Bluebell

Every year on this same day he returned to this spot. Always alone, always clutching a single bluebell, freshly picked. This year, his brown hair veiled his eyes, he had to keep shoving it back. It hadn't been cut for a while. The hands that were wrapped around the bluebell stem were red and cracked, the nails bitten down. His skin was washed out and shadows lurked beneath his eyes. He was tired, so tired, but he did not let this get in the way of what he had to do today, what he had to do on this day every year.

He is Gone (Re-draft)

Through my hazy state between awake and asleep, I feel him climb in next to me. The heat from his body immediately comforts me; I snuggle closer. For three hours his absence has left me restless, but now I am finally able to relax. His arm, slightly lifting my top, slides under my back. I peak down at his hand, curled around my waist, and sigh in contentment. I wish that for once it could still be there when morning arrives, when I am more awake. Yet every time the sun inches high enough to cast bright beams through my window, waking me, he is gone. The next day is no exception. An overwhelming brightness flashes behind my closed eyelids and stirs me. The emptiness on the sheets next to me engulfs any chance that it was real this time. 
The next night when he climbs under the covers, I shift my head so that it lies on his chest. Its gentle rise and fall reassures me that he has returned again, and that he hasn’t left me yet. He brushes his lips against my forehead. The kiss lingers there long after he draws away. As I slowly sink into a deep sleep, I feel his words tickle my ear, but am far enough gone that I can’t quite catch what he says.  

Writing Journal- 17/3/14

This week I have writing and improving my script. This script that I am working on is an adaptation of my fiction writing piece ‘Poison’. I have never written a television script before and so wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy this task. However, I have found it really fun and interesting to do so far. In a way, it makes me think more about the visuals of the scenes. This is because I kept the visuals in ‘Poison’ very minimal, barely even there, in order to keep the scene, in a way, anonymous and mysterious, so the reader could imagine the surroundings the way that they wanted to. Whereas, when I was writing the script, I found I needed to put a lot more thought into where I wanted these characters to be, otherwise the piece would not have worked as well in script form.
I tried to take the key conventions from the existing scripts that I looked at, to use in my own. At the beginning of the scene there is a line that states if it is ‘interior’ or exterior’, where the scene is, and usually the time of day. For example, for my first scene I wrote:
INT. AIRPORT –- DAY.
As well as this, I made the basic layout of my script mirror that of all the other scripts I viewed. The dialogue is situated more centrally; each line is shorter than those of the descriptions/details of the scene.
Character wise, I did not have any names in mind. In my head, the characters were simply ‘Man, Woman, and Girl’. In the original version of ‘Poison’ this did not matter, as their names were not revealed at any point. This, again, left the characters more anonymous and mysterious. However, for the script I thought that I needed some sort of identification for the three. I quite liked ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ for the man and the woman who is overlooking the scene, just for now, because it mirrors how their identities/intentions aren’t revealed yet. But I thought with the other female character, she needed to have a name. I had the name ‘Jane’ stuck in my head; every time that I thought of another and tried to apply it to her, I knew it didn’t sound right, and I kept returning back to ‘Jane’. So, that is who she became. 

Writing Journal- 23/2/14

This week, half term, I have been writing my ‘P#zazz Pizza’ review and re-drafting my travel writing piece.
I quite enjoyed the task of writing a restaurant review, which was with provided ‘notes’ from when I ‘visited the restaurant.’ I had never written a review for a restaurant review and so found it fun to try something new. However, my first draft had consisted of about 700 words, and when I read the task again, I saw that it must be only 300. So I then had to begin re-drafting, and cutting out a lot, which I found to be the most difficult part. This took a long time, as I didn’t know which bits I could sacrifice, and didn’t want to lose the personal voice I had created by taking out some of the quirky comments. But eventually, I managed to get it down to exactly 300 words, and I think that it is a lot more concise now as there is less of my waffling.
For my travel writing, I read through the part of my newest draft that I had already written, and then made some notes about parts/details that I could add to it. I remembered about the little boy who was staying on a pitch near us, which is a sweet story, and so I thought I would dedicate my biggest paragraph to this. So I began writing it. I tried to keep my ‘voice’ throughout, and to make it as interesting as possible by slightly exaggerating some details in order to add humour. For example, putting up the tent was pretty easy, but I thought it would make a better story if I tried to create a comical image of the four of us struggling. Overall I am quite pleased with how this draft ended up, and I think that it has improved drastically since the first draft.

Task: ‘P#zazz Pizza’ Restaurant Review (300 words)

My first impression of this pizza restaurant wasn't great. From the jazzed name ‘P#zazz Pizza’ to the over-the-top red and yellow décor, it was a bit ‘in your face’ for my liking.

My friend, Benjamin, and I booked online but were slightly delayed. Luckily, they kept the table. A sign of good service or a lack of customers?

The service was good, at this point, with friendly staff. The menus, delivered promptly, were good value for money with 2 courses for £10, including ‘beginnings’ and pizzas, with a range of vegetarian options.

The tables were tightly packed, creating a pleasant buzz of conversation, until a man a few tables away began talking too loudly on the phone. There didn't seem to be any policies on this; for a good 20 minutes we had to listen to him argue with his ex-wife about picking their child up from school. We’ll never know how Bethany got home that Tuesday.

Our waiter wasn't keen on serving tap water but eventually did. He also served bread while we waited for our starters; I chose salad with Italian dressing, and Benjamin, garlic prawns.

My salad was well mixed, but clearly straight out the chiller. Benjamin loved his prawns, and tried to force a couple on me, claiming they were ‘perfectly juicy’. I’ll have to trust him on that.

The pizzas, finally arriving after 50 minutes, were well sized. Mine was vegetarian, Benjamin’s was spicy beef. Unfortunately mine was soggy, however Benjamin wasn't disappointed; his beef was ‘pleasantly spiced’ and the crust, crisp.

Receiving the bill, I saw we were charged for the bread, making our total £25 including tip.   

Benjamin would return but I’m unsure. The food wasn't amazing, but one cannot complain too much for two courses at £10. Overall; my pizza lacked pizzazz.

Travel Writing: La Rive (new draft)

Upon arriving at La Rive, a campsite in the South of France; my home for the next two weeks, I couldn't wait to really get started on my summer holiday. My friend Charlie and her parents had adopted the privilege of being my family for the next fourteen days, which would be bursting with the wonders of having summer on a French campsite. The sun, a swimming pool, delicious food, and endless time for relaxing; what more could you ask for?

Whilst we were shown to our pitch, I could hear a bell ringing, the sound resonating around the site. Wondering what it could mean, Charlie and I changed into our bikinis and some shorts, and began to explore. The resort was full of little 'streets' of pitches and mobile homes. Each one was decorated with several hanging baskets of flowers, which were of the brightest colours. The pinks, blues, purples, and yellows seemed to glow in the light of the midday sun, which pleasantly heated my skin as we ventured through the site. I remember thinking ‘Wow, this definitely beats the endless stretch of French countryside we encountered on the way, and most certainly beats the classy overnight stay in the car park of a service station last night’. Unfortunately, the soundtrack of the many humming lorries just outside our caravan had provided a restless night’s sleep for me, and my window view of exhaust pipes and concrete hadn’t exactly been picturesque. Fancy hotels? Nah, not for me thanks.

After a relaxing first day spent by the pool, we had to tackle our first night at La Rive. Although Charlie’s parents would be sleeping in the caravan, we would be sleeping in a small tent just outside. And so we made a start on the evening’s first tent task; putting it up. This proved to be a lot more hassle than it seemed, with Charlie and I grasping corners of the tent like we were about to fold a large sheet, her dad scrambling around trying to make sense of the instructions, and her mum shouting things like “For god’s sake, Tim, this isn’t bloody rocket science!”. It must have looked rather comical to the neighboring families. The tent was soon up and secured, however, and after a night’s sleep I could surprisingly say that it was actually pretty comfortable in there. You know, as comfortable as a blow-up mattress on the ground could be.

And so our holiday began. Warm mornings eating fresh croissants, my favourite breakfast, hot afternoons in the mini water park, and cool evenings playing cards on the grass; we had it all. Speaking of water parks, we discovered the source of the occasional ringing that we could hear from across the campsite. Unfortunately, we discovered it the hard way. We were trying to avoid getting too wet during our first trip into the water park, as we had not yet been in the water, which was rather cold in comparison with the midday heat. However, things did not go according to plan. Looming above the large blue slide, one of four, was a giant bucket, and every so often a bell would begin to chime, warning all those below that the bucket was about to tip water over their heads. Two soaking wet teenagers later, we returned to our towels, laughing hysterically at the look that had been on the other’s face upon realising the bell’s purpose, a few seconds too late.

A particular highlight of mine was the little boy whose pitch was almost opposite ours. He couldn’t have been any older than 5 or 6 and, being French, could not speak a word of English. But this didn’t stop him becoming our favourite holiday friend. Our first encounter with him was on our fifth evening. Charlie and I had stepped out to play a game of badminton in front of our pitch and after a while we noticed that a little boy was watching us out of his caravan window. Upon our spotting him, he ducked down and his face did not reappear that night. However, the next evening when we did the same, he was standing outside his caravan, waiting for us. Not at first realising he was French, we said ‘hello!’, but were answered with a blank stare. He stood silently, observing our badminton game for some time before interacting with us. When Charlie whacked the shuttlecock so hard that it flew past my head, this little boy rushed over to it, picked it up, and handed it to me. I thanked him and smiled, and he promptly skipped back to his watching position. This continued to happen every time one of us dropped the shuttlecock until he was called in for dinner. The next evening when he appeared, he begun performing strange actions, such as stamping his feet or jumping up and down, all while grinning cheekily. We didn’t understand what he was doing, so when he next stamped his feet, I copied him. This made him laugh, and it became a game of ours; we would copy all these little movements he was performing. It was clear we had formed a true friendship when he picked us each one of the bright flowers from the nearby hanging basket. Charlie had a yellow one, and I, a purple, and we displayed them proudly in our hair. Every evening following we met him on the ‘street’ and he would play like this with us until he had to go inside. But after a while, during one day, while Charlie and I were sitting on the grass in our pitch, he ran over to us with his hands behind his back. When he pulled them out we saw he had a small sweet enclosed in each of them, and he gave one to Charlie and one to me before skipping off back to his caravan. We didn’t realise that these were in fact his parting gifts to us, and so the morning after we were quite disheartened to see his pitch empty, his caravan gone. But we savoured the thought of our little friend, who we grew to love in such a short space of time, without speaking a word of conversation to him.

More Detailed Version of “One Hundred Word Short Story 2” (now more than 100 words)

She stands alone, staring at me through the glass. A shapeless black dress hangs to the knees of her scrawny body. Marks decorate her legs; the yellowish hue of an old bruise, a faded scar from a cut. Her dark hair, thin and stringy, falls just below her shoulders. 
Her right hand is by her side, her left hidden behind her back. The sadness shining in her eyes engulfs me, and it’s only when she slowly exposes her left hand, the gleam of something catching in the artificial light, that I manage to shift my gaze from them. Her bony fingers clutch a long knife.
In one gradual movement, she draws it across her throat, her blood smearing the blade as it seeps from the wound. 
I feel a sharp sting at my own throat, and when I touch it my right hand comes away stained with a thick, dark liquid. My knees buckle and I crash forwards into the glass dividing us. 
The mirror shatters around me.