Creative Writing - Gratuitous Vengeance

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English Coursework

Creative Writing

Gratuitous Vengeance

“Son, hurry up, you’re going to be late for school.”

“Yeh whatever dad, it’s nothing new.”

“But it’s your first day!”

Yes - it was my first day at school and no – I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t scared, and I wasn’t worried, I was ready. What’s the big deal anyway?  Constantly, consistently moving house and schools, you kind of adapt to it, like an animal adapting to its conditions, you know?

     Here we were. Shattering, scratched, small windows; crumbling, decaying, aged bricks; inexpensive, inert sheds and lots of helpless, dim morons to use for my liking. Dominating this school will be as easy as A.B.C. It wasn’t exactly the best looking school but no matter, I’d be gone within a week...

     Okay, by my second glance, this school had some pretty mischievous competition. My main worry was Derrick Hopkins; Derrick is the guy to go to when you want to know something or need permission for something else. He controls everything in this school. I guess that’ll have to change... I went up to him.

“Derrick, I’m Bradley Crewe, new here, I heard about a party going on this weekend, I was wondering if I can come along? We can get acquainted.”

“It’s not that easy kid. So no, you can’t just ‘come along’. Get out of here you weasel faced low life.”

“Weasel faced? Low life? Who do you think you are?”

“I’m Derrick, but nobody cares who you are.” He walked up to me and out of nowhere he hurled his humongous fists furiously.

“Don’t come back, loser!”

     He was a menace, and he was immensely unintelligent, because to have the audacity to do that, was a catastrophic mistake... At that point my vendetta for him began. Now I would exact his punishment. But how? When? Where? I can’t just stroll up to him in school the next lunchtime and fight him. He’s a six foot-two gruesome giant of a person. Whilst the sweat from his hair running down his eyes, his huge ferocious bulging arms would again swing furiously and knock me to the floor, so no, I can’t. I need a plan. Oh and what a plan it will be!

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     But I can’t kill him, that wouldn’t make him as miserable as he deserves, no, I need to tear him apart, bit by bit, until every strand of his reputation and self- respect is non existent, and he realises how pathetic he really is. But, after what he did to me, he deserves to die... I should cut out his organs and force them down his throat and make him swallow every last bit, cut off his fingers and mail them to his family, that’d teach him to humiliate me in such a way! Slowly but carefully I ...

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The Quality of Written Communication (QWC) is good. There is evidence this candidate has tried to experiment with more advanced punctuation points like colons, ellipses and semi-colons, though there are some which haven't been used appropriately. Semi-colons must only be used with linking two main clauses that share a very common theme together e.g. - "Sally just loves dogs; she has three of the noisy little things". OR they are used when linking together a long itemised list where the items consist of a lot of words e.g. - "I need two spoonfuls of castor sugar; four egg whites; butter, flour, and a cap's measurement of vanilla essence. Other than that, the candidate's QWC is fine and is unlikely going to be penalised for a minor misuse of punctuation.

The candidate's writing ability is tested here. The story is original, thought-provoking and right for all the wrong reasons. My only criticism is that it's a little short; too long though, and this would lose it's effect. I like the fact it's set over a week and we see the gradual degradation of the protagonist's character from mardy school student to vengeful murderer in such a short space of time, but I think a little extra could be added, because the scene where he hits his dad seems forced in. Perhaps a little more about what the protagonist thinks about his father would improve this - it's no big change, but if we can connect with the helplessness of the father then him being punched in the face will draw even more empathy from the reader. The prose style is also effective, with ellipses and pauses to suggest we are reading as the protagonist thinks. I would dispute the use of onomatopoeia though - "Smash!", "Clang!" and "Clunk!" would be far better suited to other forms of writing e.g. a graphic novel/comic strip - You wouldn't find people's thoughts describing loud noises with onomatopoeia because these sounds would be external and from the world around them, rather than something that happened in their heads.

This is a Creative Writing task and the candidate here has written a piece of First Person prose. In it, there is an excellent demonstration of focus on how to create suspense, intrigue and a feeling that makes the reader fully engaged throughout. The protagonist's personality is kept well-hidden at the start and soon his interactions with other characters and thoughts piece together his personality, which turns out to be quite murderous. The use of a range of literary devices shows appropriate understanding of how to shape interesting descriptive text inside the head of someone who, at first, appears very ambiguous, but whose motives soon colour in the gaps that the candidate leaves in their personality.