Amazing Narratives

This term the 5/6 unit have been working on creating amazing narratives. We've learned about starting our narratives with a 'sizzling starter', we've worked on characterisation and using descriptive language. We've also worked on having a detailed orientation, climax and resolution.
We hope to publish our work and create a unit book so that we can read each others work.
Below is a great example of an amazing narrative created by Sean Gobbitt.

 A Raging War

Crunch! My bare feet crinkle on the gravel road. The soft zephyr sends me shivering in my cloth rags that I wear as clothes. The concrete houses look like cracked cardboard boxes. Rubble lies everywhere, remains of the bombs that were dropped here. I can pick up the sounds of bombs in the distance. I am an orphan, on the run from the military soldiers that are trying to kill me.

My name is Mohammed, and I live in the capital of Syria, Damascus. I am nine, and I have short, stringy hair, and a thin and pale face. My body is small, and my tummy gripes with hunger. I haven’t eaten in a while, since my parents got captured. I have been living on food that I have found on the street. I don't think my parents are alive. I haven't seen them since they got captured by the Syrian government. They got captured when I was three. They hid me in the bin and they sacrificed their lives for me. How will I ever repay them? Suddenly, loud noises fill my ears, like bees buzzing around my head. Oh no. No no no no no no no. It's the sound of a Syrian military truck on the horizon, doing random checks of the city. I better run.

I gallop frantically through the forest, occasionally looking back for danger. I am in real jeopardy now. The cacophonous curses of soldiers ring in my ears. They know that if I get through the forest and cross the Turkish border, they will not be able to catch me. I can feel the hard tree roots digging into the soles of my feet. I suddenly burst out of the forest, feet aching and bloody, pools of sweat dripping down my face, gathering salty beads of H2O on the tip of my nose, finally dropping onto my rag that I wear as a shirt. I bolt on, putting my life into the power of my legs, giving them control over my body. Suddenly, God seems to have seen me, because I catch a glimpse of a lorry in the distance. I run up to it and capriole into the back, landing in sacks of rice, wheat and flour. Hopefully it takes me to Istanbul, where the government can’t find me. But as soon as this chance comes, I realise that I have been a bit too cocky. This was all a trap.

The driver stops the car, pulls open the back of the truck, jerks me out and throws me vigorously to the ground. Now I see that he is not a trucker, he is a sergeant. His stare is as cold and hard, like that of a grizzly bear looking into its dying preys’ eyes, grinning with satisfaction. His face is cimmerian. Before I know it, I am knocked out cold, kidnapped, and taken to the military base. I don’t know what happened after that, but I do know that I will have some serious consequences charged against me. I haven’t obeyed government rules. I have let down my country, I am a fugitive, a guerilla. But I have thought wrong.

They wake me up. I am shivering. The cold concrete floor doesn’t help much either. My cuffs are undone. I am walked out of my cell and taken to the army training camp where other Syrian soldiers are training on obstacles. The sergeant tells me to join the other men, training to be strong, training to risk their lives for their country. This will be a long and hard life, living with the army.

Everyday, I train as hard as I can. When I finish training, my legs feel like jelly. Every step I take makes my aching body groan with tiredness. As I return to the barracks, legs numb, hands red, raw with blood, I realise that the Syrian government has given me a chance to live, a chance to prove myself reliable and robust, fighting for what is mine, my country. Now I don’t think of my throbbing body or my bleeding hands. I love it. This is how I was supposed to live in the first place. For some reason, I am happy to be with my fellow soldiers, and I am glad that the Syrian military captured me in the first place.

Bang! Bombs and landmines go off behind me. The ground is red with blood, corpses of my fellow mates lying everywhere, attracting flies as much as a beacon attracts attention. I can hear the shrill sounds of gun fires and the falsetto sounds of men shouting for cover. This is death as it is, staring into my terror-stricken eyes, taking me to a land of its own, hell. I dive behind a concrete slab. Too late. A pain stabs me in the chest. I guess this is the end for me. Time to take the plans for my second life into action.

The End


1 comment:

  1. Great work Sean! You made me want to keep reading right to the end.

    ReplyDelete