Part 1- The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Gerrard (1922)
I picked this extract because as soon as I began reading It just got me In to It and kept me reading. When I started the second paragraph it was really interesting, and it made me feel as If I was there, for example "The cracks went off all round us, and some of them ran along for hundreds of yards." This was great: it made me feel the tension and it also put me in the mood where I would just carry on reading that I would just never be willing to stop. I think this extract is a great piece of travel literature.
Part 2 - My Trip To The Middle East
The first evening of the summer holidays was around, as I was enjoying my lovely dinner. I was really delighted about the holidays as I was wishing to be going on my first "hopeful" luxurious vacation. But instead my mother came trotting along telling me I was on my way to the MIDDLE EAST.
I was In despair, I thought I would have been on my way to the likes of Spain and Italy. I have never experienced the Middle East, well In fact I have never heard of the Middle East. Well The only thing that I heard from my mates was that there was some high developed nations and many low developed nations. I was likely to be flying to the low developed. The news was I would be at the U.A.E United Arab Emirates.
Two days later, In Heathrow Airport, me and my mother, we had our luggage, passports and boarding tickets ready as we were on our way to the U.A.E, We were ready to fly, I was really excited about this new experience.
We arrived at U.A.E as my whole body was aching after that eight hours flight.
As soon as I got out the airport the first thing that I felt was the high humidity level and the Sun glaring at me with force. I could not last here with this boiling weather, but other than that it was a wonderful place to be with enormous skyscrapers, great five star hotels and exotic beaches at every coast. I could live my life here, but an issue was adapting to the weather and also understanding the language.
My first and only week was fascinating,
I always enjoyed going to the South end beach, but this was more than the British sea sides , It had everything you could think of, The greatest theme park I have ever seen it was almost the size of my hometown. I always wanted a life like this and my Mother showed me how wonderful it felt, I went to the shopping centre in the capital city Abu Dhabi. It was the size of the greater London, I was shell shocked I never knew I was going to be expecting this.
The people were scattering every where like a herd of sheep being chased by a shepherd dog. I made the most of my time at the centre, I was buying a lot of gifts for family and friends at home as I was also buying some traditional things such as a Thobe which I was really interested in.
But that was it for my time at the U.A.E, and that memory will never be forgotten.
Part One
ReplyDeleteIt is really great when you become so engrossed in a book that you feel as if you are experiencing the narrative with the protagonist, I’m glad you made that connection with this book. Be careful with your capitalisation of words beginning with ‘I’, sometimes the computer does it for you and makes a mistake so just double check in your proof reads.
Part Two
I like the conflict between what was expected of the Middle East and what the reality of it was. You have managed to portray this very well, I think you could have played with it a little more though. I think this is the strongest idea within your work, so take it and perhaps heighten the tension or make the contrast greater.
Be carful which tense you intend to use, a number of people have fallen into that trap this week. “I was In despair…I have never experienced the Middle East, well In fact I have never heard of the Middle East”. You mix past and present tenses, if you are telling the story in the past it should be “I had never”. With a couple of proof reads you should be able to hunt all of these small errors out.
I would also concentrate on one particular event, as you gloss over a few in your short extract, you were very ambitious! Take one of your interesting events and really concentrate on creating an image in the reader’s mind. Show the scene, inform them of sounds and smells, what could you taste, touch? Try to capture the reader with a description of the heat and how it made you feel. You have started to do this with “I could not last here with this boiling weather”. Maybe extend this more, create a metaphor to really bring the reader into your story.
I hope you have enjoyed your first task of word blogger, I look forward to seeing how your work progresses!
Hi English Craze. Sorry for my late responce, and welcome to Word Voo Doo.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other moderators.
Be careful with you capitalization of words. 'In', 'it', 'we' etc do not need a capital letter unless they are at the beginning of a sentence. You should know this, so try to pick up on them when you read through your work.
As Gina said, although I enjoyed the tension between the expectation of the Middle East and how it really was, it might have been better to focus on one particular event that encapsulated your trip, rather than try to summerize.
Your tenses need a lot of work. Make sure you stay in the past or the present and don't flit between.
Your phrasing is often confusing. Don't try to over-complicate your prose just to try and sound clever. The best writing is usually understated rather than overstated. Read through what you have written aloud to yourself. Listen carefully to your sentence structures: does it sound natural or forced?
You have some great little observations in here, though. I particularly liked the way the mother 'trotted' over, and the 'aching' eight hours of flight. Good stuff - I'd like to see more of this careful, well-observed detail.
Sophie