ANOTHER NON-HUMAN PERSPECTIVE STORY

This will be a short post.


I was browsing through my old posts when I came across this excellent story done by an ex-student.


The story is about a robbery at the gold shop. The narrator in the story is one of the gold items in the shop, and it ties in with the PSLE composition I posted last week (regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using a non-human perspective). So I thought I would post it for your reference.


High recommend that you read this piece. In the PSLE, if the language is a little more polished, it would score mid to high 30s.

HOW TO START A STORY AKA HOW TO START A PSLE COMPOSITION PART II

Welcome back to the second part of How to Start a Story. You can read Part I and Part III by clicking on the links.

To recap, in the previous post I talked about 9 techniques to start a story. We went through 3 of them:

1.          Describe the setting

2.          Speech/Dialogue

3.          Sound

Today we’ll cover the next 3:

4.          Characterisation

5.          Question

6.          Flashback

4. Characterisation

Characterisation refers to the description of a character, usually a main character of the story, either the protagonist (the good guy) or the antagonist (the bad guy).

Two things to note about characterisation:

Describe relevant trait of character

For your storyline to be tight and compelling, do not simply put together a haphazard description of the character. The description must be relevant to the story.

As an example, if your story is about bullying, and you decide to start with the description of the bully, then you would need to show why he is a bully (swaggers like a gangster, cuts queues, forces his classmates to do his homework, etc.). Or you could do a characterisation on the protagonist. You could describe him as being a coward, always trying to stay of out trouble because he fears the bully’s attentions will be turned on him. The turn in the story will come about when the bully picks on the protagonist’s best friend (or maybe a girl he likes  ;) ) and that forces the protagonist to stand up against the bully.

The point I’m trying to make is that the trait you describe during characterisation should be LINKED to the story.

From general to specific

What I mean here is that when we describe a character, we are talking about the character’s general behaviour. But stories are made up of specific events so we have to link the general behaviour to the specific event.

I used to think this is instinctively grasped by most pupils until I came across pupils who didn’t do the transition properly and the story didn’t flow smoothly. See this post.

Making the transition is easy: make a reference to the specific event by using words like ‘one day’, ‘that incident’, and/or the ellipsis (a punctuation mark denoted by three full stops '...') etc.

Using the crab story as an example to link the general to the specific:

Darryl was addicted to computer games. He played it every free moment he had; in class when his teacher was teaching, his thoughts would wander to his favourite game as he thought about what moves he should make to make it to the next level; sometimes he even skipped his homework to play the games. His parents had coaxed, cajoled and chided him, but it was to no avail. All their words rolled off him like water off a duck’s back. (General description) Until one day something unforgettable happened… (moving to the specific)

(The specific) It was the night before the class’ Community Involvement Programme (CIP). Early next morning, Darryl’s class was to go to East Coast Park to pick up litter. It was almost midnight but Darryl had no intention of going to bed. He was determined to finish the new game he had bought. He tried and he tried, time ticked on. Twelve midnight. One o’clock. Two o’clock. It was after four in the morning before Darryl finally turned in.

Needless to say, he had a hard time getting out of bed the next morning. He snoozed all the way to the beach, and was unable to admire the tranquil beauty of the early morning beach. He was so exhausted that he even failed to listen to his teacher’s instructions, missing entirely the safety part whereby Mr Chong stressed to the class the need to use tongs or gloves when touching the litter…

You can guess how the story continues.

Another type of characterisation

There is another type of characterisation besides the description of a main character. It is the description of a relationship between two people. Strictly speaking, it is not characterisation, but for ease of categorising the different types of introduction we do for stories in class, I’ve classified it as characterisation.

This type of introduction is useful for stories about quarrels (describe the hostile relationship between neighbours for example, before recounting the infamous quarrel in the neighbourhood) or friendships (such stories usually involve a 180˚ turn in the relationship; at the start maybe one character has a tense relationship with another character and then something happened so that the two characters draw closer together, or vice versa; you could also do a complete circle — describe a close relationship in the past, then show that at the start of the narrative the relationship has already become strained, finally a development so that the characters become close again).

That is the beauty of story writing. So many possibilities. And as long as your story makes sense, anything is possible.

5, Question

We rarely do this one in class.

One thing I’ve observed about this one is the need to be careful. I’ve come across a couple of students who loved it so much they kept using it until it became cliches.

This particular student would always begin his story this way:

•             Have you ever been trapped in a fire? Well, I have. Let me share my story with you… (story about fire, obviously)

•             Have you ever been in danger of drowning? I have and let me share my experience with you… (I don’t have to tell you what this story is going to be about, do I?)

•             Have you ever been kidnapped? I have and let me share my tale with you… (Ditto.)

I think what happened in school was that the first time he tried it, it got a favourable response from the teacher so for subsequent compositions, he used it every single time. Eventually it got to such a point that he was marked down because of it.

You could get away with the introductions above if you were in Primary 3 or 4, but for P5 and 6 standards, a bit more work is required.

Example using the crab story:

Why do humans keep provoking me? All I wanted to do was to enjoy my nap in the sand, admire the sunset, enjoy a meal of detritus. But why, oh why do they keep disturbing me?

I did not want to hurt the boy. But I really thought I was in danger. I am well aware of human dietary habits, and I know my brethren and I are considered delicacies by those two-legged monsters! Let me tell you what happened and you could judge for yourself if my act was justified.

It started off as an ordinary day…

If you want it from a human perspective:

What is my favourite food? Crab, of course. Nothing gives me more pleasure than cracking open a crab’s shell and tearing into its flesh. Each time I eat a crab, I am ridding the world of one pest. Why do I loathe crabs?  It all happened because of an incident when I was young…

It was a beautiful day at the beach…

6. Flashback

This is a perennial favourite among students. But it is subject to the same danger as using a question to begin a story — it could become rather cliche.

So same thing. If you decide to use a flashback to begin your story, you need to put in more work to make sure it really stands out from the crowd.

No cliches.

First thing you do: Avoid the cliches. Many compositions starting with flashbacks involve old photographs and visible scars. So don’t do that. Do something original. I bet you many students who do the crab story would talk about Darryl looking at the scar on his little pinkie and then reminiscing about the incident. If you have to have a scar, do it with a fresh twist:

‘Grandpa, why is there a deep hole in your last finger?’ Chloe’s high voice piped out. Her grandfather who was holding her little chubby hand looked down at his gnarled and wrinkled hand before he replied her.

‘My little pinkie? Oh it happened long, long ago…’ Darryl’s memories came flooding back as he recounted one of the most unforgettable events in his childhood to his favourite grandchild…

It was day like any other day, except that Darryl’s class had to go to the beach for CIP…

Use tension/suspense to hook the reader for certain storylines

Another way to use the flashback technique effectively is to introduce suspense into the introduction, to hook the reader. But this works better for stories with more serious consequences like a fire, drowning, car accident, etc. With such stories, you could hint in the introduction about the gravity of the incident (e.g.: Little did I realise that death would brush us by.)

Beware the timeline

One thing you need to be careful of when you use the flashback as an introduction is the timeline.

The story would begin in the present, then the narrator recalls an event from the past and the story goes back to the past. Some children end the story in the past, which is a NO NO. The narrator has to return to the present, then end the story. In fact, I posted about this some time back.

Using the example we gave above about Darryl being a grandfather:

(End of story) Even though the gash was deep, the doctor told Darryl that he was lucky that it did not reach his bone. It would leave a scar when it healed, but it was not life-threatening. A few stitches, some anti-septic, and Darryl was as fine as rain after a few days.

‘What a naughty crab!’ Chloe exclaimed, her sweet voice jolting Darryl from the past back to the present. He looked at his grandchild with amusement.

‘Yes, naughty crab, isn’t it? So what do you say, let’s have crab for dinner tonight, shall we?’

Chloe pouted in a most adorable manner as she answered, ‘No, I will never eat nasty crabs again!’

Repeat: If you use a flashback to start the story, remember to return to the present in the timeline. Otherwise, your story will be considered to be out of point.

That’s it for the 3 three techniques today. Note that the techniques are not ranked in any way. Examiners do not prefer any one technique over another. What they look out for is how effective and well-written the introduction is.

Tomorrow, we’ll have the final segment in which we’ll go through the last 3 techniques.

HOW TO START A STORY AKA HOW TO START A PSLE COMPOSITION PART 1

As I said on Friday when I posted the PSLE crab composition,

we’ll go through the various techniques to start a story for this post. (Edit: I had initially wanted to go through all 9 techniques in this post, but after covering 3 techniques, I find that the post is already quite lengthy so I’ll divide this post into 2 segments and post the other 2 segments tomorrow and the day after.)

The 9 techniques  to begin a story are:

   1.          Describe the setting

2.          Speech/Dialogue

3.          Sound

4.          Characterisation

5.          Question

6.          Flashback

7.          Proverb/Idiom/Famous saying

8.          Unique action

9.          Climax/Create suspense

It’s a lot of information to go through, I believe several of these techniques — describe setting, speech/dialogue, sound, proverb/idiom/famous saying, flashback — would not be unfamiliar to you; you would have done some, if not all, of them in school.

So let’s start.

1. Describe the setting

This was the introduction we used for the crab story. What you need to note about this is that when we describe the setting, we are referring to three things:

a.           the place

b.          the time of the day (morning, afternoon or night)

c.           the weather

You don’t have to describe all three at the same time. In the crab story given, we started off by describing the time of the day (dawn). Then we described the place (by mentioning the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves)

There are three points I want to highlight about this technique:

Use the five senses

To describe a place vividly, to enable your reader to visualise the place in his mind when he is reading, describe the place using the five senses. I’m sure you know what the five senses are from your science lessons:

•             the sense of sight

•             the sense of hearing

•             the sense of touch

•             the sense of smell

•             the sense of taste

Now, this is not a checklist. If you decide to use this technique to start your composition, please don’t give one description per sense and consider it done. That’s robotic and unnatural. Two or three senses would suffice.

Which senses to use? That is a good question. Not all senses are created equal. To help your reader in his visualisation, the most important sense would be the sense of sight. This usually takes up most of the description. What can you see at the scene? Then add in one or two other senses. I’ve arranged the senses according to their relevance when writing a composition. It is common to describe what you can hear and what you can feel. These senses are most apparent to us usually.

The sense of touch tends to be a bit confusing for most pupils. They wonder: How to describe the sense of touch for a place? Smooth? Rough? Hard? Soft?

No. When we talk about the sense of touch in the description of setting, we are referring to things like: Was it a hot day? Or cool? Was there a wind blowing or if it was humid? In other words, it’s linked to the weather.

The sense of smell is appropriate when you are describing places that are associated with certain scents, like a wet market, the sea, or even a crowded bus or MRT carriage.

The sense of taste is listed last, because it usually does not apply when we are writing the introduction of a story, unless a character is eating something or thinking about food, which is quite rare (the only instance I can think of is the picture composition in which a girl drops an ice cream cone on a man in a shopping mall).

Colours!

So we’ve established that the sense of sight will take up the lion share of your descriptions if you should decide to begin your story by describing the setting.

What to describe? You can talk about the things or people you see at the scene. And a trick to remember is to talk about the colours of these things/people (see the sample story).

Which is why every year in class we had an exercise called the Rainbow Connection; it is to come up with unusual colours to replace the mundane blue, red, white, etc.

An extract of the list:

Red	Blue	White	Green	Black
scarlet	azure	pearly	verdant	sooty
coral	cerulean	ivory	olive	ebony
maroon	sapphire	snowy	emerald	inky

Some parents/teachers are against pupils using bombastic words like ‘verdant’ or ‘cerulean’. They feel that a simply written but heart-felt composition would be better writing.

I can see their point of view and if you or your child is a gifted writer who can create a story is original, sincere and well-written, that’s great. You can skip the rest of this post.

For those who need a little boost, let’s continue.

I always tell my pupils: Go for a balance. You don’t have to insert big words into every sentence you write, but don’t feel shy about using them when you can. You need to showcase your range of vocabulary in the PSLE and using less common words is a great way to do that.

Let me share with you a secret about examiners: There are shallow examiners out there who are easily impressed by big words, and the more discerning examiners? They won’t penalise you for using big words as long as you use them correctly, because they understand that this is a national examination, and you need to showcase your vocabulary powers.

So to reiterate, use the five senses (a maximum of three!) and colours if you are at a loss on how to describe the setting.

Warning

If your story is starting place indoors, you CANNOT begin by describing the weather. Most examiners will consider this out of point.

The way to get around this problem is by linking the weather outside to what’s happening indoors. For example, a picture of a boy at home. You could start by describing the sunny weather, and then add that the boy wished he could be outdoors, playing in the sunshine, rather than being cooped up at home.

2. Speech/Dialogue

There is not much to say about this except that it would be better to link whatever the character is saying to the story.

For example, in our sample story, you could have the teacher giving instructions for the CIP programme. Hint: You don’t have to give all the instructions; we know teachers can be very longwinded, we don’t want to expend precious words on CIP instructions. You could jump to the end of the instructions.

Example:

‘One more thing. Please use tongs when you are picking up the litter. Some of the litter could be very dirty, or might even have sharp edges, so it is advisable to use tongs to hold them. If you don’t have tongs, used your gloved hand. Any question?’ Mr Tan asked his class, 6 Achievement.

Darryl yawned, only half-registering his form teacher’s words. He had stayed up late the previous night; actually he had stayed up late all the way to the wee hours of this morning to play computer games. At the moment, he was struggling to keep his eyes open and his body upright, lamenting his ill fortune at being forced to pick up litter on the beach on a beautiful morning when he could have been comfortably snuggled in bed…

Warning

After the character speaks, the writer must introduce the 5Ws and 1H. Not all of them if you don’t want to, but at least enough so that the reader knows where the characters are and why they are there.

Sound

This is very similar to speech/dialogue, and is even simpler.

Essentially, you begin the story with a sound. Some common ones:

Ring — The narrator is in class or in school

Ding dong — A story beginning at home

Crash — A story about something breaking (glass window, vase, etc.)

Bang — A story about a car accident

Splash — A story about someone drowning

Note that if you start your story with one of the last three sounds, you’re essentially starting in the middle (usually the climax) of the story. It overlaps with the technique of starting the story at the climax, and in terms of the timeline, you would have to go back to the beginning to address your 5Ws and 1H before proceeding with the story.

A common question is whether to put the sound in inverted commas.

NO, you don’t. Because inverted commas are used for:

•             direct speech when someone is talking

•             quoting what someone has said or an excerpt from a passage

•             irony

When you write sounds, none of the above applies, so you don’t have to use inverted commas for the sound.

Example:

Vroom…Vroom…(note that the sound words are not in inverted commas) The loud roars alerted me to the fact that something was up. I know those sounds. They were produced by the big boxes that transport the two-legged humans around. Those sounds were a lot louder than what I usually heard. Curious, I popped my eyes out of the sand and scanned my surroundings…

Here is a list of onomatopoeia (sound words) for you. Take a look at it. You never know. Some of them might come in handy someday.

Note: No example is given for the first post since the sample story starts with describing the setting.

This post is turning out to be a lot longer than I expect. If I were to talk about all 9 techniques here, I might exceed 5000 words. So I’ve decided to stop here, and leave the rest for another two posts. I think this would be enough for you to chew on and digest. Try to process the information in this post before we move on to the other techniques.

Here are Part II and Part III.