Dozens of student answers at every grade, with my commentary.
This is the bottom of Grade 9:
Content
Communication is convincing
Tone, style and register are convincingly matched to purpose and audience
Extensive vocabulary with conscious crafting of linguistic devices
Organisation
Varied and effective structural features
Writing is highly engaging with a range of developed complex ideas
Consistently coherent use of paragraphs with integrated discourse markers
The first 5 bullet points are entirely subjective.
That said, here’s a story which is nearly there, from one of my subscribers. Read it and see what you can learn from it for your own writing.
The characterisation is pretty brilliant in places, and some individual descriptions are really original.
But, does it fully hang together as a story? You can make a strong case either way.
The following is practice I did with the prompt 'Write a story about a new beginning'.
“Well, it looked better in the pictures,” the young woman said with a bitter smile, tucking a stray curl of dark hair behind her ears.
Phoenix scoffed and adjusted the weight of the boxes so it spread more evenly across her arms. “I suspect some form of editing was involved, Zaraya.”
The duo were in the room of their new apartment- although ‘apartment’ was an overly generous term. The website had promised a luscious red carpet inscribed with intricate gold designs and fringed with tassels. Reality replaced this with wooden floorboards that groaned like old bones on a frigid winter’s day. Green moss crawled up a ceiling wilting with moisture, providing the only splash of colour in a monochrome setting. Phoenix appreciated that most of the furniture was included- even contending with the jaundiced couch that spat out plumes of dust.
Zaraya immediately claimed the room with the least amount of dark spots mottling the door and pushed it open with an exuberant shout.
Chuckling, Phoenix set the box down and thanked the wearied movers. Even as children, Phoenix was considered more responsible, a calming breeze on a hot day, while Zaraya was the spitfire that never backed down from a fight.
Phoenix leaned over the boundary of Zaraya’s room- only half-listening to her friend’s excited chatter. She could imagine the walls lined with music sheets scrawled with thick black pen and her friend hunched over the next best hit. Privately, she had always been envious of Zaraya’s innate talent at twisting anything into a melody, haunted by memories of her own brother mocking her when she tried to sing. To ameliorate her guilt over petty jealousy, she threw herself into ancient civilisation- burying herself in thick tomes about fallen empires and architecture.
Glancing into her own room, Phoenix was elated to see a small window which looked out onto the bustling streets below. Her eyes traced over the pedestrians, the only splash of colour against a dreary pavement. She watched a young child in a bright pink jacket flung around the group and sighed in relief at seeing her reunited with her mother.
Ignoring the pang that erupted in her chest at the thought of her family, Phoenix turned and stopped short. “What are you doing?”
Zaraya’s amber eyes glinted with a streak of mischief that Phoenix had learned to fear and adore over the years. Tapping a knife against her chin, she gestured to the carving of their initials into the wooden table. “For the memories!” A radiant smile illuminated her face.
Years later, a woman sat on that very table, tracing the worn letters with a bittersweet grin. Her face was hardened with the harsh lines of time and were enunciated by the sadness in her brown eyes. She treated the memories with her friend like a fragile snow globe, afraid it would crumble to dust if she looked at it too long or shook it too hard.
Doesn’t she look lost to you?
What advice would you give this writer?
Read it again, with my commentary, to see if you agree.
Paid subscribers get a top grade answer with my comments every week. This one is a bonus.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Mr Salles Teaches English to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.