Task One:
I particularly enjoyed extract 1 from the great gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald because it was very descriptive. The setting was described precisely which made the extract more interesting. The mention of moonlight and stars made the extract romantic and calm. The description in the extract was very powerful. It made want to read on. I would definitely want to read the full story.
Task Two:
The night was dark and there wasn't a single star to be seen in the sky. Jeremy had been waiting for an hour in the hope that the girl of her dreams would turn up but he eventually gave up. He started to walk with gentle steps. After every few steps he halted looking left and right.
The howling wind became stronger. Jeremey's hair swept over his blue beaming eyes and his arms crossed to give himself warmth. Suddenly he felt a nice fur coat jacket being put over him. It was Angela, the girl of his dreams. She was covering his shivering body with an extra jacket she had. She then gave him a hug and made him feel special. He smelt her orange and lavender perfume as she hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her and they both looked at each other as though they had been waiting their entire life for this moment.
Angela put her cold hands on Jeremy's cheeks and slowly closed her eyes. She pulled her face towards him. They connected their cold lips, the feeling of the kiss was very cold and wet but when they relaxed the coldness and wetness had faded away.
I’m so glad you liked ‘The Great Gatsby’, as it’s one of my absolute FAVOURITE books. You definitely should read the full story! Fitzgerald does have wonderful powers of description, and I agree that this excerpt does have a very ‘calm’ atmosphere. It’s not overblown or “too much” – exactly what makes this extract so affecting.
ReplyDeleteI think that you show similar, and commendable, restraint in your own writing. The last paragraph is particularly admirable; there is both an acute observation of physical details (‘the coldness and wetness’), which makes the kiss realistic, and a refusal to succumb to romantic cliché (a kiss that is “hot and burning”, for example). The simplicity and repetition of the language also works well – that last line (‘the feeling of the kiss was very cold and wet but when they relaxed the cold and wetness had [ although you can cut this past tense ‘had’ for brevity] faded away’) is worthy of good Hemingway.
However, early in your piece you do utilise some clichés, such as ‘blue beaming eyes’ and ‘as though they had been waiting their entire life for this moment’. Be careful to avoid these! Also, the writing isn’t quite as restrained (for example, you could lose ‘and made him feel special’ in order to give the sentence more impact) as it is in your final paragraph.
Finally, there’s just a couple of obvious slip ups that you should have picked up before submissions: in the first paragraph it should be ‘the girl of HIS dreams’, and at the second sentence it should be ‘Jeremy’s’.
You’re starting to put ideas of minimalism and “show, don’t tell” to good use, in order to create realistic, affecting prose. Keep working on these skills, and avoid clichés, and your writing will become top notch!
Hey,
ReplyDeleteGood opening sentence – spare writing, and fulfils your criteria of being “romantic and calm”. All you need in the second sentence is “Jeremy had been waiting for an hour”, though – you don’t need to tell us that it’s for “the girl of his dreams”, as Angela appears in the very next paragraph. It also makes the opening more mysterious; don’t worry that the reader will not follow your story if they aren’t given everything in the first sentence or two!
Small point: why are Jeremy’s eyes “beaming” if he’s feeling disappointed? The word “beaming” usually means that the owner of the eyes is smiling, so perhaps you mean that they are clear and direct, like beams?
I like the tenderness that the two characters feel for each other, but I think the piece needs to be physically longer so that we see a bit more of both of them. You could play around with point of view: it would be nice to hear a few of Jeremy’s thoughts in the first section, though it’s nice to keep Angela more mysterious. Why has she kept him waiting an hour? We want to know this, and how Jeremy feels about it; at the moment it just seems that he’s not too bothered, given that we have none of his thoughts. It would also be good to have some dialogue between the two characters so that we know WHY they love each other so much; even something as mundane as Jeremy saying “I thought you’d never show up” would help the reader to feel more connected to the characters.
The pervasive mood of the piece is certainly “romantic and calm”, though, so you’ve done what you’ve set out to do in that respect. You could work a bit more on setting, though, as this is something you’ve flagged up in the Fitzgerald piece; at the moment, we’re not really sure of where the characters are other than outside in the dark.
Take care,
Penny
Hello again, another fine piece of writing, and I personally found it contained both well-defined pros and cons for me.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the positive aspects of the piece, I think you were well-served by choosing a very basic scenario (waiting for and the finding the girl of one's dreams) to work with as it meant you could wring as much emotional tension from it as it was worth...and you have very admirably achieved this.
The opening line, for example, does err on the side of cliche and being overly-obvious...but it still works as a stark establishing image.
The second paragraph is possibly your strongest; there is a very strong contrast between the powers of nature ('the howling wind') and the powers of human affection and silent communication ('a nice fur coat jacket being put over him').
I have to agree with Penny, however, that your piece would probably work better without the recurring image of 'the girl of his dreams' as it's clear that this is what function Angela fulfils. You symbolise this so well with the subtle emotional and physical connection of putting the fur coat over him in defiance of the weather that it's rather a shame to undo all the good work by merely stating explicitly that she is the girl of his dreams.
One point Penny made that I might have to slightly disagree with, although literally just on a point of personal preference, is that you should work on setting due to nothing being known about location other than the darkness. I personally feel that the symbolism of the piece is served very well by such a sparse and simple setting...in that the idea of these two passionate lovers pitted against the darkness and the howling winds with only a fur coat for protection...is quite a poignantly beautiful idea. Rather than work on the setting, I would work on the elements and the weather; really develop a contrast between nature and these characters.
Well done again,
Eoghan