Here in lies my
GCSE English original writing piece from approximatly two or three years ago, complete and unabridged
"We sat there. Day and night. Just waiting. Waiting for the enevitable.
"I sat there in the trench everyday waiting,, sinking into the soaking mud. I watched as continuous grey clouds rolled over the sky, and would swell and leak sending tiny bombs at us. But they couldn't deflect the shells that were purposely fired at us, exploding either somewhere in front of us blowing up barbed wire, or behind us blowing up our comrades. Either way the blast thundered on our ears, turning us deaf, and for some thundered on their soul, to change ordinary men into gibbering fools or suicidal maniacs all too ready to pull the pins out of grenades and carry on holding the bomb in their hand, still in the trench. I saw one man crying out for his baby daughter, half running, half stimbling along the trench, bobbing in and out of the enemy's line of fire. But he didn't care for the bullets hurtling around his head, he just wanted to cuddle his baby. He went past me, then stopped turned around and looked at me. He stumbled closer and stared at me. He extended a shaking hand towards my face, but instead he took my helmet and cuddled it, whispering to it gently and tickeled it where he thought its chin was. He then walked back calmly to where his gun was. He fell asleep holding the helmet to his chest.
"The rain came down heavily almost everyday, collecting in our ditch making a stationary stream that ran for miles. The rain ran over the edge of the trench, creating little water falls that slowly filled in the trench raising us up to the enemy's line of fire. At night, when the visibility was considered minimal by the generals five miles behind the front line, we had to shovel out the earth trying to drown us, throwing it on the mud wall behind us.
"Enemy bullets were firing at us all the time sometimes hitting our shovels, sending vibrations down the shaft knocking it out of our hands. But more often the bullets hit bodies sending a lump of lead through vital organs. If they didn't die from a shot in the head, they were taken off by stretcher down the trench into the network of ditches behind us. They called this 'Honourable Retirement', but what it really meant was that you would die before you even got in sight of a 'hospital'.
"We did this all night repairing what was keeping us in this prison. During the day we tried to get what sleep we could between the shell and gun fire, and the continuous flow of rain water and mud down our backs. But most of us found sleep too difficult to acheive, so we continued to sink into the mud, maybe talking a little between explotions about home and their girls, the shops they're going to open and how little work they're going to do once the place was opened. One guy made a pack of cards out of scraps of cigarette packets. There used to be five of them all sat on crap boxes siting there playing poker all day, winning and loosing bullets to each other. Now though, two have gone on Honourable Retirement.
"I, on the other hand I played 'Sniper' with the guy next to me: we sank our guns into the mud, and hunched over them looking through the sights. The rules were simple, just shoot as many of the enemy as possible. With every shot great plumes of what looked like red smoke exploded out of the back of the target's head. The smoke gave the only colour to this grey battleground, swirling beautifully in the wind, moving in elegant arcs, until it landed on the faces of my next target.
"But as soon as the sun went below the horizon the fun and games stopped, the shoveling shit and getting shot and bombed to death started.
"And so this cycle went on for weeks and months. Men would die. Boys would arrive with the enthusiasm of getting out of their school day routine. Some would make suicidal runs across the void so that they thought they would become heros, not knowing what they would do if they got to the other side with a country of men to shoot them. All that became of them of course was to be shot by machine guns every possible place on their bodies. Bullets riped through blood and bone. They colapsed, falling to the mud with an expression on their face that asked 'Why?'. And what happened to them? Lice would set in, eating their way through turning a boy into a carcas with a name chipped in stone at home. The only way you could get through it was to not care, and surpress emotions. No friends could be made because anyone you cared for was shot first.
"A fog descended one evening and the generals ordered the order no body wanted to hear.
"Every man I could see along the trench was positioned by the mud wall, ready to scramble up it.
"The order was given.
"It took what seemed like hours to settle in, but before I knew it I was digging my hands into the soft mud and climbing the mud wall.
"The fog was thick. As we ran towards the enemy we only saw the barbed wire and other man traps until we were on them. Many got caught in them and metal neddles sliced through skin, bleeding to death, the dignified send they got as other men used the dead and dying bodies as foot bridges to jump the man traps.
"There was bullets flying all around us but I carried on running, and so did the people around me.
"Through the fog I began to see the enemy trench, and two more lines of barbed wire. I jumped the first line using the man I played sniper with while trying the impossible to dodge bullets.
"As I landed after the jump, I stood on a mine. The explotion ripped off my right leg and threw me onto the last line of barbed wire. What seemed like a thousand needles peirced my body. I was pushed on them further when someone used me as a foot bridge.
"Agony chased every nerve cell in my body, commanding it to feel pain. Every nerve was screaming from it. I tried to lift my self up to at least remove the needles in my eyes so I could close them, but my hands were impaled on the other needles.
"My strength was leaving me as fast as blood was. It was dripping from the holes in my body, my mouth and nose, the stump where my leg had been.
"I wished I was dead
"To me it seemed like hours for me to die, but in reality I was dead in minutes.
"Around me other men had fallen in a battle of no victory. In a war that did not end them all."
This is the only story I have ever got down on paper, for me and the written word are a bit at odds with each other.
The main ailment my writing suffers is a lack of plot and realistic characters. I can think up 'universes' at the drop of a hat, it's normally what I do to make the walk home less hard going, I'll think up a story. In my head at the moment I've got about five story universes that I would seriously like to get on paper (by universes I mean places, cultures, societies, technologies in some cases, basically a general feel of what exists in that story), one such universe I think I've been dreaming up for at least four years and is now quite complex. But when I tried to write a story about it I get bored writing it, so I can't imagine it would be that interesting to read. My universes lack direction and my character's lack life.
And then there's the actuall writing. Whenever I try to write something it reads like an itteration of facts rather than the weaving of a tale.
Then there's the ending. I can never think of a clear and cut way of rounding it all off.
