descriptive writing of 'murder scene'

aliqueenb

okay hello again am all this that i have written is homework u see im in 2nd year honours english(can u believe it with the stadard, i cant!!!) and im just curious to see what people think....so again be as critical as you like please....

A cold shiver ran up my spine when I entered the room, the body was under the desk. The room was pefectly normal but a glass smashed on the floor and one bullet lying on the groud. The errie silence seeped into the room.(i cant think of a good simile here?) The smell was disgusting.(again i need a simile?) Everywhere was hard and cold like the mind of the murderer. My mind wandered back to what had happened.........see i was thinking narrator could of been the killer is it too soon to reveal?
(

please write back....

Simile's are great and all, but not when they're done badly. You don't even have to use them, really. For example, how can a room be hard and cold like the mind of the murder (perhaps you meant murderer?). It doesn't make much sense to me. Maybe something like, "The room was hard and cold like slabs in a morturary" or something along those lines.

There are still some spelling mistakes. Have you got microsoft word? You should really use it's spellchecker facility. As you will lose marks if your spelling is bad. If you haven't got Word, try using google. Do a search for whatever word you're trying to spell.. how you think its spelt first. At the top it will say, "did you mean --". Thats something I've found quite useful.

If you intend on doing honours straight through, I strongly recommend you stay away from txt-talk as much as possible. It is evident from your typing that you tend to slip in between them.

TerrorFirmer

This shows a lack of creativity. You are trying far too hard to be overly descriptive and the similies you are trying to use do not read well, nor are they really credible. In fact some of them do not even make sense if you think about them logically.

Write what feels natural, and have a think about the comparisons you are drawing - saying an otherwise undescribed place is "hard and cold" like the "mind of the murderer" does not really sound very realistic - instead you could say something like "The place generated an aura of coldness; not unlike the horrific events perpetrated here"

Also, the small details - I assume you mean there was a single shell casing on the floor, not an actual unfired bullet...

aliqueenb

HavoK wrote:

This shows a lack of creativity.

Also, the small details - I assume you mean there was a single shell casing on the floor, not an actual unfired bullet...

how do u get creativety!!!....ohh yea i actually have always thought to my self i had no imagination whatsoever...sad isint it!
ohh the bullet thingy yea i suppose i do sorry im not up on the whole gun thing!

Blush_01

Ali, sarcasm won't get you anywhere. I've refrained from commenting on your writing because I didn't want to be "mean". But we're not here to check your homework for you. If you're interested in writing, great. But unless you actually want to take advice from people, or can refute what they're saying, please don't try to turn these boards into a babysitting service. We're not here to tell you you're brilliant because you're in second year, and that some day you'll be a genius and a famous writer. If you ask for advice, or critique, deal with the fact that what you're told is an opinion, not what you necessarily might want to hear.

And please stop asking people to comment on your writing in other threads, it's really annoying. So annoying that I, for one, asked BEAT to try to get you to stop, so I wouldn't get really annoyed with you.

Now, back to the writing.

A cold shiver ran up my spine when I entered the room, the body was under the desk. The room was pefectly normal but a glass smashed on the floor and one bullet lying on the groud. The errie silence seeped into the room. (i cant think of a good simile here?) The smell was disgusting. (again i need a simile?) Everywhere was hard and cold like the mind of the murderer. My mind wandered back to what had happened......... see i was thinking narrator could of been the killer is it too soon to reveal?

First sentence - how are the two parts related? Why not use a full stop instead of a comma, it'd make sense that way.

Second sentence - a glass lay/was smashed on the ground before you came in, or it smashed when you came in? One bullet was lying on the ground? (a single bullet sounds better than one bullet IMHO) If you spell the simple words correctly, and have sentences that make some sort of sense, your readers will like it better.

Third sentence - seeped implies something soaking. Poetic license and all the rest aside, seeped is too liquid-y for *eerie* silence. Filled would be perfectly adequate - there's no need to use complicated stuff where something simple will do. Plus, don't force a simile onto something, it will sound forced, which is the last thing you need.

Fourth sentence - Everywhere was hard and cold, fine. But like the mind of the murderer? It doesn't work. It's that simple. The murderer hasn't been introduced so far, and all of a sudden we're privy to what it's like inside his head in a semi-physical way? I don't buy it.

Fifth sentence - why is your mind wandering back to what has happened... if you're in the immediate scene and you expect the reader to be too? The jump was too rapid without saying what your mind wandered back to, or where. If it's a case of you wandering back to the scene you've just been describing, then you need to describe it differently from the beginning. If you're wandering back to what happened before you saw the dead body under the desk, then you have to say that too.

It might only be a paragraph that's five sentences long, but you need to match the beginning and the end and have them make sense. The person reading this isn't in your head and doesn't know exactly what you mean. They're looking for meaning from the words you've given them. If it's confusing, especially in the first paragraph, then you'll have mentally turned the people you want to enjoy your writing off before you even get properly started. Ok? But keep at it. Practice makes perfect!