What would you decide at this point?

[dilligaf]

I'm writing a "Choose Your Own Adventure Story" for Extension 2 english (4unit) and this is the first page.

Just wondering what you geeks would do...

The air is thick. You can see your breath slowly rising into the mist. The sound of the cascading feature fills you with calm, normally reserved for after a bomb explodes. Looking at the time you realise the job interview starts in twenty minutes, banks can’t wait forever to be robbed. Not much of a chance in getting there on time, but its still worth a shot. As you stuff your balaclava into your pocket and holster your Glock you realise time is of the essence and scoot out the door. The door slams behind you. “Bugger!” The alarm isn’t on. A screech of tyres breaks your calm. You live in a safe area with no crime reported in the last few years. You keep telling yourself that, even though your neighbours have smoked windows from the last arson attack. The squeal of tyres again pierces your ears, with gunfire thundering behind it. Turning your key you again hear the tyres, this time a lot closer. You see a magenta vehicle in the distance, as it approaches the crest, adjacent to your house; the WRX loses control and wraps itself around a power pole. The drivers head continues down the street gathering momentum as the slope intensifies. You hear a whimper. “Help…Help…Please help me.” You sprint to the wreckage. Your heart skips a beat. The victim bears an uncanny resemblance to you except they have deep lacerations on their necks and a few minor abrasions on their arms. They look you squarely in the eye, “Please help me.” You look down the street just as the drivers head comes to a halt, one hundred metres away. You hear sirens in the distance creeping up on you. Something isn’t right. Everything looks safe, sounds safe and smells……wait, no it doesn’t. The stench of petrol hits you.



Do you help the criminal out of the car

or

Head to the bank job?

[Whiskers]

You know what I'd do? And I swear to you I'm not trolling- I'd give up on the short story idea and go with one of the other forms. Many people choose the short story option which means you'll be up against more students. I went with the critical analysis and my final mark was a lot better than most others- even those ranked (a lot) higher than me before the final work was submitted.

Any work you've done at this stage can still be used. I initially started with the Short story idea, changed my mind- and documented it all in my journal.

Sorry for de-railing your thread.

[Bifrost]

To answer your question immediately, I would help the person who still has a head...

Now, for sage advice...

OK...The first thing to remember about writing for English scrutiny is that - on the whole - English teachers don't give a rat's crack about whether or not the story is gripping. They are looking primarily for the structure of your chosen piece, grammar, spelling, punctuation and imagination - they want something different to relieve the boredom of going through 30 bloody English assignments. Of course if a story IS gripping and they get caught up in it, they will probably give you a better mark because they enjoyed themselves, but technically that's not the purpose (unless it is a specific creative writing class).

Whiskers is right - you should try to go for something different than your classmates, but don't think that creative assignments will be marked any harder than non-creative (particularly seeing as how you are writing one in the third-person, which is VERY hard to do).

First, what was the criteria of your assignment? It would help to know that to be able to advise you.

Now assuming that you really like the idea of doing a choose-your-own-adventure (and trust me - if you are doing something you like, it is SO much easier to finish an assignment), I really like your story so far.

As a suggestion, I would try to explain a little more about the protagonist's interview. You have spoken matter-of-factly about the fact that he is headed to a Bank robbery, but you need just a little more detail for the reader's mind to automatically register that the protagonist's job interview IS a Bank robbery - maybe mention the name of the protagonist's would-be interviewer.

Your reference to the driver's head being gone and that there is one person alive in the car also needs clarification. Refer to the living person as being a passenger or something so that they are not confused with the driver.

Also, if it is permissable by your teacher, I would consider writing the story up in a HTML editor with the story choices marked up as hypertext, automatically linking to the next story section. You will probably get better marks for a web-capable assignment, but remember there is a lot more work in something like that.

Also remember that when you are writing for the web, you need to make sure all of your paragraphs are inside <p&rt; tags to space your work out. I'm sure you can see by your post up there that it's a bit hard to read - teachers (and markers) love double-spacing. You'll get deducted if it's not double-spaced (remember they'll probably print it if you hand it in on a disk - even if it's a html assignment).

OK, without any further information, that's all I've got, but keep us informed of your progress (just don't spend your writing time on ZGeek like I bloody do - stories don't write themselves!!) ;)

[berserk]

The story is confising as hell. Too many juxtapositions that doesn't seem relevant or make any sense like
"You live in a safe area with no crime reported in the last few years. You keep telling yourself that, even though your neighbours have smoked windows from the last arson attack."

Go to the bank. robberies are cool for dialogue.

[DrDivad]

Personally my advice is similar to Whiskers, I also did 4unit english, started the Short Story and ended up converting it into something completely different (and technically not one of the options but my teacher allowed it). It was kinda 3 short stories and then I commented on each one as a critique of myself then re-wrote it all into an extended short story, I just chucked the lot in! Scammed a 45/50 for it so it musta been alright!

It was this bizarre fantasy thing with time travel and crazy shit, point was the technicality of it saved me, even though it was probably written badly I got points for trying to put in the stuff they were looking for, at the expense of a decent story though :)

That probably makes no sense!