creative writing wksh.pdf

8/18/2019 Creative Writing Wksh.pdf

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Creative writing: setting and atmosphere

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The new GCSE English Language Assessment Objective 5 states candidates should

‘communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively’. In creative writing, presentation

of setting can be important in helping you communicate the kind of atmosphere, mood

or tone you want to convey to the reader.

Reading

Read extract A, from the short novel Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad, and

then work through the following activities, to discover how the writer uses setting to

create an eerie, mysterious atmosphere.

The narrator is travelling up the River Congo in Africa to find Kurtz, who runs an isolated

native trading post in the jungle and is believed to have gone mad.

Extract A

‘Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world,

when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a

great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There

was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on,

deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and

alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a

mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and

butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself

bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far

away – in another existence, perhaps ...

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely

across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into

the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums

behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if

hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant

war, peace or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a

chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig

would make you start.’

1.

The writer uses various senses in his writing, including sight, sound and touch.Highlight any examples you can find.


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2. How do the following contrasts add tension to the atmosphere? One has been

completed as an example.

‘heart of darkness’ ‘brilliance of sunshine’ Dark and light without colour create ashadowy, sinister setting.

‘great silence’ ‘snapping of a twig’

‘a chill stillness’ ‘the broadeningwaters flowed’

‘you lost your way on

that river’

‘as you would in a

desert’

3. How does personification add a sense of threat to the forest? One example has

been filled in.

‘big trees were kings’ Suggests the trees are powerful and rule the landscape.

‘vegetation rioted on theearth’

‘a mob of wooded islands’

‘the forest had steppedleisurely across the water tobar the way for our return’

4. How does vocabulary choice affect the presentation of the setting as isolated?

Look up the words in a dictionary and comment on:

‘an impenetrable forest’

‘you thought yourself

bewitched ’


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5. How does the sentence structure add suspense to the telling of the story?

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6. Look at how all these techniques start to suggest the narrator feels unsettled,

even frightened, by this journey up river.

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Writing

Now try some of these techniques in your own writing. Choose one of the following

scenarios and create a tense, mysterious atmosphere in a paragraph.

Lost in a strange city.

Stranded on a mountain overnight. Thunderstorm!

Before you start, plan your answer making notes on:

setting e.g. where and when

atmosphere e.g. threatening

feelings e.g. fear, confusion

techniques you could use to convey these to the reader e.g. senses, contrasts,

personification, vocabulary, sentence structure.

Now write your first paragraph!


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Reviewing creative writing

1. Re-read extract A and note:

any similes, metaphors, interesting nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs that are

used.

the effect of Conrad writing in the first person, but using ‘we’ and ‘you’, to draw

the reader into the narrator’s experience.

2. Exchange your creative writing paragraph with that of a partner; read and discuss

each other’s work. Make a note of your partner’s choices and compare them with

your own:

Setting: ............................................................................................

Atmosphere: ......................................................................................

Three techniques used:

1.

.......................................................

2. .......................................................

3. .......................................................


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Development

Read the following two short extracts for more ideas on how to develop your writing

skills with regard to setting and atmosphere.

Extract B

Read this extract from the opening page of the novel Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du

Maurier, describing a garden that was once very neat and cared for, but in a dream

appears to have been neglected and returned to nature.

The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They

crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white,

naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange

embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were

other trees as well, trees that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that

straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet

earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.

What sort of atmosphere do the following techniques help to create and how effective

are they?

simile e.g. ‘a vault … like the archway of a church’

metaphor e.g. ‘monster shrubs’ verbs that suggest a struggle or invasion e.g. ‘They crowded , dark and

uncontrolled’

Extract C

Read this extract, from the opening pages of the short story ‘Kew Gardens’ (1919) by

Virginia Woolf, presenting a detailed, snail’s eye view of a garden.

In the oval flower-bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red, blue, and yellow for

the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell,

and next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled

down as it passed over them. … Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat,

blade-like trees that waved from root to tip, round boulders of grey stone, vast

crumpling surfaces of a thin crackling texture — all these objects lay across the snail’s

progress between one stalk and another to his goal.

What features does the author use and how effective are they?

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