DESCRIPTION …

1. DESCRIPTION … Friday, 05 September 2014

2. Snow, snow and snow again. • Consider descriptive words… go on! • How many words do we have for the pieces of paper in a cardboard folder that you have in you bags? • Book, books, textbooks, workbooks, roughbooks, englishbooks, recipebooks, dictionaries (books that are full of words), hardbackbooks, paperbacks…

3. A selection of 49 words for snow

4. Now, what do you notice about the translations? • It is interesting how we often need several words to do justice to the descriptive power of the Eskimoes’ one. • Consider your descriptive sentences… how precise were you with your description? • Did you use varied vocabulary, sentence length and language for sensory effect? • Did your neighbour?

5. What is striking about this image? What is striking About the colours? What ideas do we get about the Content of the film? What is the single Most striking thing In the picture?

6. Review: You are thousands of feet up one of the most treacherous peaks in the world, Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. The descent would be gruelling enough even if your climbing partner hadn't broken his leg, requiring you to winch him down yard by yard with a rope 8mm thick. Progress is agonizingly slow; your body is seizing up from dehydration, and the wind is tearing your skin off. Suddenly the rope goes taut and stays taut. Your friend is hanging over the edge of an ice cliff, screaming at you to stop lowering him, but all you can hear is the howling blizzard. For all you know he's probably dead. You daren't move in case his weight drags you right off the mountain-face, and you remain rooted to the spot for hours, until the realization dawns that if you don't take action soon you are going to die. Would you cut the rope?

7. Response: • How does the opening paragraph draw in the reader? Discuss and feedback. • 5/8 minutes ( not that I’m counting…)

8. Tension • I lolled on the rope, scarcely able to hold my head up. An awful weariness washed through me, and with it a fervent hope that this endless hanging would soon be over. There was no need for the torture. I wanted with all my heart for it to finish. • The rope jolted down a few inches. How long will you be, Simon? I thought. How long before you join me? It would be soon. I could feel the rope tremble again; wire-tight, it told me the truth as well as any phone call. So! It ends here. Pity! I hope somebody finds us, and knows we climbed the West Face. I don't want to disappear without trace. They'd never know we did it. • The wind swung me in a gentle circle. I looked at the crevasse beneath me, waiting for me. It was big. Twenty feet wide at least. I guessed that I was hanging fifty feet above it. It stretched along the base of the ice cliff. Below me it was covered with a roof of snow, but to the right it opened out and a dark space yawned there. Bottomless, I thought idly. No. They're never bottomless. I wonder how deep I will go? To the bottom ... to the water at the bottom? God! I hope not! • Another jerk. Above me the rope sawed through the cliff edge, dislodging chunks of crusty ice. I stared at it stretching into the darkness above. Cold had long since won its battle. • There was no feeling in my arms and legs. Everything slowed and softened. Thoughts became idle questions, never answered. I accepted that I was to die. There was no alternative. It caused me no dreadful fear. I was numb with cold and felt no pain; so senselessly cold that I craved sleep and cared nothing for the consequences. It would be a dreamless sleep. Reality had become a nightmare, and sleep beckoned insistently; a black hole calling me, pain-free, lost in time, like death. • The torch beam died. The cold had killed the batteries. I saw stars in a dark gap above me. The storm was over. I was glad to see them again. They seemed far away. And bright: you'd think them gemstones hanging there, floating in air above. Some moved, little winking moves, on and off, on and off, floating the brightest sparks of light down to me. • Then, what I had waited for pounced on me. The stars went out, and I fell. Like something come alive, the rope lashed violently against my face and I fell silently, endlessly into nothingness, as if dreaming of falling. • From Touching The Void by Joe Simpson

9. Tension… • Look at the text on pg 107:void 2.3.doc • Consider how the writer makes this experience tense. • use PEE in your answer • ( The writer creates extra tension by the use of questions, exclamations and short sentence fragments: “The rope jolted down a few inches. How long will you be, Simon? I thought. How long before you join me? It would be soon. “ The reader is engaged in the fear of the narrator.)

10. TASK , • write PEE bullets to describe three ways in which the writer makes his writing tense. • In 10 minutes we will swap papers and add 1 extra point to the list.

11. We should get something like this: • • A viewpoint that involves the reader (make them see as character sees, sharing partial discovery) • • A setting with atmosphere • • A particular situation, sharply depicted • • Appeals to one or more of the senses (maybe exaggerated) • • Similes or metaphors to create vivid sensations • Well chosen and limited direct speech - if used • • Unexplained details/ hinted at worries or fears or expectations - reader asks questions • • Varied sentence length and structure • • Short sentences or minor sentences used for effect • Repetition of key phrases or words • • Time reminders - ticking clock, time checks, temporal connectives • • Punctuation that acts to slow down or speed up the pace • • Powerful verbs or verbs that add to doubts and fears and expectations ("seemed", "might have been...") • • Vivid noun phrases - don't overuse adjectives • Well chosen adverbs • • Combinations and variety of technique build and vary the level of tension which can reach a climax, be held at that point of climax or quickly relaxed - the tension has been structured/organised/shaped to create the fear or excitement • REMEMBER: Use vivid, telling details; and sentences that maximise feelings or atmosphere.