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Creative writing story (intro)... check

This is an introduction.. Can someone please check if it's ok please? (e.g. punctuation, spelling, if it makes sense etc...) Thanks:p:E.... :ta:
It was a dark and stormy evening. Woke up sweating and screaming with fear. Flashing lightning streaked through the ajar window. Rapidly, shifted towards the window and shut it firmly, closing the dark red drapes too. My mother had long ago told me that lighting could pass through glass... whether that was true or not, I wasn't intending to take the risk! I lay in bed, awaiting the lightning to pass. The sky was tenebrous and gloomy. I just desiderated that it wouldn't rain... I started to think again about last night's eerie sounds. Something-- or someone was pacing around the creaking floorboards of the house next door. Spine chilling screeching besides my door, that kept me awake all night. I had dared not move an inch. Although,that would have been impossible, no-one had lived in that house for centuries. At least, that was what I had been told...
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by Monica Micaela
This is an introduction.. Can someone please check if it's ok please? (e.g. punctuation, spelling, if it makes sense etc...) Thanks:p:E.... :ta:
It was a dark and stormy evening. Woke up sweating and screaming with fear. Flashing lightning streaked through the ajar window. Rapidly, shifted towards the window and shut it firmly, closing the dark red drapes too. My mother had long ago told me that lighting could pass through glass... whether that was true or not, I wasn't intending to take the risk! I lay in bed, awaiting the lightning to pass. The sky was tenebrous and gloomy. I just desiderated that it wouldn't rain... I started to think again about last night's eerie sounds. Something-- or someone was pacing around the creaking floorboards of the house next door. Spine chilling screeching besides my door, that kept me awake all night. I had dared not move an inch. Although,that would have been impossible, no-one had lived in that house for centuries. At least, that was what I had been told...


"It was a dark and stormy evening" - not only is this quite cliche, but you are telling the reader about the weather here, not showing! Instead, why not describe the weather in a little more detail? Try to use personification to describe weather - it is normally very useful. But try not to overdue it!

"Woke up sweating and screaming with fear" - who woke up?

"Flashing lightening streaked through the ajar window" - you might want to use 'luminous,' instead of 'flashing.' Everyone knows that lightening flashes, but using luminous is more ambitious, and, alongside this, it makes it alliterative.

"Rapidly, shifted towards the window and shut it firmly, closing the dark red drapes too." - I like the change in sentence start, but again, who is shifting towards the window? Additionally, you are telling the reader too much. Why not say Rapidly, I walked over to the window, enclosing myself in a rectangular room of darkness. instead?

"My mother had long ago told me that lightening could pass through glass... whether that was true or not, I wasn't intending to take the risk!" - I wouldn't use ellipsis there; I would use a dash instead, to highlight your feelings. A nice use of the exclamation mark to vary the tone of your writing. However, I would make this more descriptive: As the memories of my mother's hauls about lightening passing through glass, I rapidly walked over to the window, enclosing myself in a rectangular room of darkness. Do you see how I merged this sentence and the previous one together, to create a really long one to build tension? What would be brilliant after this sentence is a really short one.

"I lay in bed, awaiting the lightening to pass" - as I said that a short sentence would be great after the previous sentence, why not try to change this a little, to make it more effective?

"The sky was tenebrous and gloomy" - great vocabulary, but 'gloomy' could be changed to 'melancholic.' Also, what is in the sky that is making it obscure and mysterious? We know lightening is in the sky, but what about the clouds - you can easily hint that it is gloomy.

"I just desiderated that it wouldn't rain... I started to think again about last night's eerie sounds." - I might suggest that you reflect on last night, rather than say that you thought about it. It would be more suitable for your purpose - you're trying to describe; NOT tell!

"Something-- or someone was pacing around the creaking floorboards of the house next door." - incorrect usage of the dash here. It should be Something - or someone - was.... Instead of the long sentence. Why not say: Floorboards squeaked from the house next door. Someone - or something - was pacing around.

"Spine-chilling screeching besides my door, that kept me awake all night." - you could change this to Spine-chilling screeching came from under my door. It kept me awake all night.

"I had dared not move an inch." - this is a brilliant attempt to make short sentence, but it could be shorter. I didn't move an inch.

"Although,that would have been impossible, no-one had lived in that house for centuries." - this is not a grammatically correct sentence - although what? My advice would be to say: Although the house has been abandoned for centuries, something is always lurching around in the darkness.

All in all, I think that it is a good attempt at descriptive writing, although it needs work to be sophisticated. I have given you some feedback above, and tips, so try to adapt them to your writing. I think this piece has a lot of potential, if you focus on description just a little bit more.

Good luck! Message me if you need anymore help.








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Thank you for the help, it helped me so much:smile: I just was trying not to use ''I'' too much, so i tried to replace it:P







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