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Spark Comp 5

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84 views3 pages

Spark Comp 5

Uploaded by

byrum
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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VIVID DESCRIPTION

The last aspect of style that we are going to focus on in this book is vivid description. As you
write your composition, you might want to appeal to all the five senses of the reader that is ;
sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing. How do you make that possible? Vivid description of
course. Let the examiner take part in your composition. Make them feel like they are part of it.
Let them create that visual image of the occurrences of your composition in their heads.
In descriptive writing, the writer does not just tell the reader what was seen, felt, tasted, smelled
or heard. Rather, the writer describes something from their own experience and through careful
choice of words or phrasing, makes it seem real. Your writing should be colorful, vivid and
detailed. Your writing has to be concrete, evocative and plausible.
 Concrete; Rather than saying, his eyes were blue in color, try, his eyes sparkled like
sapphires in the dark.
 Evocative; you have to unite the concrete image with phrasing that evokes the
impression the writer wants the reader wants to have. For example, in stead of the
example in 1 above, you could go further and write, his eyes sparkled like sapphires in
the dark, warming my night.
 Plausible; you have to constrain the concrete, evocative image to suit the reader’s
knowledge and attention span. Do not try to show the examiner that you know too much
as he may end up losing interest in your composition. Just be brief. Avoid writings such
as, his eyes were brighter than the sapphires in the armrests of the Tipu Sultan’s golden
throne, yet sharper than the tulwars of his cruelest executioners.

More examples of good descriptive writing.

Her last smile to me wasn’t a sunset. It was an eclipse, the last eclipse. Noon dying away to
darkness where there would be no dawn…

The painting was a field of flowers, blues and yellows atop deep green stems that seemed to call
the viewer in to play…

The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys
and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the
dingy boats, on the yellow river clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house front.
It was a cold grey day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a backing
wind brought a granite sky and a muzzling rain with it. And although it was now only a little
after two o’clock in the afternoon, the pallor of a winter evening seemed to have closed upon the
hills, cloaking them in mist.

I have always been fascinated by carnival rides. It amazes me that average, ordinary people
eagerly trade in the serenity of the ground for the chance to be tossed through the air like
vegetables in a food processor. Therefore, a date to the carnival with Jessica did not really
warm up my heart. I only came since I could not decline the kind offer.

Mary’s hands curled into fists as she saw the smoking ruin that had once been her beautiful
forest. She hardly felt the sharp points of her fingernails digging into her palms. Everything that
she had worked so hard to maintain, gone. It wasn’t only the acrid smoke that made her eyes
water.

WRITING A SATISFYING ENDING TO YOUR COMPOSITION


As the examiner finalizes reading your composition ready for evaluation, your last impressions
will also impact the score you get. How you complete writing your composition, the language
the tone and several other factors are key to the result. It is therefore important that you make
your ending fascinating just as the rest of the composition. Here are some factors to consider;
1. Make sure that your ending resolves the storyline. Don’t leave the examiner hanging.
Remember that your ending should clear out all the air and settle the suspense created
as this will give the composition a sense of completeness.
2. Ensure that your ending evokes emotions to the reader. Whether happy, sad or a little
of both, your composition should bring out emotions.
3. Your ending should be in line with the composition and should make sense in that
you should be able to effortlessly show logical progression all the way from the start.
4. Another smart way of making your ending satisfying is by building up tension in the
lead up to the end. Building up tension through suspense will make the reader eagerly
wait for the anti-climax. The tension created is then resolved with the respective
ending whether happy or sad.
5. Try out comingling happy and sad moments in your ending. Although you can have
either a comedy or tragedy as a story, comingling the two will result in a more
suspenseful story i.e comi-tragedy where the rest of the characters have a happy
ending while the main character is at his worst or a tragi-comedy where the main
character gets the ending he wants while the other characters don’t get a very happy
ending.
Some examples of good endings;
I’ll think of that tomorrow. At Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow I’ll think of a way to get him
back. After all tomorrow is another day. (Gone with the wind)
‘’ My eyes have looked upon bad work this night!’’ he cried, and so the council of the Big bellies
closed, never to open again. (Crazy horse)
He felt paralyzed. His lieutenants, Kahiga and Njoya, had forewarned him of troubles
unimaginable. He recalled his resolution. He sat back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and
tugged at his earlobes meditatively. ( Wizard of the Crow)
More examples are shown in Appendix.

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