Over the holiday, remember you should still be reading books in English, and you also have the following homework task to last you over the Songkran holidays:
Write a story of between 1,000 and 2000 words on the theme of 'Transformation', or 'Change'. It is due to be handed in on the first day back at school after the holidays.
It can be any genre or mixture of genres (fantasy, horror, detective, thriller, sci-fi, comedy etc) but you need to make it as good as it can be. That means you shouldn't hand in your first draft - you should write the story, then go back and check it for mistakes and edit it to make it as good as possible. (Paragraph breaks, correct punctuation, speech marks, interesting connectives and adjectives, clear and memorable descriptive writing etc etc etc.)
You might write a true story about how you changed schools, or you might write a fictional story about a kid being bitten by a werewolf and the first time she transforms into a wolf, or you might write a story about a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, or about a librarian becoming a pirate, or about an alien disguising themselves as a human, or somebody falling in love, or falling out of love, or about growing up, or about divorce, or about pretty much anything that tickles your fancy so long as it's some kind of change.
Think about who your audience is (are you writing for people your own age or for people younger than you? You choose); think about whether you have a good beginning, middle and end; think about whether your reader will be excited; think about whether your reader will care about the characters, and how you can MAKE them care. Think about whether your reader will feel like they can see, hear, smell, taste, touch and feel what the characters do.
If you're wondering how to push your writing from being good to being EXCELLENT, start thinking about mixing up the length of your sentences. Read this paragraph out loud and you'll get an idea of what I mean:
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
(by Gary Provost, “The Writer’s Writer”)
