Creative Writing

Today, we worked on the following bit of in-class creative writing.

I also let students know their marks from the Multiple Choice Section of the test -- everybody passed!

After spring break, we'll work on a novel study: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. But for now we'll begin a creative writing assignment:

English 10  Assignment

Write a narrative in which you use at least five of the words/phrases below.

1.very small toe

2.cocoon

3.a tailless cat

4. telepathy

5.  forking muck

6.monstrously long legs

7.mutant

8. hideously exaggerated

9. clutch the yellow ribbon

10.skinny fish-shaped things

11.sticky strands

12.have no tongue

NOTE:  you  may change the endings of words (e.g. ‘fork muck,’ ‘forks muck’, ‘forked muck’)

Requirements

∙ must begin with dialogue

∙ underline the five words you use

∙ colourful title page

∙  in pen or typed

∙ double-spaced

∙ maximum 750 words

We worked on this for half an hour today: we'll continue working on this on Monday when we return.

Mr. Pfeiffer tried his hand at this assignment and came up with this:

She Likes Clean Things

            “Bevy, could you please pass me the salinity tester?”

            “Just what I need,” she thought.  “Another distraction.  And from HIM!  He was unbelievable!  The nerve some men have.”

            Without taking her eyes off her work station Beverly D’Angelo   indifferently passed Doug the syringe, hoping that perhaps telepathically he would get the message. 

            As usual, her morning routine required her utmost attention.  Roland, the last person to operate the centrifuge was still at home on medical leave recovering from the nearly severed finger which was a product of careless distraction.  Beverly, would not be so careless.

            Doug, now clutching the yellow ribbon of litmus paper , continued to stare at the brown curls of Beverly’s hair that cascaded down the back of her lab coat.  With the whirr of machines in the background, Doug once again struggled to make everything all right.  “Did you catch Dharma and Greg last night?  It was hilarious. Dharma lost her very small toe nail after Greg stepped on her foot during their ballroom  dance recital.”

            “Rah-lly smaaahll toe-nayehl,” she repeated to herself.  “His Australian English is so  . . . so impersonal.  Does he really think I still care?  She silently continued replacing the test tubes in the cylinder for their second run.

            “And then the dance instructor, Raoul, decided to . . . “

            “Jerk!  Idiot!  Creep!   Looking that way he did at his old girlfriend.  She wasn’t even that good looking,” she lied to herself.  “Her hair  was backcombed -- BACKCOMBED!  And who wears blue eye shadow.  HEL-LOH?  It’s not the eighties!”

            “And then Greg says to Dharma . . .”

            From Beverly’s point of view, the last Saturday’s date began charmingly enough.  Doug arrived in his old Pinto in which he always felt insulted.  Charming as he was, Douglas Pfeiffer had a tendency to bend the truth, and, once more, he had  hideously exaggerated just how ugly the car was.  It was fine.

            It was at the restaurant when it all began.  Dimly lit and smelling pungently of  basil and balsamic vinegar, the Italian cafe was a favourite of Beverly’s.  No sooner, though, had they been seated when SHE came over:  the dreaded EX.  Blonde, tall, thin, beautiful -- every woman’s nightmare and every man’s lurid fantasy.

            With monstrously long legs covered only partly by a short leather miniskirt (“It had to be leather,” Bev thought), she played and clutched the yellow ribbon in her hair.  She started to ruin what Beverly had thought would be a wonderful first date.

            Whirr!  Thunk!”  The sound of the centrifuge’s hydraulic breaks helped bring Bev back to her work.   As she replaced the test tubes for their third rotation, she could hear Doug’s desperate attempt to make small talk while working with the sticky strands of Trisodium Flouride. 

            “Flirt with your old girlfriend in front of me,” she mumbled to herself deviously.  It was then that she first gently caressed his hand.  Surprised with this surprising but not unwanted show of affection, Doug briefly lost his focus with the centrifuge.  Carefully, Beverly slipped his fingertips into the outer cylinder of the machine, just like she had to Roland’s hand had three weeks earlier. 

            Doug Pfeiffer, his heart now beating faster, was SO preoccupied with the sensual touch of Beverly’s hand that he didn’t even think to say goodbye to his index finger.  She could still see the quick splash of blood on the lab coat that reminded her of the spilt raspberry syrup on her Aunt Gertie’s white table cloth.  She sure did like clean things.

            Not always sadistic, and  a bit shocked at her own thoughts, a smile crept across Beverly’s thin lips at the delicious taste of getting even .

            She turned to look over her shoulder at the victim of her revenge, at Douglas, as he continued to scream, when she heard the quick “Snick” of the centrifuge and then looked back in time to see her own blood nearly coating the stack of graduated beakers in a disturbingly pretty pattern of crimson spots.  Funny, she later thought: she didn’t feel the pain ‘till after she looked at her severed thumb.