J.T. Stone English 7
6/14/15 Period: 8
My English Final Reflection!
Part 1: My Context and Reflection-
The writing piece that I chose for my final reflection was something that I made a first draft of at the beginning of this school year, and that was a part of NaNoWriMo (a program that helps you write up a novel and to help you accomplish your word count goal) . This first draft was a fictional story I made about a boy and his friends finding a “blob” monster and having to fight it and kill it to survive (otherwise it would have eaten their whole town). My English teachers told us to turn in an excerpt (small section of writing) from our stories to fully publish and hand in for a grade. But since there was a limit to how many pages/words your excerpt could have, the part I turned in was just describing what the main character goes through during school, and how he discovers the blob (the antagonist). As for the rest of the story………… I’ve decided to improve it in my final writing piece for English because from learning about all of these amazing new styles of writing and how to improve it (making the story suspenseful, show don’t tell, and thinking about the five senses), I’ve come up with new ideas to modify my whole original story! Now, my whole piece is not a whole entire story from start to finish (purposely), because you all probably don’t want to be sitting here all day reading this. So, I decided to start this final piece out a tad bit late in the story (but you’ll be able to catch up quickly) to save time (plus it would be over the maximum word count). In this modified blob story, I’ve used better and more descriptions to describe the characters and the setting to help the audience understand the story more, included lots of interesting words that will appeal to your five senses (what you hear, smell, see, touch…..), and overall, made the story ten times more interesting and suspenseful by putting you inside the main character’s head, and using more interesting words (avoiding words like “big” and “said”)!
The first draft had a pretty bad final fight scene with the main character and the blob (not at all suspenseful and/or making you eager to turn the page), and I thought that the part where the main character walks us through his normal school day was a bit too long. I not only shortened the part I turned in for my excerpt (the going to school part), but instead of a final fight where the blob just dies at the end…….. I’ve come up with a more interesting ending! Finally, I chose this out of the many other writing assignments I’ve done this year because I not only thought that improving a story would be more interesting than an essay or a short response based on the book you’ve been reading lately, but because I have had so many new ideas on how to improve this one piece that I just couldn’t resist it (plus I couldn’t find a good way to improve any other writing I’ve done this year)!
Part 2: The Piece-
The Blob of Boston
When the bell rang to go to your next class, I had a feeling that my brain might just turn into a nuclear bomb and explode into a billion pieces! Not only was I super nervous for the test I’d probably fail because I totally forgot to study for it, but I also wanted to review all of the homework I had to do tonight so I wouldn’t forget it like I did last night (and I had a LOT of other work to get done)! So, while I was slowly dawdling, I was thinking my butt off about those two essays for Social Studies, and that packet for Math, but mostly just trying to think about the test; I had so much stuff to think about that I was going crazy!
When I walked into the dark and dusty German classroom, I looked around and noticed that there were four rows of wooden desks lined up together, and each desk had a student’s name on it (and mine was fairly close to the teacher which means I couldn’t really cheat). When everyone was settled in, Mr. Isely stood up (and today he was wearing his green scarf and his big bumblebee T-shirt), and then started to walk around giving out the test.
But right before he gave me my test, I heard a horrible and loud “mmmmmmmm” sound from outside. The hard rainbow colored tiles on the floor started to shake like the whole school was on top of a massively large squid who was getting its tentacles chopped of! One girl screamed, someone hid underneath their desk, and all my other classmates just stood there super frightened and confused. Suddenly, the wall to the right was turning completely green, and then it collapsed! The blob that ran away from my house came back and it was an epic sight: the blob was around one hundred times bigger, and even more splashes of color were inside the see-through blob! But now it has great black eyebrows, and eyes that are even bigger than Godzilla and King Kong combined!
“FFFFFFFFEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDD MMMMMMEEEEEEEHHHHHHHH!!!!!” it exploded in a loud and harsh voice. I was practically paralyzed; I have never heard anything so demanding and evil before in my life (I was also shocked that it could come from a creature that use to be so small and cute). It then started to spit out blue balls that had such a huge impact that they made a loud “BOOM” sound, and they were made out of some weird substance (something close to lava because when it touched the floor it melted); the next thing I knew, a dinosaur-sized, fingerless hand that felt like jello and cake batter mixed together to create a squishy masterpiece came and scooped me up from the room and took me away. I passed out ten seconds later.
I was awoken by a very gentle and soft touch from the slimey figure. But then, “mmmmm….mm….MMMMMMMM…….. WAKE UP!”, it screamed.
I was laying on my back and saw the beast’s whole entire head which reminded me of a scary clown…….. a scary green clown. I also looked around and noticed that we weren’t outside anymore, but in a freezing cold and small room with orange walls with white polka dots.
“Hehehehehehe! Your dad never should have stolen me from my sacred homeland of New Jersey! And now……… YOU SHALL PAY FOREVER!!!” The huge blob stood perfectly still in the middle of the room and glared at me (since it's one enormous eye that was staring at me, I actually felt that the eye might just eat me or something crazy like that; I mean, nothing crazier could happen…...right? Just then, the ground started to shake super fast and deadly that I was feeling sicker than a beaver who's allergic to logs! A couple seconds later, the shaking stopped and when I looked at the blob again…… I gasped! Instead of seeing one gigantic green blob, I saw around ten smaller blue blobs with purple fangs!
“WEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEHHHHEEEEEE!!!” they started cackling in a high witch-like voice, “NOW YOU SHALL JOIN OUR LOST SOULS!” they finished quickly.
“What! Stop! W-W-W-WH- WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!??!!” I screamed when they started flying around me at a thousand miles per hour………. then everything went black.
When I was awake again, I couldn’t see that well because everything was so green. I also felt really small for some reason.
“Hey pal,” someone said. I looked to my left and saw a pair of eyes, but then I looked around more and realized……. there are about one hundred pairs of eyes here……… inside this green thing. “Welcome to the club,” he finished.
Part 3: About the Author-
My name is J.T. Stone and I am a student of Ms. Redfield and Mr. Scott. I am just a regular 7th grader who tries his best at everything, but I think that I’m an especially good writer. I’m not a big fan of packets and reading types of schoolwork (like math packets or where you read something and answer questions based on it), but I love writing because you always have a larger amount of room for creativity! No matter what it is (responses based on something interesting you’ve learned, essays, speeches, or novels), I find it too easy to not only write about what you’re suppose to write about, but to also add in a bunch figurative language to your writing, and express your own opinion about something (or you can just write to create something for fun that you think is interesting).
Now in English, I’ve always been on top of my game for everything (writing essays, using proper citations in your writing, and even when it came to creating a poster about an author). But I am CERTAIN that I’ve become a better writer if you compare this year to last year. Now, I think that I’ve always been a GOOD writer (I knew how to get a point across and what specific word would sound great in certain sentences), but I think I’ve evolved as a writer because of all the things we’ve learned throughout the year to improve our writing skills. We’ve learned how to write good topic and concluding sentences, how to show not tell (using descriptive words that appeal to the five senses), good ways to avoid saying boring words over and over again like “said”, and so much more!
I have improved so much as a writer this year, and because of many reasons. I used to not be very creative with my writing (didn’t make funny metaphors and use interesting words that add to the story), I wasn’t very good at introductory and concluding sentences because I never really knew to restate the question I was answering, but most of all, I have done SO much writing in English this year, that I strongly believe that I’ve just adapted to writing and how to make my writing make more sense to everyone!
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