Personal Writing

Setting

Description of setting

• Focus on setting• Use of adjectives/ descriptive

language• Use of imagery: metaphors,

similes, personification

Activity

• Copy down any words or phrases that you feel are particularly effective in describing the setting in the following extract

• Just before the sun broke above the Gulf’s rim, the wind, which had blown the waves with ropes of foam all night, suddenly died and the sky became as white and brightly grained as polished bone, as though all colour had been bled out of the air, and the gulls that had swooped and glided over my wake lifted into the haze.

• The eastern horizon was strung with rain clouds and the sun should have risen out of the water like a mist-shrouded egg yolk, but it didn’t. Its red light mushroomed along the horizon, then rose into the sky in a cross, burning in the centre, as though fire were trying to take the shape of a man, and turned the water the heavy dark colour of blood.

Activity

• Complete a senses chart for a setting for either a piece of personal or creative writing

• Use this to write one or two paragraphs describing your setting.