The Sunday News
Charles Dube
“WHEN you can write confidently, you can make things happen; you can campaign for things that matter to you; you can present yourself and your personality in writing for job or university applications; you can express your deepest, most personal feelings; you can write stories and poems that make others laugh or weep. In fact, you can write to change the world!”
These are wise words from Debra Myhill.
How does one become a good essay or composition writer? Teachers will tell you that you can improve your writing by reading widely. This helps you become familiar with different forms of texts and writing styles, and to improve your vocabulary. Take the opportunity to read everyday texts such as newspapers, magazines, websites and advertisements. One way of making writing personal and imaginative is to choose vocabulary carefully.
This can give the reader a very clear sense of you, your attitudes, and how you feel about things. Words can help build up a balanced picture of an experience. One of the best ways to provide variety in your writing is to use synonyms, which gives you the opportunity to try something different. Expand your vocabulary by researching and learning new words. You will be rewarded for using originality, high order vocabulary and flair appropriately in your writing.
Before you start writing, remember to plan your work. I know students are not keen on writing plans before writing their compositions or essays. The general feeling is that plans are unnecessary and a waste of time. Ignorance is very dangerous. Planning helps you present better organised work. There is cohesion on compositions which have plans. Students avoid mixing up ideas when they have planned their work.
Students should think of the following when they write: What type of text are they writing? (What is the main purpose?) Who is the target reader? What are the main points to include? How can they vary sentence structure and length? How can they make the opening grab the reader? Will the paragraphs work in a logical sequence? Vocabulary should be varied and interesting. At times they can decide on how they can make their personalities come through.
Examiners say: ensure that you make decisions about subject, genre and audience before you start to write.
Whatever task you choose, think carefully about words, sentences and paragraphs. Try to be both ambitious and original in your writing. When writing compositions students use their imagination. When using imagination students create wider ranging texts which often go beyond their personal experiences. What are the features of this type of a story?
We have characters to interest the reader; detailed setting to help build atmosphere; setback or crisis in story (maybe several); descriptive passages; dialogue; climax and satisfying end. You need to have an interesting title that establishes genre or type; specify details of the setting. Use dialogue to move the story. You can use varied characters for conflict or contrast; introduce a crisis to change pattern of narrative and have an ending that challenges the reader to think.
When students write their compositions, they should aim to both entertain their audience and show a range of writing skills. As stated earlier, the most important thing is to identify the type of subject, because this will influence setting, that is where your story takes place, characters, dialogue and vocabulary. The examiners will be looking to see how well you can: get the reader interested and keep him or her wanting to read on; organise ideas in varied sentences; structure your writing so that it holds a reader’s attention; structure your story with paragraphs of different lengths and purposes; for example, description, action as well as dialogue. Use interesting and appropriate vocabulary — with correct spellings and accurate punctuation.
Examples of genre on composition writing I am referring to are: horror where you have mysterious characters and ghosts. You can have fantasy where plot elements could be magic spells, and epic battles. You also have science fiction (Sci-fi) where we talk of futuristic or space-based settings. Romance, where we talk of lovers and villains.
Lastly, there is adventure with its heroic characters and villains.
What makes a good opening? The most important part of any story is the opening. If it does not capture the attention of the reader, the reader is likely to give up, and no matter how strong the characters are, or how exciting the events in the rest of the story, they will be missed. To develop a story effectively, you need more than just action and a series of events. By describing the setting, you can take your reader right into the heart of the story, helping to create atmosphere, build up tension or even help slow down a story if tension is too tight.
Think of the following ideas to help you in writing descriptive passages: think about the effect on your reader, visualise the setting or sketch it to help you focus on key aspects, vary vocabulary by using synonyms and use sense impressions — sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste. Create strong believable characters. You can achieve this by first having a clear idea of them in your own head. Imagine how they appear, how they behave, how they think and how they respond to other characters.
All the above aspects need to be linked to create credible characters that are portrayed consistently throughout your writing. Once you have a clear idea of your characters, you need to think carefully about how to convey them to your readers. This could be done through the use of comparisons (similes and metaphors) to describe them. These help give clues about their personalities. Avoid flat, detailed physical descriptions, such as “he had grey hair”.
Choose the way that your characters speak with care. The way people speak reflects the way that they think.
Include some dialogue in your story. Here are some rules for speech layout in writing: Use a new line for a change of speaker, the first word inside speech marks begins with a capital letter, separate the words in speech marks from the rest of the sentence with a comma, exclamation mark or question mark. The words actually spoken go inside speech marks. What is the purpose of dialogue in a story? Dialogue can be used help move the story on, explain events, provide humour, extend understanding of character, vary the length of sentences or increase tension.
We leave it here for today, but more is still to come on skills for writing. Follow this page.
For views link up with [email protected] or sms only to 0772113207
