Writing Competition Results
The May Writing Competition has just concluded with yet another high-quality round of writing. Unlike last year, where original compositions were the majority of entries, classwork is being submitted across the various subject areas. The quality of writing occurring is once again at a high standard. With that in mind, the winners in the month of May are:
Year 7: Richard Tannous
Year 8: Ruby Ison
Year 9: Mackenzie Jones
Year 10: Athieu Majok
Year 11: Kritika Aryal
Each winner receives a $30 Teen gift voucher.
Our Honourable Mentions with quality submissions in the month of May are:
Tapan Padya (7), Aaron Geevarghese (8), Monica Luong (8), Tristan Fegradoe (8), Ben Reyes (9), Jelena Wong (9), Irish Raymundo (9), Monark Patel (10), Rayna Rao (10), Primaljeet Sandhu (10), Alessandra Bova (11), Max Preet (11).
Below are some samples of writing from May. Fonts have not been altered to preserve the intentions and originality of the student work. Thank you to those who entered. I look forward to receiving your submissions for the next competition ending on June 30th.
Extract from ‘Roots of 1908’ Kritika Aryal, Year 11.
It is the middle of winter. The distant sound of laughter and music fills up the streets of this small town. There are people rushing by, casually bumping into each other, exchanging small apologies as they walk. There are children throwing fits at their parents demanding toys they want from the store displays, completely oblivious to their parent’s lacking salaries which is is just enough to feed their
stomachs. There are the ‘important’ people who always walk as if they have somewhere to be. They carry grey, tinted briefcases and wear freshly polished shoes., and occasionally glance at their watch as they walk.
Then there are the people that no one really notices. These people slip out of their views never to be thought about again.
A young boy is walking on the street, shoulders slumped, and face grim. He walks, dragging his feet along, entirely immersed in his own world. He rarely laughed, and even when he did it became lost in a sea of sadness.
Walking on the other side of this young boy is a middle-aged woman. When she walks, the streets and her come to an understanding; as if the concrete is more than willing to rise in support of her soles.
She fights hard to ignore the little hole in her heart.
This young boy and woman are too engrossed in their thoughts to realize that they are heading in the same direction, to the same destination.
Another person joins this journey.
Extract from ‘Control’ by Max Preet, Year 11.
What was once a joyful sector, now transformed to a maze of streets. Polluted racket of automobiles and disheartened individuals echo down the long halls of metropolitan roads. The world seemed to grow cold, and though the sun was shining, the sky a bright blue, the colour seemed removed, except for the deep reds of propaganda posters scattered about. They branded someone in a black tuxedo, warily smoking a cigar, labelled with bold text denoting, ‘Control’. They polluted walls like insects, their meaning long lost in this cold, misery filled world. On the edge of a concealed street housing barren remnants of once wondrous complexes, an enshadowed structure stood. The Oldest House - a featureless structure of the brutalist style, its insides a labyrinth transposing at its whim. A blizzard of white paint coated the insides like Winter snow, heavily contrasted by dark blacks and melancholy greys. On the exterior the building spanned a similar height to those around it, just shy of 20 stories, homogeneously blending within the skyline. Yet on the inside, its scale knew no bounds.
The home of the Federal Bureau of Control; an agency solely sworn to control lives. They had manufactured a fabricated world, placing it on a podium, force-feeding it to the common public. An unorthodox melody of deceiving lies puppeteering the working classes, stringing them along like leaves in the autumn winds. The black suits, they had herculean deposits of hatred for them, the common public; their simplicity in life, their abundance of joy, their fulfilment in selves. So the Bureau sought after what was the most tangible, their freedom. They ushered a wave of surrendering, subjecting them to a new way of life, one enslaved by restrictions and scrutiny.
Extract from ‘Happy Puppet’ by Athieu Majok, Year 10.
Gold wired around the outskirts of the ceiling, draping the stage in saturations of red that contrasted the lonely abyss above. The audience opened into a sea of silence that blackened further into the abyss. Happy Puppet’s wooden figure pranced on stage, her fragile elbows and knees wobbled with every step. You see, Happy puppet isn't tied with any strings; but she dances. Happy puppet doesn’t have an audience or a script, not even a camera. Happy puppet is lonely but never alone, for something or someone watches out in the distance, she’ll never know.
Act 1
Happy puppet sways amongst the empty crowd, her shadow as her guidance. Songs of silence take the stage, for only whimpers of air that escapes from the gaps of her wooden joints make noise. Happy Puppet begins her first act, the stage lights dim from the side. Her frail body toggles up and down as she pirouettes leaving no room for introduction. She mindlessly twirls, her fritted red skirt blooms in the luminescents, nothing will go wrong for Happy Puppet. Two large-scale mirrors enter from the sides, circling the brittle puppet. She curves to a stop before bowing to finish. Happy puppet locks her head to the side in confusion. Mumbling vibrates from the audience. The mirrors open like a gulf projecting multiple reflections of herself. Each reflection looked different, her mind sketched insecurities that replayed impulsively. The mirrors jittered before completely shattering into pieces. Happy puppet scrambled to the ground, snivelling into her arms as she shakely traced her way off the stage. Glass shards jabbed into her wooden soles as she avoided the sights of the mirrors. Nothing will go wrong for Happy Puppet, nothing ever does.
Act 2
Happy puppet once again sways amongst the empty crowd, her shadow as her only guidance. Songs of silence take the stage, for only left over glass settlements tugged into her foot tinkle. Happy Puppet begins her second act, the stage lights twitch to the sound of silence. Her thin body bounces cautiously, as she twirls. Nothing will go wrong for Happy Puppet, smile. Happy Puppet shines a smile, the crowd whisper’s beneath the black. Almost immediately objects fly from the abyss, name tags are being thrown onto stage simultaneously. Who are they for? Happy puppet takes a few steps back, her eyes jitter in fear. Smile. Happy puppet perks her lips in, obediently collecting the nametags off the ground, one by one the nametags pin into her thoughts. Ugly? Loner? Attention seeker? Failure? She drops everything, her mind pulsing as more name tags latch by her feet. Her feet splinter, as a flood of camera shutter erupts from the crowd. The lights flashed aggressively from the eyes of the crowd, Everyone’s watching. Nothing will go wrong for Happy Puppet, nothing ever does.
‘Not Meant to Be’ by Irish Raymundo, Year 9
Although you didn’t make it to the end of my book, I will always remember the pages you were in.
You were there for me. You always were.
No matter if our situation was tough, if we stopped being friends or cut each other off, you always happen to be there.
I somehow always find myself back to you, or you do the same. Even if we seperated, there’s always a way one of us would come back to the other.
In most cases, we didn’t treat each other well. One would start being quiet to the other, then we would go our own ways. Yet even though it happened so many times, we never seem to fully disappear from one’s life.
I see you sometimes, staring. Making direct eye-contact, my stomach always made a weird feeling. Whether it was only for a few seconds or for a long time, I couldn’t tell what the feeling was, if it were the emotion of fear, ecstasy, nervousness or some would say butterflies, I couldn’t make up what the feeling was.
I sometimes wanted to fully leave you. Seperate myself from you, but I can’t seem to make it happen, no matter how hard I try. Some would say it’s fate, destiny, some would say it’s a curse. I can’t say if you ever felt the same way, but I always happen to stare, I catch you doing it too.
We exchange small ‘ hello’s ‘ and ‘ hi’s ‘, yet I can’t seem to make a full conversation with you like how we used to. We used to be so close, I helped you with work whilst you always asked to call me. You seemed to always entertain me, even if we stay silent sometimes, you never failed to make me smile.
Something about you always made me feel safe in a way, I don’t know if you felt the same. Others would say you seem terrifying to approach, whilst I see you as a friendly person. You were nice to me, not always, but we had our few exchanges.
I sometimes think if it’s the right thing to do, coming back again and again. No matter what the situation is, I seem to see one of us coming back. Although we are separated again, I wish that you would come back.
Talk to me. I missed it. Not small hello’s, but actual conversations, whether it’s light hearted or deep.
I don’t think you’ll make it to the end of my book. But I’ll always remember the pages you were in. Every chapter, every sentence and every line. I will always remember.
Extract from ‘This is Reality’ by Sakina Ganiwalla, Year 9.
Just as much as I want to become a writer, an amazing writer who can let my imagination flow to the people around me, it’s just not possible when I have no imagination. Reality, studies, reputation, chores. They’re all getting in the way. I barely have any time to think about what story I want to write. What type of world I want everyone to see with me. What I could create with thousands of words. What I want to be.
But then, at the end of the day, after a full day of work, I get to bring my guard down and let my subconscious finally take over. And let me tell you, my subconscious, it’s amazing. It holds so much more than I could ever imagine. It surprises me every night that I, someone who can’t even come up with something original when asked, can come up with a whole new world and characters with their own unique and complex personality in my dreams.
But then, when I wake up, I’m slapped to reality, not being able to continue or finish off my quest properly. Most of the time, I can’t even remember what I dreamed about, and so I go through another bland day.
But sometimes, just sometimes, I can remember the world my subconscious created. I can remember the characters I went on a trip with. I can remember the weird yet intriguing objects and species I met. And that’s one of the best feelings I can wake up to. The feeling of me being awake in reality, yet living and experiencing my imagination. Looking at every ordinary object around me, and turning it into something new.
And when I run to my book and write down those words that have been stuck inside me, I feel light. I feel free. I feel…happy. I feel happiness that I’ve never felt with people. I feel relieved. So relieved that all those words, that all that imagination that was pent up in me, was able to freely flow out onto frail, thin white pages. Those pages could be torn easily, and yet they still carried my characters, my world that I carefully created.
Poem by Tristan Fegradoe, Year 8.
The music has the power to sturr up different emotions,
The trees dance when the sun’s up,
They are full of happiness,
But when the music goes down, the world becomes quiet,
Darkness surrounds the world once the sun sets,
but instead of the quiet engulfing the world,
The sounds of the wild crickets, the wolves howling, the bears snoring, and the smell of moisture
Those noises are music to their ears.
The sun and the moon,
Each bringing about Life and Death,
It’s like they’re in a duet,
Both circling each other, waiting for the right moment to start the dance,
The music has the power to sturr up different emotions,
Whether it be sad or happy,
Light or dark,
The light of hope shines brightly always within you.
‘Review of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ by Richard Tannous, Year 7.
I strongly believe that the best book of all time is Percy Jackson and the lightning thief. This book is amazing and can grab your attention from the first few pages. It is undoubtedly the best book for these three reasons, it is a very descriptive book, the multitude of characters are easily recognised and it has a well thought out storyline.
Percy Jackson is definitely a very descriptive book allowing it to ignite your imagination. In the book the use of figurative language allows the reader to imagine the fight scenes in the book. Doing so allows the reader to feel like they are in the moment of the book. This is shown during the fight with Ares. It described the movement of between the characters making the page feel very intense and having an exact picture in my head. This truly shows how good the book actually is.
When reading Percy Jackson the many characters in the book are easily recognised. The reason that the characters are easily recognised is because they are from Greek mythology. This fact helps the reader to understand a character’s potential or traits before they are shown, this allows the book to feel suspenseful. This is shown in the text when the character “Hades” was introduced. Knowing Hades as the God of the underworld with his pet “Cerberus” we got an understanding why Percy would venture there or what would occur there. The understanding of what a character's role is a crucial component of a good book.
The story line in a good book is crucial to its success, in Percy Jackson that element was nailed. Without a good storyline the book would not stay engaging and wouldn’t be action packed. Whilst reading I was engaged the entire time so much I got angry when I couldn’t read. The action between characters allowed the suspense to build easily and put you on your heels. In Percy Jackson the story line was full of plot twists like when Luke, the person that Percy thought was his friend actually was working with an evil God to kill Percy. The story line in Percy Jackson was above any other story line forcing the reader to think deeply in suspense.
In conclusion, Percy Jackson and the lightning thief is unquestionably the best book of all time. The language, storyline and characters were all crucial elements that elevated the book above the rest. The language was super imaginative and the storyline was the element that put everything in its place allowing the reader to try and follow along.