Part 1: Creative Writing Piece

The Ordinary Crow

These endless nights seem to be repeating again with the burden of knowledge
pounding in my head. Sitting at home in my comfortable, jet black office chair and
feeling the unbearable hunger in my stomach, I promptly stood up to find a delicious
supper but while microwaving my dinner, the unexpected feeling of nausea began to
surge as my heart palpitations soared through the sky. Unable to think straight my
vision had started to gray out and eventually I was unable to audibly hear anything.
Losing grip as my limbs feel weak, I collapsed onto the cold, hard, cream tiles.

It was like a light gust of wind, caressing down the midpoint of my back, tempting me to
step closer to the end of the cliff. I calmly lost my balance, allowing my body to
surrender and without any hesitation fell from the edge of the cliff. My fingers that were
held together like a fistful began to freely unravel delicately out of my stone cold hands.
Falling like a cherished dandelion in my dreams, descending softly, I laid there feeling
confused, while my fingers dug pleasantly into the velvety, green coloured moss ground
as my eyes blinked open to hear the desperate screeches of crows. A small crow was
frantically flapping its wings in the air, when suddenly a loud crash of thunder had sent
the crow into a catastrophic fall. Hurriedly, holding out my hands just in time as the bird
plopped into the palms of my hand. I noticed a crimson coloured red ribbon that was
knotted tightly around one of the legs of the crow attaching a small paper scroll.
Carefully, my fingers had wandered around the bulging knot, fidgeting around the
crevices of the ribbon until I reached a loose opening. A piece of paper that left a phrase
that read ‘There is always light at the end of the tunnel’. I stared back into the crow’s
black, beaded eyes, peaking into an empty void filled with sorrows and tears.

I stuffed the scroll inside the pocket of my puffy, white jacket. Appearing from the
horizon was a wave of black shadows spreading rapidly across from a distance like
wildfire as I witnessed the environment around me had turned into ashes within contact.
Everything surrounding me from head to toe had transformed into a dreadful state when
I realised that I had entered into a dark universe in which there was no chance of nature
to exist in this realm. I stood up to take a final lingering glance over my shoulder, feeling
as if it would never end at this point in time. I continued to tread along the steep hills up
ahead as I reached inches closer to an abandoned castle that was pitch dark reflecting
the doleful midnight sky above. Shivering at the sight of the intricate, silky, white
cobwebs draped across every corner, covering the exterior of the castle, I cautiously
opened the grand, wooden door which stained my fingers with dust and soot, accessing
what appeared to be an isolated throne room made entirely by black steel.
And before I knew it, a loud bang came from behind me as I realised the door was shut,
locking me inside of this castle. A colony of bats which seemed to appear out of
nowhere from a mysterious throne, glossed in black and embedded with small, polished
onyx gemstones. I took a step back, scanning the room frighteningly as the ground
beneath me was shaking thunderously as a whirlwind of bats roared with excitement,
converging a world full of eternal darkness around me. I could no longer hear the
shrieks of the bats ringing in my ears as the silence was echoing restfully. Shadows of
faded human figures had appeared out of the dark, stealthily creeping up from behind
with some of them gathering around me like the commencement of a ritual ceremony.
Feeling the anticipation from hearing each and every spine chilling whisper made me
flinch occasionally. My mind had slipped off the edge, it was like these contagious
voices in my head were telling me that there was no way out of here.

Suddenly I immediately remembered what I read in the past. Fumbling frantically

through my pockets, I pulled out the scroll, holding it in front of the pale, white spirits. A
ray of sunlight which shone upon the towering spirits, each one disintegrated into the
transparent thin air. Everything around me had gradually been rewarded back with its
colours, flowers began to flourish from its bud as the sun glowed yellow with warmth in
the cerulean blue sky. Feeling slightly dazed from the sun beams falling on my face as
my body fell into an endless pool of wind when out of the blue I had finally woke up to
find myself being rested and laying on the dark, pine green couch. Sitting up
comfortably with my legs crossed, cupping both of my hands in my lap as I stared
outside of the window pane to see a crow with the most familiar black beaded eyes
cawing in rejoice. I murmured to myself that ‘there will always be light at the end of the
tunnel’.

Part 2: Reflection
One of the challenges that I have encountered while creating my imaginative story was
the difficulty of writing in the concept of show don’t tell. A strategy that I used to assist
myself in improving the language and word choice of my story was by referring back to
the style of creative texts and literary concepts that I have studied in class to develop
my inspiration to write my story in a way that is appreciated more from a writer's
perspective.

Another challenge that I have endured during the process of writing my story was that I
struggled to visualise what my storyline was going to be about as I had a lot of ideas in
mind. But since I kept all of them in my mind, it was quite challenging to collectively
gather all of my ideas. By overcoming this challenge, I resolved this problem by writing
my ideas down on paper to reinforce the plot of the story and slowly mapping out the
structure of my story.

The text type I chose to write my story in was the stylistic choice of writing my text
revolving around a descriptive landscape. I specifically picked this style of writing
because it allowed me to explore a range of different vocabularies through the visual
and sensory aspects of nature as well as delving into the beauty of nature.

The elements that I enjoyed while writing my creative story was the process of pre-
writing my text as it allows me to plan my story without being overwhelmed by drafting
all of the details of my story together while being able to experiment with different
descriptive language techniques.

I have utilised the language feature of first person as it allows me to communicate the
moral of my story in a way that assists the reader to form an emotional connection with
the characters within the text. I have significantly chosen to write in first person as it
gives the reader a stronger understanding of the characters thoughts, feelings and
emotions as well as the events occurring throughout the story.

A literary concept that has influenced my style of writing was the idea of ‘The Sublime’. I
have explicitly picked this concept to inspire my short story as it attracts the reader's
attention and engagement to the story by creating a sense of inferiority and awe from
the reader as they have no choice but to admire the superiority and infinite beauty of the
landscape.