Descriptive writing: The old yellow taxi came to a screeching halt in front of David, splashing him with droplets of polluted rainwater from the previous night.

The old yellow taxi came to a screeching halt in front of David, splashing him with droplets of polluted rainwater from the previous night. The young man stood there, startled and very dismayed. The cold water took him by surprise; he shivered as it soaked through his clothes and trickled down his raw skin. He took a moment to examine the exterior of the vehicle that did this to him. Its odious sight was distasteful. He stared at the old hunk of rusty metal sheets, which seemed fused together crudely. Next, he saw the rubber tires sagging under the weight of the body, ready to crumble at any moment; they were begging to be relieved of their job. And the paint was slowly peeling off as well, revealing nothing except for more rusty metal.

David nervously stepped towards the taxi. He carefully reached out and grasped the cold and crooked door handle and pulled. The car door opened with a creak.

It hit him by surprise. The putrid stench assaulted him and sent him reeling. As David crawled onto the dark rough leather seats of the taxi, the smell of dry vomit, body odor, and cigarette smoke enveloped him. He gulped uneasily and tried to hold his breath, but this barely helped, as he could almost taste the sources of the foul reek. He shuddered.

David could see the man’s face ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

David nervously stepped towards the taxi. He carefully reached out and grasped the cold and crooked door handle and pulled. The car door opened with a creak.

David could see the man’s face through the rearview mirror. He couldn’t see much however; it was covered in dark brown unkempt hair. There were two tiny dark slits in the mass of hair that David managed to spot, where the man’s eyes were most likely situated. His cracked lips opened up to reveal crooked yellow teeth as well as a big lump of chew-tobacco. In a disgruntled voice, he asked David,

“Where ya wanna go?”

David waited. He was scared. Scared enough to forget about the fact that the driver ignorantly splashed water on him with his taxi. How could this world bear such a wicked and sinister man?

Eventually, summoning his courage, David managed to tell the driver where to go. The driver let out a deep grunt through his big matted beard and then turned his keys. The engine was like grinding metal as it struggled to ignite. An empty can of coke rolled around on the floor beneath David’s feet, clanking loudly as it collided with other pieces of trash. The tires let out a high-pitched ‘screech!’ as they started rolling.

David sat nervously throughout the entire ride, anxious to get off as soon as possible. He bit his lip, and prayed silently in his head, that the driver or the taxi wouldn’t do something dangerous. He clenched his fists tightly, and his face was beaded with sweat, even on a dreary cold autumn day like this one. He tried to roll down the windows to get rid of the nauseous smell, but instead was confronted by an ancient yellow school bus pumping its tainted fumes.

The taxi approached a traffic light, and David’s heart sank. An endless sea of traffic stretched through the city, flooding the streets with vehicles like a massive school of silver herring fish.

David stared anxiously at the ticking taximeter in front of him. The desperation grew inside him. He was longing for that single breath of fresh air the moment he stepped out of the taxi. Time slowed down. Every second dragged on, as he hoped the glowing red numbers in front of him would stop counting upwards every mile, to signal the end of the journey. They didn’t stop.

Peer Reviews

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

sydneyhopcroft

7th of Apr 2012

Quality of writing

The Quality of Written Communication is fair, though the over-indulgence in an adjective/adverb thesaurus has compromised the fluency of the piece. A small bit of more complex punctuation points would also improve this answer.

Level of analysis

The candidate write at fair length about something that is of very little importance, and their descriptions of the events that do occur is not sufficient enough to gain much higher than a low D grade for GCSE. It is a common misconception to all candidates struggling to achieve higher than a C grade that by stacking adjective upon adjective, they are describing well. The candidate has not taken into consideration the rounding of any character - David and the driver appear merely as vehicles to show off the poorly-constructed vocabulary which has been clumsily stacked on top of itself and leads to sentences like "The odious sight was distasteful" create a paradox with one powerful adjective and another which suggests and air of reserved formality, meaning the image is ambiguous and hard to imagine. Candidates should exercise more control over the language they use as imagery is everything in creative writing tasks.

Response to question

This is a Creative Writing task where the candidate describes an unpleasant experience. The answer here is focused, but alas, there is no direction to the piece. There is not even any inclination as to why the candidate gave his protagonist a name, as it does not feature as an aspect of the piece - it only means something to the reader and it is not at all symbolic and does not carry any allegorical weight. It seems pointless. Not only that, this story goes nowhere; there is very little description that leads to a story - this is merely a description of surroundings and very little occurs plot-wise. This is not good for candidates wishing to write interesting short stories.

Did you find this review helpful? Join our team of reviewers and help other students learn