short storys

fireflys

lads our teacher didnt prepare us at all for this in english ...im just wonderin would anyone be able to post ideas for short storys or anywhere i would be able to find them...im really stuck with this on wednesday...thanks

Cipango

fireflys wrote: »

lads our teacher didnt prepare us at all for this in english ...im just wonderin would anyone be able to post ideas for short storys or anywhere i would be able to find them...im really stuck with this on wednesday...thanks

To be honest, stay away from them!! They yield the lowest marks and not everyone can do them. If you have had no practice or no guidence, well then im sorry but its too late for you to decide on doing a short story. Maybe a personal essay may suit better. Hope this helps.

lallychops

short stories involve imagination and a decent interesting plot.

start with a sentence that will grab your examiners interest such as a piece of dialouge in the middle of a conflict...

your charcters have to be engaging and there has to be conflict and a resolution either positive or negative...

whatever you do..do not do something completely obvious at the end of your story...there should be a twist the examiner hasnt seen coming ....if its boring they will just look for reasons to take marks.....the titles are generally broad but dont go off on too much of a tangent...i would also start thinking about characters now like 25 yr old male...tom....drug addict etc etc then you can slot him into your story on wednesday.:)

good luck and i hope this helps

Victoria.

Your teacher probably doesn't want you to do it because out of all of the options it is marked the hardest. If people are going to consider it they have to have experience in writing short stories with creative plots and believable too, it's very difficult to do that in an exam so most teachers would attempt to push you away from it. I'm doing the speech persuasive/argumentative style which I think is the easiest or maybe as someone else suggested you could do a personal essay.

LovexxLife

Victoria. wrote: »

I'm doing the speech persuasive/argumentative style which I think is the easiest or maybe as someone else suggested you could do a personal essay.

Hi, how are you preparing that?
Thats the one im going for too. In the mocks i wrote on how beauty compeitions are demeaning to woman and got 76, but didnt have it planned at all.
what other topics for that should i go over?

Ashashi

I did the beauty contest one, which is a horrible topic and got 65. I am going to probably do a short story if the titles are kind. A speech is good as well, once you like the topic. The beauty one seemed easy, but I made a shambles of it, had points all over the place. Was quite poor.

Short stories are usually the toughest, but if you can make it interesting, and not very cliched, then it rake in the marks. Usually being very descriptive can help, describe the environment, describe your characters feeling, this kind of thing.

Also, don't make it extremely deep, there doesn't have to be a secret meaning underneath it all, just write an interesting story, it could have great dialouge, could have an interesting monologue, you could describe a battle, anything really, as long as it is interesting.

Keeping the examiner interested is key.

Victoria.

LovexxLife wrote: »

Hi, how are you preparing that?
Thats the one im going for too. In the mocks i wrote on how beauty compeitions are demeaning to woman and got 76, but didnt have it planned at all.
what other topics for that should i go over?

Hey I'm going to look at my revision books to refresh my memory of the different techniques used in the style because that's how you get the marks. Things like triadic structures, statistics, anecdotes, rhetorical questions.

On the day because I don't do engineering I'll be at home until 12 and I'll go online for a bit and pick up the main headlines and maybe a quote of two from someone like Gandhi on the future of the world.

That's it really and then hope that the person setting the paper will be kind.

I'm not going to learn off essays on the environment, peer pressure, the media and anorexia. I think it's a waste of time and I'm going to put the effort into paper two and save the memory:pac: A lot of people in school are doing this but the majority of them are doing anorexia and bulimia, I mean the question last year was on science and our world, not a great situation to be in.

Good luck with the study:)

lc2010

Victoria. wrote: »

On the day because I don't do engineering I'll be at home until 12 and I'll go online for a bit and pick up the main headlines and maybe a quote of two from someone like Gandhi on the future of the world.

You might want to double check your timetable! Wouldn't be a good start to miss the first exam!!:p:)

All of the above comments, don't take up the story option unless you've done a lot of practice on it.

Also, *stories.

SirDelboy18

Character is key. A good character can make even a very mediocre plot good. Look towards, rich, descriptive adjectives and a complex protagonist. Limit the characters too.

I personally like to make my short stories about very sinister/sadistic characters.

Have two in my mind at the moment. I know their ages, the extent of their "darkness", about which will achieve redemption and which won't.

I would try if at all possible to have a plot worked out in your head.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend short stories though. If you don't have the technique nailed to a tee than you are fu**ed.

Our teacher in school told the whole class essentially to do them, when only a quarter could ever write a good one.

Corkfeen

I love writing short stories and would consider my work to be a relatively high standard. But theres no way in hell that i'm gonna choose it in the actual exam, it appears to be one of the hardest marking of the choices....

FordieMUFC

If you've never done a short story before you're taking a big risk going into the exam on wednesday and doing one to be honest.
I've only been doing short stories for the last few months and it took me a while to be getting a good mark in them, gradually pushing from 70 up to 78 so it takes practice, which you didn't get off your teacher so I say stick to the speeches or something

ldxo15wus6fpgm

I've never heard anyone saying they mark stories harder... maybe the people who say such things just didn't write good stories? Once you can get their attention and write something at least a little interesting it's easy enough. Have you ever tried it in school? If so did you get good marks?

dorothymantooth

well my teacher is an ass. cant take his eyes off the girls skirts for 2 minutes to teach us

Limerickhurler

Just a quick but urgent question. Would yhis be a good structure for a short story: THE BEGINNING AND MIDDLE is mostly symbolic and metaphorical(based on animals) with the end linking it to a real persons life. I know people say stay away from the short stories, what do ye think??

LNags

what makes a short story a short story is the time it is set in! as in an hour, day, week...
for the pre there was a question entitled write a short story on one of the pictures in text three...one was of a boy doing an exam


so i basically wrote a first person narrative, (me?)
it started something about my mother said i would be a toilet cleaner... bla bla...how much better my brother and friends were, how id done stupid stuff (humour) and how i kept getting this weird "niggly" feeling....
all the way thru the essay i kept remarking on the "niggly" feeling and i also commented on how, even though i was great at art, during my life drawing i zoned out and left the person with no head or no chair...so there was half a body floating on the page...bla bla bla... how it was such a shame id zoned out and how im a failure at everthing..then suddenly the "niggly" feeling came back...stronger than ever this time... the faint scratching on pens and pencils brought me back to reality... i looked around and saw my classmates, heads down scratching furiously at their pink and blue papers... and then it struck me...i only had 20 minutes in which to write a whole, leaving certificate standard english essay. the art fiasco had happened again... it just finished with "hand me the domestos and rubber gloves" or something...

i know its not fab but i got like 80 for it... the only reason is my teacher said it was "engaging"...but not interesting or gripping..lol....

LNags

Limerickhurler wrote: »

Just a quick but urgent question. Would yhis be a good structure for a short story: THE BEGINNING AND MIDDLE is mostly symbolic and metaphorical(based on animals) with the end linking it to a real persons life. I know people say stay away from the short stories, what do ye think??

id love to read it! if it is well written and has loads of imagery and the setting is set properly then id say go for it!! however, with a plot like that u are limiting yourself greatly on the day...

i never ever plan essays...i seem to do much better under time pressure...my exams are always much better than any classwork i do.we get a week and i just mess around with a stupid idea all week and then get disheartened and write some terrible, terrible stuff!!