English Essays

lilmissprincess

Well, how did people do on these??? We did absolutely minimum practice on these before the exam, but since that we've done two in the space of a week, from the same paper!! I didn't get mine back yet, it was " the light at the end of the tunnel"...how depressing...what did the rest of ye write about??

andyman

My nightmare come true. Or something like that.

JC06

Mine was 'The Greatest Gift of All' or something like that.:D

yourpetzombie

I got 66/70 and I did 'Wishing On A Star'. My English teacher wasn't feeling it though - bit too abstract for her. But feck her, I'm happy with it. Well, with the result, not so much with the essay itself. There are so many lazy sentences. I like every sentence to be necessary, but eh, that's what happens when you don't plan.

I'm going to have a few basic essays done out for the real things so I'll be able to pull some flowery language out those if I get a creative block on the day.

We haven't done much in preparation of essays either. I think we've done about five essays since first year, erlack.

Apple Gal

We havent done much essays,I did really really badly on that part of my exam.

lilmissprincess

Anyone feel like putting theirs on here?? Like a link to it or something?

rip2roar

I'm getting mine back tomorrow so I'll put it up.
I think I chose My Nightmare Come True

lilmissprincess

I'll put mine up later, got it back today, got a B overall and B for the essay..pretty happy with that.

Jello

lilmissprincess wrote:

Anyone feel like putting theirs on here?? Like a link to it or something?

Sweet Jesus no!

I got 50 outta 70.

lilmissprincess

Okay..typed up mine..I got 50/70 for it...
Here it is: "The Light at the end of the tunnel"
It lay there, white and crisp, the ink purple-black spelling out my name. I only noticed it now, two days later, after the damage was done. I grasped it in my hand, his handwriting scrawled on the filled pages, untidily scribbled, like always. I began to read, paper in one hand, the glinting silver scissors in the other.
“Dearest Amy,
I am sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you, I really truly don’t I just have to do this, I can’t keep going on like this. I never wished to hate life, it just kept turning on me in the coldest, cruellest ways.”
I stopped reading. Rory’s words stung my heart like a thousand wasps. The scissors found its way to my left wrist, scraped along the skin, cold and merciless. I continued reading.
“You’re my best friend in the world and I will never forgive myself for this. I know it will hurt you. But Amy, Snowflake, I have to. I told you about Christian, the accident and all that. I just keep finding that I can’t live without my brother Amy. I’ve tried and tried so many times, but life keeps coming back and biting me, biting the bitter bones of any remaining happiness away.”
The use of the childhood nickname stood out blatantly, memories of us at seven years old, playing in the tree-house in his garden. Again the scissors scrapes across my wrist, deeper this time, and it breaks the skin into the vein. Blood spatters out, falls on the rug, some remains on the scissors.
“Don’t cry for me, please. I beg of you, don’t. I’ll see you someday again. Remember me as I am now, writing this letter, not as you see me while you are reading it.”
Two days, and I could still see it before me. Rory, a pendulum, swinging from the tree-house. The same tree-house where we had mingled blood to show that we’d be best friends forever. The same tree-house we had kissed in last summer, before the accident, all this. And now, it was the tree-house, where he had attached a rope around his neck, pulled it tight and jumped. The tree-house where I had found him dangling, breathless, staring at me with his cold glassy unseeing eyes. The scissors sank in deeper, blood, red and passionate, flowing in a steady stream, down my arm, dripping off the excess. The pain was excruciating, and my eyes fell on the paper again, begging for relief.
“They will be happier without me. My mother is always screaming at me anyway, my father too silent, as if they wished that I was the one in that accident, they can’t even look me in the eye anymore.”
Rory. Could he not see how much he looked like his older brother used to? That he was an ultimate replica, that his mother just wanted her son back, his father didn’t speak because he was still grieving in his own way? Christian had died in a car crash months earlier, and like a small child, Rory had blamed him for leaving him here alone in the world.
Blood continued to pump, painlessly now, I was numb. The scissors started the other wrist, and cold salty tears released down my cheeks and down the brink of my nose.
“Amy, chickpea, know that I care for you, a hell of a lot more than you ever possibly could have known. I’ll miss you, my b

---

”
The paper was gone. I must have blacked out, it was dark here and I was standing there, cold and alone. A shining light glistened from an end of this emptiness. I started to head towards it. A shadow stood at the end f it, still and silent. Moving closer and closer to the luminous white blinding light, I put my hand on my forehead toshade my weary eyes. My mind was wondering where I was, was I asleep, did I faint, was I dead??? The shadow remained unmoving as I walked nearer to the white light. Looking closer, I could see a pair of deep crystal blue eyes glancing at me. A tuft of brown stringy hair fell over one of them. I was sure I recognised it. Then it hit me. It was Rory. I began to run, my two arms outstretched to embrace him, eyes blinded by the light but I didn’t care.
He stood there, a dark purple graze and bruise on hi neck where the rope had left its mark, but otherwise, still the same Rory, my Rory.
His silence was broken seconds later, quoting the last paragraph of his letter.
“Amy, chickpea, know that I care for you, a hell of a lot more than you ever possibly could have known.”
He put his arm on my shoulder and continued.
“I’ll miss you, my best friend forever. Love you always. Rory.”
He pulled me closer to him and we walked together into the light at the end of the tunnel. Friends in life, friends in death, friendship like this lasts forever.

f

ok trick to essays- make them as violent as possible and use discriptive words and den ur grand. i got 60/70 for one bout the gestapo in the mocks, just blood everywhere people shoutin etc

Piste

I did well in my essay, cant remember the exact mark but it was around Sixtysomethnig/70. I had only written one essay before and I got an A in that from my teacher so I decided to reuse it in the mock and I will use it again in June. If you have the essay planned out in your head before hand you take less time writing it, the trick is twisting the title you choose to fit it, for example I used The Picture on Paper X as the stimulus for my story even though my story had nothnig to do with it, the girl in the picture was brightly coloured so I opened my story with colurs and then brought it back to what I had originally planned.

lilmissprincess

Ya she was weird looking....I got an A for a different essay the other day tho...

BlueSpiral

yourpetzombie wrote:

I got 66/70

*bows down* lordie are you lucky!
How long was it?

I got 56/70, only because I didn't expand on my descriptive words.

PurpleFistMixer

I got 70/70 on my one in the mocks last year... I didn't think it was possible but the examiner must really have liked my story. It was four pages long if I recall.

lilmissprincess

Mine was 4 pages and I got 50!!! What did ya write about, how lovely the examiner was??

PurpleFistMixer

Nah, I wrote mine about a terrorist girl who gets betrayed by her team, ends up in prison. Had some glaring plotholes that I tried to conceal by saying "That's the mystery of the story dun dun dun" (only not those words), but hey, it seemed to work out okay.

lilmissprincess

Sounds pretty cool. You still got a copy of it?

PurpleFistMixer

Turns out I do, I'll put it up... Though, I'm not going to read it. I wrote it over a year ago so I shudder to think. All I remember is the last line being hilariously bad.
The starting point was the first line, (which is underlined...)

When the music stopped I turned around and looked down the barrel of a 9mm Viper JAWS. On the smooth, shining surface I could see the whole scene. Like people say before you die – your life flashes before your eyes. Well, this was like an entire film-reel of that room, playing on the gun. Until I heard someone gasp and it all stopped. Later retrospection might have had it be me, but all I wanted to say that that point was
‘Nice gun. New model? I’m not familiar.’
It’s a times like that, however, where nobody wants you to talk. Screaming, that’s fine. If you want to play it that way, be the struggling victim in a game of players. But I didn’t, not at all. I’ve never been like that. No; I was steely cool, polished chrome. Myself a weapon of perfect precision. Well, until the elegant chandeliers and crushed velvet bodices all dissolved in a black wormhole, somebody pouring ink down a sink, with me watching in a daze, like the back of my head exploded.
I wake in daytime. Blinding light, it seems from up above, spears my eyes. Draws cracks of bloodshot in a tiny red biro on the balls of them, I feel like it’s pressing so hard my eyes just might split and pour aquaeous fluid everywhere. Closing these organs of pain, I have a moment to reflect, recall, realise and wonder why my face is still there. Why, I am thinking, is there no bullet carved of perfect aerodynamics lodged in my brain? In this business, when stuff like this happens – you don’t ask questions. Call it a miracle or an act of God if you swing that way, but whatever it is, it’s happened, and, when living your life in bullet-time, it’s way ancient history. In don’t even think, then, and am absorbed into darkness.
Running a tight ship, so to say, means you have to be ready for action, well, before anybody knew there’d be any. It comes with being the anti-news, a friend of mine once said. She considered us to be some kind of polar opposite to well, everything. Against the law, against the government, against the clock. She was against everything, even when she died with her face pressed against a wall. Some people say if you’re shot in the back of the head when you die – you leave a mask of blood and skin there forever. I say, all of these people are dead, dying, or as good as. It doesn’t pay to be an idiot in this business, so when I picked up the phone that Tuesday, I should never have expected a paycheque.
Rising from near-comatose sleep, I am reminded of the current, as they say, situation. With oddly vivid dreaming, or rather, disjointed memories behind myself, it is now evident to say where I am.
One cell. Cubical in shape. Four walls, one of each, ceiling and floor. Fluorescent light on ceiling, embedded in cement and impermeable without proper equipment. One steel door with heavy bolts and several hatches. Closed and locked from outside. One hard mattress and disoriented woman. No windows, no holes. Cracks from the corners run up the walls, branching out like trees in a damp concrete sky. I am reminded of my eyes – bloodshot, and recorded inside one thousand doomsday scenarios. It is neither hot nor cold inside the cell, no breath of wind to cool or brush me face. Were I not moving, it would be a perfect still image of despair. But, in this business, panic isn’t a role you play.
It was an important political function. Box social, as it were. For these events they individually resurrect words like that. Standing in the bathroom adjusting my silk choker, I wanted to gag. It was the place to do so, if I wanted. So much so, that the lack of a machine dispensing anorexia-grade laxatives was worrying. Underneath my silk lustre dress, complete with ruffles, lack and enough ornaments to see a family of seven through Christmas, I was loaded enough to take said family out over and over, forever. But I don’t mean out in a dinner fancy red carpet caviar way, and I sure don’t mean loaded like those fat cats sipping champagne in thousand euro suits. Not at all, this was the heavy ammunition of only the finest kind. The phone call – it said I’d need it. There was work to do – influential, career destroying speeches for us to make. And I don’t mean ours, either.
[FONT=&quot] Staring at that heavy steel door, I don’t even think about anything. I hear movement down the corridor, if it is one. People walking, talking quietly. Discussing my weaponry, or what price there is for my necklace. I feel deceived and rightfully so. When the plan is going smoother than white gloves down a black tie, you don’t ever expect to turn around and face your team at gunpoint. Oh no, I could melt steel with this betrayal, I’m wishing I could, but the door stays there. I don’t scream, I don’t panic. That’s not my role, my role is like that gun. Cool hard cold and calculating, that’s why I don’t’ even crack a smirk when I find a key in my pocket. In this business, when good things happen, you don’t ask questions. You just act, and this scene is scripted revenge.[/FONT]

yourpetzombie

BlueSpiral wrote:

*bows down* lordie are you lucky!
How long was it?

I got 56/70, only because I didn't expand on my descriptive words.

About a page and a half on narrow rule paper, so that'd be just over two pages (not front and back, just like the two sides of an a4).

PurpleFistMixer - I love your style of writing!

Fobia

yourpetzombie wrote:

PurpleFistMixer - I love your style of writing!

Seconded. More lesbians. More.

lilmissprincess

Congrats, that was excellent...no wonder you got full marks!!!

f

can you swear in your essays cos itd mae t a lot better

Piste

You're not *meant* too, as it can make your writing seem trashy. but if it fits in well and contributes to a character then go for it, but use it sparingly.

Aoibheann

Yeah, as was said above, it can be used as long as it's not gratuitous. If you think it works in the context, then sure. But be very careful. You could get an old-fashioned examiner who doesn't like that sort of thing..

lilmissprincess

Yeah if you get like a nun teacher/priest teahcer, you're screwed...