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Composition Guidelines III

Use your common sense. Don't go overboard. A story that is wholly absurd is as bad as a story which is boring. Don't insult your reader's intelligence by expecting them to believe ridiculously exaggerated heroism. Really don't. Really.

If you set up your story right, you won't have to resort to extreme solutions. Nobody is going to believe you beat a man with a machine gun by dodging through a rain of bullets and karate chopping him on the neck.

Have fun. Planning makes it more fun, not less. Because it depends only on your imagination, every student is as good as another. It is the only place where the competition is completely fair. Go for it.

Do not forget to let your reader have a pleasurable reading experience by using appropriate linking words and linking phrases to link up your sentences. Having good ideas are not enough to help you get the points. Good content and language will get you the points.

Do not write in long sentences. We tend to make grammatical mistakes whenever we do so. Whenever you feel you are stuck in your writing, break the long sentence into a few shorter sentences. When there is a need, you can use linking words to link up those shorter sentences. In this way, we can express our ideas effectively to our readers.

Use appropriate tenses. We tend to use inconsistent tenses in our writing. Remember, good content and language will get you the points. So we have to be careful in our use of the tenses

Use dialogue to add life to your composition. However, do not use too many dialogues in your composition. As a guide, 4 – 6 dialogues will be fine.

By Raymond Ang, Oldschool & Leonard Kua