stereotype has reared its head during the COVID crisis in universities this Autumn. And it has done damage as all these things do. I am not saying that no student has had a party. I am not saying that it is not true that more students will like to go to a party than a similar number of people from another demographic. I am saying that not all students are the same. The result of the stereotype has meant that some have blamed students for the spread of COVID (instead of the universities who asked them to come, the huge halls of residence, the parents who encouraged them to go, the lack of testing available etc). And in this moment of blaming them, many have forgotten those who have been isolating in their rooms, have been working hard but unable to make friends, those who have been sick and a long way from home and those who love them.

Stereotypes, both big and small, as innocuous as they may seem, are all a way to make beautiful, unique individuals into an easily manageable lump. It may be easier for us, in that moment, to think of the world in this way, but the pain, heartache, violence and suffering it causes are not worth it. You may wonder why I do not focus on the big hitters like sexism and racism – well there are plenty of others who do that, and most of us are well aware of them. But what I would like, in my small way, is to point out the sneakily reductive way we all think of others. Guard against it! Human beings deserve to be gloried in, celebrated, in their infinite variety, rather than reduced to the lowest common denominator.

Reading, Uncategorized

Women and Power by Mary Beard

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This is the second of my book reviews for the lockdown. So far I’m managing to keep to my book a week target, though I fear I may struggle to do that every week!

I was bought this book by my son for Mothers’ Day. I have already bought it myself for two other people, but had not yet had a chance to read it. I am not well enough versed in either the history of feminism or the classical world to fully appreciate Beard’s arguments, but her main points certainly resonate with me. They reflect a world I have lived in and live in still.

The voicelessness of women, their silence, is something I have noticed in life and in literature. The Duchess of Malfi, is a play about a powerful woman who uses her power in the domestic rather than political sphere; she is silenced by her brothers. In their presence she is restrained and quiet, while they berate her and insult her undeservedly. The Cardinal only yearns for total power, Ferdinand is offended by his sister’s lack of obedience to him and warped by his own incestuous feelings towards her, blaming her rather than himself for his passion. In the end, they kill her, her husband and some of her children. The ultimate way to silence someone. Of course, Webster was a man living in the misogynistic world of the mid-16th century, and could only write from his perspective and historical situation.

In my life too I have seen, time and again, that women are silenced by men. Concerns seen as ‘female’ are treated as less important, comments made by women are brushed aside, ignored or reworded by men. Beard calls this the ‘Miss Triggs treatment’ after the Riana Duncan cartoon set in a boardroom where the chair of the meeting says, “That’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs.  Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.” I have worked in professions which are seen as female and have predominantly female workers – librarianship and teaching – but I have seen women silenced in meetings, in the workplace, in private, so regularly that I barely seem to notice it any more. I would be astonished if any woman said they did not.

Mary Beard talks about how, from the Classical world, we think of speaking as in itself male. If a woman speaks, she becomes less female. It is an interesting idea, and a way of understanding why the world is as it is. How do we change it, I wonder?

The second part of the book is about the nature of power and how women fit into that idea. Again, Beard talks about power and how it is defined as intrinsically male. Women who achieve positions of power are described as grabbing, as fighting, and breaking through, as though the men hold the power and the women must seize it by force. She suggests that what we view as power should be changed; ability to change the world around us rather than public prestige is the way she describes this new idea. To me, it brings to mind Dorothea’s life as described in Middlemarch as one who ‘lived faithfully a hidden life’ and rests in an ‘unvisited tomb’. This idea of power as the ability to make life better (or worse) for others without self-aggrandisement or even being lauded or celebrated beyond that very specific sphere of influence, is an interesting one, but it is hard to see this idea taking over the more exciting, intoxicating feeling of direct power over others.

Women & Power presents a familiar world by tracing its origins in the cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome. It does the invaluable job of defamiliarizing the familiar enough that we see the way our society is structured. Under this searching light, we can clearly see the imbalance of power and its causes. Essentially, speaking in public and power as it is currently defined are seen by society as intrinsically male. This is the hurdle we have to overcome. We can not just fight to have the same rights to be heard, to be listened to. We have to rebuild our ideas of what society is!

Literature, Novels, Reading, Uncategorized

The overcoat by Nicolai Gogol

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Gogol is a pleasant companion for a couple of hours of reading. His agreeable, good humoured tone ameliorates the misery and grimness of the story. The quality of the writing is conversational, confidential even. We can imagine him sitting next to us, telling us his tale, including us in a world which to him is ordinary and every day, but, for us, is a glimpse into one which is exotic and unreachable. The little life of Akaky Akakyevich Bashmachkin, ‘a somewhat short, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired man’ becomes important to us because of the warmth with which the narrator describes him.  When he is teased by his colleagues at work, he asks to be left alone. The narrator describes the tone in which he speaks to them: ‘there was something in it that touched one’s heart with pity’. Akaky Akakeyvich’s vulnerability as well as his ordinariness make him an unusual but affecting hero.

His life gains a new focus when he starts to save up for a new overcoat; because of that ‘his whole existence indeed seemed somehow to have become fuller…’ The day he finally gets his new overcoat ‘was one of the greatest days in Akaky’s life’. He celebrates with the colleagues who don’t care about him, in a place and at a time which make him uncomfortable, and on the way home he is attacked and his coat is stolen. He tries to get justice for his loss, but the system is described as full of self-centred, self-important bureaucrats and he is left alone with no reparation. The end of the novella has a darkness and supernatural element which feels truly Russian. Justice, in the end, is done. After having read it, though, what is left is only the dim sense of the littleness of life and its struggles, and the hopelessness of the small man against the pettiness and casual thoughtlessness of others.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol  Николай Васильевич Гоголь

1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1809– 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852

He was a Russian writer of Ukrainian extraction.

The Overcoat: Шинель, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, as expressed in a quote attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “We all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’.”