Creative writing

I need help on writing description about waiting at a bus stop. OR lost at sea and finally seeing a lighthouse. I'm so bad at creative writing please help. Thank You.

What kind of help do you need? As in do you want inspiration, or a solid idea to write, or help with the technicalities of actually writing it, or something else?

Descriptive writing often includes references to the five senses: what can you see, hear, smell feel etc, rather than just the visual. Use imagery (similar, metaphor, personification etc) and a wide range of imaginative adjectives. Use a wide vocabulary. Consider sound effects (onomatopoeia and alliteration). Vary your sentences for effect. Go and stand at a bus stop and get a sense of what you can see around you, the sounds etc.

Will it be a detached description or in first person, describing your experience there? Describe the conversations around you, the comings snd goings of people, traffic etc.

The hard chemical rain lashed against the glowing carbon structure of the waiting post. Trundling metal behemoths ground by, sending red dust spiralling into rusty clouds. The terraformed atmosphere was expertly engineered but the gravity was a third heavier than on homeworld Earth (that glinted blue in the black sky). That's not to say that the girl wouldn't have been huddled and bowed anyway; there was more than gravity weighing her down.

(So what will the bus look like? Where's the girl going? What's her problem? How can we bring the narrative to a conclusion within 500 words?)

Firstly, I have to recommend you watch Mr Salles’s youtube videos on creating effective, ingenuitive descriptions and takes you through how you would plan as well.

My own personal take on the matter is to jumpstart your imagination from the wording of the question and try to take information from personal experiences to inspire you if relevant. For instance, use times where you’ve waited at a bus stop to help think about ideas and it also adds a sense of realism to your writing making it more relevant to readers and thus making it more ‘convincing’ and ‘compelling’. Was the experience of waiting positive/negative – tone of writing? Are you going to describe what was happening inside your mind (what you were thinking whilst waiting at the bus stop reminiscing about a previous memory – what happened earlier) or describing the setting throughout and how it had some sort of impact on you e.g. weather, people, buses. Are you crafting the bus stop around you (a personal connection), the bus stop throughout time (past, present, future) As you can see there are infinite possibilities. One tip I have is to make it completely obvious in the start what you are describing through a series of subtle hints – things you would relate to a bus stop without saying the words ‘bus stop’ repeatedly (don’t write at the end of the description it was a bus stop having left the readers with no clues from the beginning).

For the 2nd option – ‘being lost at sea and finally seeing a lighthouse’ I would encourage you to think more emotionally, emotively. Focus on the emotions associated with ‘being lost’ and the sense of relief upon seeing the lighthouse. This 2nd option for me provides you with a fantastic opportunity to use contrast and juxtaposition within your writing to make it seem more interesting. You can compare the darkness and emptiness of the setting/parallel with your internal emotions of despair and solitude and then have a beautifully crafted description of the light emanating from the lighthouse perhaps using personification or a sense of ethereal presence guiding you to safety/then again referring to (not stating) your emotions.

4 basic rules I follow when doing description
1) Avoid being narrative at all costs – this will bring down your marks as you aren’t answering the question ‘description’ . Minimise the action, 0 dialogue.
2) Use lots of contrast – this is something examiners love and almost all writers use this.
3) You have to think about the structure of your writing as well the actual language itself as you get marks for structure. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to make your writing cyclical referring to something at the start and at the end providing a sense of finality. Another way is to use a flashblack/flashforward showing the examiner you have a grasp of manipulating time and also acts as a tool for contrast between different time periods.
4) Don’t forget the similes, metaphors and personification. I’m also not a particularly creative person myself and so have to consciously and sometimes forcefully use these techniques appropriately and effectively to get more marks.