“GCSE English 的 creative writing 究竟要寫多少字？”
幾個英國學生在 The Student Room （英國最大的考試升學論壇）討論這個問題。一個學生建議，“Keep it simple. Don’t drag unnecessarily. Don’t make the piece of work lose its charm because it is unnecessarily long.” 另一學生分享他的經歷：“I only wrote about 400 words but I still got 8 (相等於A). I’ve seen people write 4-5 pages and they still got 5-6 (相等於合格).”
我完全贊同他們的觀點。一個字數多的故事不代表具備一個完整故事需要有的原素。相反，Hemingway 寫過一個只有六個字的完整故事：“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
下面有兩個對 GCSE creative writing 題目的回答。First response drags on unnecessarily；second response 是我寫的，字數比 first response 少差不多50%，但故事情節清晰很多，高潮起伏也佈置得恰當，兩者的區別足以證明 qualtiy is more important than quantity 的道理。
Question：Write a story about an event that cannot be explained,
First Response (667 words)
It was a night. Not just any night， but a night with stars in the sky that resembled diamonds on black velvet. The moon, full and suspiciously shaped like a potato, floated in the inky sky like a ghost that had nowhere else to go. Wisps of clouds loitered around it, judging each other. The wind rustled the leaves, whispering secrets only the squirrels could understand.
John, 17, sat in his room which smelled of dust and pizza crusts. His room even untider than an average teenager’s. Pile of school papers mixed with action figures mixed with three empty mugs that should have been in the dishwasher. He was too lazy to turn on his light, so he was happy to rely on the moonlight as his light source. This gave his room a ghostly mood that would have chilled a less brave person to the bone.
John turned on his computer. It whirred like a hurricane and pierced the silence of the night. He opened his favorite game, Shadow Legends of the Cosmic Beast. Outside, the stars blinked and an owl could be heard hooting on a branch. Patches of grass were already covered in morning dew, which made them glisten in the dim moonlight and gave the environment an eerie feeling. As the game loaded, a weird breeze passed through the room. There was also a shadowy presence that began lurking in the dark corners. John didn’t notice it because he was busy adjusting the brightness setting.
Then, the moon blinked. Not metaphorically — the moon in the sky outside literally blinked like an eyeball. Still, John failed to pay attention.
The game world booted up, showing a vast mountain range as majestic as Mount Everest. Suddenly, a strange sound buzzed from the speakers. Then, the screen flickered. Once. Twice. Then, it turned dark.
The shadowy presence in the room moved. John still didn’t notice because he was banging his fists against his computer, as he was angry that it wasn’t working.
Suddenly, a dragon with floppy wings burst through the monitor. It screeched like a banshee being tickled. John fell backward. The shadowy presence in his room smirked.
The dragon flew everywhere like it was mad. It had eyes as red as cherry and teeth as sharp as razors. The illumination coming from the fire it breathed lighted up the room.
The dragon made the hair on the back of John’s neck stand.. He was now so afraid that his palms became sweaty. His parents were out of town, so there was no one of help him. Desperately he tried to scream but no noise came out. He picked up his phone to send a message of help to his friends, but somehow there was no internet signal. He was at his wit’s end.
To make matters worse, more monsters were now tumbling out of the screen. Many were hooded figures with green lights as eyes that reminded him of traffic lights. He felt as helpless as a baby.
Suddenly, the floor fell away. John plummeted through space, landing in a basin bursting with flames.
“I must be in hell,” he thought to himself.
The next thing he knew, he woked up in his gaming chair.
“Wow that was the most horrible nightmare I’ve had.” He glanced at the window outside. Night had fallen like a velvet curtain soaked in ink, descending upon the earth with a theatrical flourish only the cosmos could conjure. The sky stretched endlessly, a yawning abyss scattered with a million stars — each one a trembling eye of ancient light, winking cryptic messages from the universe’s oldest diaries. The moon, absurdly swollen and glowing like a polished bone lost in a dream, hung with majestic laziness in the sky, bathing rooftops, treetops, and forgotten fence posts in a ghostly, silver milk that poured generously over the world.
His belief that he was safe was soon proved incorrect. A terrifying warrior barged into his room and carried him away. He disappeared forever.
Second response (458 words)
“I’m sorry. Other than filing a Missing Person’s report, there’s little we can do right now,” the police officer said as he handed me a form.
He also rolled his eyes. It was obvious he didn’t believe my story at all.
In fairness to him, if I hadn’t witnessed John’s disappearance with my very own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it either.
A mere twelve hours ago, life was still normal. I was heading off to John’s home in the excited manner of a just-adopted puppy leaving an animal shelter. Our finals were finally over, and we were planning to celebrate by pulling an all-nighter playing The Legend of Zelda at his home – his parents were going to be out of town, so we had the whole house to ourselves. I brought along a dozen cans of Monster Energy and several pillow-sized bags of Doritos.
“I read on Reddit that there’s this new dungeon on Level Four,” John said as he turned on his game computer. “It’s a replica of the dungeon at Conwy Castle, one of the most haunted in the UK. I’ll get my avatar to go there and have a look.”
As for me, I was more eager to fight in the battlefield near the forest, so that I could win a King Arthur’s sword to add to my arsenal of weapons. Our plan was therefore to first let our avatars separately do what we wanted them to do. Thirty minutes later, they would reconvene and join forces to fight the dragon on the hill.
I was so focused on my playing that I didn’t know thirty minutes had passed until John nudged me on the elbow.
“You wouldn’t believe what they do to people in the Middle Ages!” he exclaimed. “Follow me.”
As soon as our avatars entered the gates leading to the dungeon, a torture chamber came into view. Placed in the middle was the much-dreaded rack, a bed the size of a table tennis board, used to extract confessions out of prisoners – unless they talked their bodies would be stretched till their bones popped out of sockets.
Without a warning, one of the guards on duty grabbed John’s avatar and tied him to the rack. At the same time, I could hear sounds of bones being crushed coming from where John was sitting. When I finally managed to recover from my shock, there was nothing left of John but the empty can of Monster Energy he had been holding.
A week had since passed. Both the police and John’s parents remained convinced we were playing a prank and that John must be hiding somewhere. I was left so traumatised that I swore I would never play any game ever again.
Michelle Ng
英國牛津大學畢業，前《蘋果日報》和《眾新聞》專欄作家，現在身在楓葉國，心繫中國大陸和香港。
聯絡方式： michelleng.coach@proton.me
個人網站： https://michellengwritings.com
🌟加入YouTube頻道會員支持《追新聞》運作🌟
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5l18oylJ8o7ihugk4F-3nw/join
《追新聞》無金主，只有您！為訂戶提供驚喜優惠，好讓大家支持本平台，再撐埋黃店。香港訂戶可分享給英國親友使用。
