Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Terribly cheesy fiction

Written as an example for my Y10 class. I typed it with my back to the screen, so it may be riddled with errors :-) The wind was howling through the trees as my brother and I entered the Old Settler’s Museum. It was a pretty boring holiday activity, but our parents had insisted on taking us to a remote part of the Coromandel. The museum was perched on the edge of a ravine. Early settlers had dug for Kauri gum down there, way back when. The museum was empty as we stepped inside, the air still and stale. “Hello?” I asked nervously, feeling oddly guilty about breaking the silence of the dimly lit room. “Is anyone there?” “Let’s just take a look around and get out of here,” muy brother said gruffly, pushing through the turnstile into the main area of the museum. “Don’t we need tickets?” I asked, following him. “Nah, it’s all goods,” he said, trying to be gangsta. He was just as white as me, the try-hard. “But, I’m sure you’re supposed to…” I said. I didn’t finish the sentence, as the room began to shake violently. The first thing that popped into my head was that it was a terrorist attack of some kind. Stupid, I know, but I’d been watching 'Die Hard 4' the night before. “Earthquake!” my brother yelled, grabbing hold of the verandah of a fake settler house. The building lurched again, and began to slide sideways. “The gully!” I yelled, my voice straining with panic. “We’re falling into the gully!”...


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It gripped me to the end. What happens next?

Matt said...

According to the task I gave the class:

Myself and one or two friends/family members are trapped for 1 - 24 hours

We face physical and/or emotional hardship

Nobody dies, no emergency cannibalism takes place

We are eventually rescued.

It is permissable for someone to be injured, though not Phantom-of-the-Opera disfigured :-)

Unknown said...

I love that you had to put in the stuff about cannibalism and phantom-of-the-opera disfigurement.

debbie said...

Prohibiting cannibalism and horrendous disfigurement?! Enforced happy endings?! Sounds like your turning into some fuzzy, sappy English teacher. Some you'll start wearing lilac and ridiculously huge fruit-shaped earrings, and then you'll put up inspirational quotes on your wall.

No in all seriousness I can understand the requirements after years of reading Year 10 creative writing. They go through a gross, morbid stage and every story ends up with an overwritten, purple, angsty death/suicide/mutilation or combination of all three. Gross storylines is one thing, poorly written, cliched, gross storylines is unacceptable.

Anonymous said...

Hello. This is Jon. I like your story.

Seraph said...

Terrible story ! Not nearly enough cannibalism or disfigurement ! ;-)