Writing with Stardust: The Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers and writers (16 page)

                                       LEVEL 3: CREATIVE PARAGRAPHS

The
barbecue-red leaves
hang silently on the trees.
Muffling
winds
deaden all sound in the forest and slow the
billowy bells of cloud
. The oak
leaves are
still a-light
, but barely. Dainty noses, sniffling and snuffling, glow the same mercury-red as the trees. They replace the sound of children
slobbering
over elderberries.

Fog-tinted fairy trees stand alone in fields, noosed by coils of dragon breath. A weak pitter-patter is heard, but it is not the sound of children’s feet. It is the centuries-old, hissing drip of raindrops in caves. Spiders flood the forest, clutching their snare strings tightly, their eyes a-glitter with hatred. Owl-light replaces daylight as autumn comes to a close. The seething energy of the forest becomes vow-silent as promises to nature are kept. The burnt-red leaves turn a
smouldering-gold
as the first of the heavy rains fall.

The
rain drenches
everyone. They are not the soft, sodden, swollen raindrops of summer. They are not the light, aerated mizzling of spring showers. They are plump, pregnant with moisture, ploppy and destructive. The long, straight streaks of cloud we call mare’s tails do not carry them. The skies are damnation-black and churning with anger. There is a cataclysm coming. It is time for
daunting
winter to display his wares.

The
hotchpotch of aromas
that graced the air is gone. The
delectable, marchpane
taste of the autumn harvest has faded from the palate. When the first snowfall comes, the world will be mummified in a powdery silence. It is time to be afraid again.

                                       LEVEL 4: COMPLEX SENTENCES

Autumn is alien. The season of bumper harvests and swaying hay is soon replaced by Hallowe’en and horror. It is a portal to a time of dread, when winter’s suffocating skies throttle the land. At its most glorious, autumn is spectacular. The world is a-blaze in its fiery cloak of colours, from incandescent-red to lightning-gold. Then both leaf-flame and field-light burn bright one last time, ‘ere fading into the dying embers of their memory. The pyrotechnic show is over. The lifeless smell of monotoned winter invades the air.

Autumn starts with edibles exploding from the crackly mattress of the floor. Above them, the leaves become
conflagration-red
. It is the signal for ripened berries to fall from weary bushes. They make a phut-phut-phut sound as they hit the ground. Bronzed nuts, unhinged by
the wheezing
wind
, go thunk-thunk-thunk as they fall like scattered gunshot.

The forest becomes an Abraham’s bosom for a few brief months. As the nights turn chill, the urge for food is rekindled. The sound of animals
masticating
on nuts and slurping on berries fills the forest one last time. Then they delve, dig and disappear in order to escape the coming onslaught. Clouds fill up the sky like
vaporous veils
, intent on causing mischief. The canopy of the trees is still
a-smoulder
, but it won’t last long. The
sweltering-oranges
, riot-reds and burning-yellows will soon fade. The waxing moon and the waning sun vie for supremacy. The sun, Gods daystar, is as luminous as his left eye. The moon, his night star, is as phosphorescent as his right.

Eventually, the moon wins the timeless battle of the ages. The molten-gold sheets of summer light turn into despairing fingers of moonlight. They poke through the trees rather than drown the forest’s floor.
The straining light of the autumn moon
creates a dome of soft glow above the trees. This lends an eerie glamour to their death sleep. The wind dies with the tree-fire on occasion, creating a terrible silence. There is no insect-hum, no leaf-rustle, no wind-music. The winged symphony of birdsong no longer rings out. In the rivers, the spawning salmon starve and die. The last dragonfly whirrups and flutters, his wings a-glirr in that magical space between river and mist. He too must die. It is the tragedy and the glory of the cycle of life.

Hallowe’en creeps up with sinister intent. Scallions still grow in the forest, but rapscallions come out at night. Jack-o’- lanterns leer at passers-by like fiery poltergeists. Visions of bogeymen and doom-witches steal into dreams. Accursed sounds lacerate the night sky and strange shapes enter the realm of the forest. Creaking trees become wailing banshees and screeching ghouls spill out of windy bottles. Phantom-eyed owls hoot and haunt the night, ghosting through moon-stained trees. Deadly nightshade, lethal larkspur and poison hemlock burgle through the forest’s floor. There’s sorcery afoot, an alien and arcane hex that prowls and poisons the land. It is easy to become
unmanned
by it all. The mackerel skies of autumn, fringed with halogen-green and laced with lagoon-blue, give way to the claustrophobic skies of winter.

The
smorgasbords of scents
that have whirled around the forest are all gone. The
toothsome treats
of autumn are locked up in larders so mankind can survive the winter. Sly shadows return to the land. Wizened faces peep nervously from condensation-veiled windows. Doors are locked, kettles hiss, and fires splutter and cackle in cold grates once more. Parchment-faded faces puff on their pipes and mutter about the coldest winter in aeons approaching. The fading sunlight gasps its last, moulded-gold breath and turns pale until the first daffodils bloom again.

All living things seem to shrink into themselves, shrivelling and withering. There is a Reckoning coming of Dante-esque proportions. Winter’s frigid fist is clenching and the last dragonfly seems but a flitting memory…

                  
LEVEL 5: COMPLEX SENTENCES: THE END IS NIGH

A swirl of mist, a whirl of snow, a robe of shadow. It is the last day of autumn. The sere and yellow leaf is crumbling. A lesion of black light is churning in the sky. It bulges and swells, like a cauldron of doomsday-black. When it clears, it leaves a moon as bright and vile as the drop from a blood oath. Under a starless sky, Investigator Corbie, the king’s monster hunter, is quarrying after the flesh-eaters. He has been hunting them for a long time.

When he started out on his quest, the rivers were kingfisher-blue and trickling. Now they are brandy-brown and make the land tremble. Instead of sowing fertility, they wreak havoc as they rumble and thunder through hidden valleys. Over the water, swirls of creamy mist steam in their own malice, as foul as any witches’ soup.

The mountain range has been purged of its pristine-white majesty. It is unwelcoming and hazardous, draped in a fog of direness. Goblin-shrieks and wolf-howls carry down on the wind. It is a cold house for a monster hunter.

He has passed beaches where the sea buckles and creaks to the mercy of the heaving tide. The earthshine-gold aurora of summer has faded, leaving a storm-tossed seascape and a tempest of wind. He saw the sea stewing in its bruised-blue hatred and wisely took the route overland. He left it to carve its age-old carnage into the cliffs.

He saw the sensuous and sylph-like waterfalls of yore turn in to raging harridans. Now they are bullwhip-brown and lash the naked rock instead of caressing it. Neither are they inlaid with silver seams. Their brows are knitted with rage and edged with anger.

Whirls of snow ghost down over the forest. He was there to reap the early harvest of its nut-brown goodness. No more does it provide a culinary bounty for men of the bow; horsetails of moss hang like a spectre’s entrails, the boughs are like the despairing limbs of the damned and only pools of shadow haunt the open spaces. It is abandoned and forlorn.

Sinews of fey-grey fog writhe over the pulsing lakes. The rain falls like the devil’s spit, hot and hissing. No longer becalmed and glassy, they have a hazy, phantasmal aspect to them. Boiling with the incessant rain, they slowly swell in the bosom of the valley.

A tremulous purring begins in the sky above him.  It’s a barely suppressed rage, a growling from the gods. The carnal-black clouds begin to coalesce together like immense raven wings. A great clanking is heard. It is akin to some massive body of metal being dragged against its will across the sky. Heaven’s forge gives out a last clanging gong, its final warning. It resonates and reverberates in a concussion of sound, a deafening convocation of hatred. The world falls crypt-still, waiting for the jarring collision of hot and cold air. The clouds converge into one mass, like a vast shield of vaporous hatred. It seems to steam like ichor, the black blood of the gods. There’s a bellow, then a boom like a volcano erupting.

A great scar of seething light appears in the clouds’ centre. The sound of humming, like a straining dam, trembles in the air. The lacerations of light seem to whine as great forks of flame-gold burst forth. Wriggling and writhing, they branch out like a wizard’s whip. They zigzag through the agonized air, blazing like crippled capillaries. The lightning flashes once more, illuminating itself like the crawling cracks on stained glass. Then it sizzles itself to silence, its searing stilled, its anger quieted.

He has seen the bedewed spring and the bedizened summer come and go. He has hunted blood-besmeared trolls and dread vampyres. He longs for home but he must forge ahead. He is so close. He drops the human thigh bone back in to the midden heap. He doesn’t have the words to describe the horror he feels. He needs help with that. In two days, he will catch them. The last three leaves of autumn are splashed on the trees like an afterthought in the easel of the gods. With the rumour of his passing, they slowly twirl to the ground, Van Gogh-red and tragic. Autumn is over.

He steps into the penumbra of shadow between two trees and into the next chapter of his life, waiting for the diction of horror to arrive with the cannibals.

                                                    
ASSONANCE

Assonance occurs when the same, or similar, vowel sounds are used in two or more words in
a passage of writing
. Assonance has the power to dictate the mood of a passage. It can make it seem lonely or joyful and it can make it sad or uplifting. There are five vowels which can potentially affect the mood of a passage:
‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’ and ‘u
’.

Using the letters
‘e’
and
‘i’
in a group of words usually signifies that the passage will be light hearted or neutral of tone. By using a deliberate concentration of joyful words associated with these vowels, it can change the tone of a passage. Examples are given in the grid below.

The letter
‘u’
is very neutral. It can be used in a lot of words without any noteworthy effect on a passage. It can be combined with ‘o’ to make a very effective combination, however. An example of this is words that end in ‘ous’: tremendous, wondrous and marvellous, for example. This then gives a passage an injection of energy and dynamism.

The letter
‘a’
is also neutral as a general rule. It can be used for evoking scenes with water if it used properly by including an ‘s’ at the end of the word.. In particular, it can be very effective if you wish to conjure up the sounds of splashing through a bog or sitting by a river.

The most common and effective use of assonance is the use of the
‘o’
sound. This imbues the passage with sadness and evokes pathos in a reader. “The wind m
o
aned thr
o
ugh the c
o
ld h
o
use of the
o
ld man”. Although the vowel sounds are not perfectly pitched, it is still effective. These half-sounds (thr
o
ugh and h
o
use) are still very effective in conveying the loneliness of the house. That is because they are long vowel sounds and they add an air of gloom to the mood.

    
SAD ‘O’ SOUNDS                 JOYFUL ‘I’ SOUNDS               WET ‘A’ SOUNDS