Style Model #2 - Rookie Of The Year by Paul Byall

For the next two weeks a debate raged in Josh's head over asking her to leave or letting her stay. As he saw it, the longer he put it off, the harder it would be to get rid of her. But if she was as sick as she claimed, he wouldn't have to worry about that. Come to think of it, though, she had never actually said what kind of illness she had, which you would think a person would do.

Sometimes he felt comfortable around her and was actually glad she was there, but at other times she bothered him. She joked, or half-joked, about his habits, implying that he was disposed to sloppiness. When he popped a cap on a beer and let the foam rise up and overflow down the side of the bottle, dripping suds on the floor as he moved across the kitchen, she would rush over with a paper towel and mop it up. One morning she entered the kitchen as he was frying bacon for breakfast and remarked that bacon was bad for him. "Especially at your age. That stuff'll clog up your arteries and knock you flat dead."

"What? Now you're my doctor?" The truth was that Doctor Hinson had been cautioning him against fatty foods. He'd had a stent inserted the year before, and his cholesterol was up again. But he liked bacon, he liked it with his eggs, and for lunch he liked BLTs. He ate BLTs at least three times a week.

One morning he came out of the bathroom and found her waiting in the corridor wrapped in a powder blue, terry cloth robe. She held a small bag in one hand and a fistful of pill bottles in the other. He nodded a greeting in passing and foresaw a budding problem. The house only had one bathroom.

The problem never materialized. She kept her personal toiletries in her room and always waited for him to use the bathroom first.

One day he cut his fishing short, came home early and was surprised to find her gone. He raised the window blind and looked outside for the Plymouth , but it was gone too. There wasn't a whole lot of places to go on the island, and he knew she didn't have any money. He wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, then had a thought and went to her room, but yes, her clothes were still there. He went into the living room, switched on the TV and flipped through the channels looking for a movie. He settled for "Bull Durham", a film he'd seen maybe ten times.

At four-thirty the telephone rang. It was the hospital on the mainland. She'd just had her treatment, the woman said, and needed somebody to pick her up.

In the waiting room a pale looking patient in a wheel chair, who bore only a vague resemblance to Marybelle, like a frailer, less hearty relative, gave him a weak smile. The woman at the desk handed him a form on a clipboard. "Just sign at the bottom that you're picking her up."

He wheeled her out to the car and lifted her into the passenger seat. She felt like a small child in his arms.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "This was my first time. I didn't know it would do this to me. I thought . . ." She paused for breath. "I thought I'd be able to drive home."

On the way home, her hair began falling out. "I'm getting hair all over your seats," she said, and he looked at her and realized he'd never really seen her before. He carried her to her room and laid her in the bed. He asked if she wanted him to sit with her for a while, but she said no, she thought she'd sleep a little.

In the morning she seemed better. He offered to make her breakfast, and she said fine, but not that greasy bacon he liked. He served her scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice, and that seemed to satisfy her, although she did mention she preferred wheat toast.

"That's what you should eat too," she added. "Whole grains. And if you must have bacon, buy Canadian bacon; it's got almost no fat."

"I'll do that," he said.

"So what happened?" she said later, "To your baseball career?"

"I took a line drive to the head. I was never the same after that."

"Bad break."

"It was my own fault. I never learned to square up. Every coach I'd ever had, since Little League, had told me I had to finish up with my feet square to the plate, to be in position to field the ball. But I never could get it in my head. I just wanted to rear back and fire. They said I wasn't coachable."

"I can see that."

The following afternoon, he went to the supermarket and picked up the wheat bread and Canadian bacon and some other things, then drove to Carl's.

"Do me a favour, Carl?"

"Oh, oh."

"I need to pick up Marybelle's car at the hospital."

"On the mainland?"

"You know another hospital around here?"

"What's it doin' at the hospital?"

Josh didn't want to tell Carl about her illness; it seemed a violation of her privacy, but he didn't want to lie either. Josh rarely lied, not because of fidelity to some moral code, but because it was just too much trouble. It ascribed excessive value to the opinion of the person being lied to. Was anybody really worth all that effort? Generally it was easier just to clam up. Which was what he did, and when Carl repeated the question, Josh said, "It's complicated." in a way that ended the inquiry.

Style Model #1 - Extract from An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the 19th time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down. He climbed into the tub as soon as the water got hot, and he sat and watched with a curiously blank look on his face as the water overtook him. The water inched up his legs, which were crossed and folded into the tub. He did recognize, albeit faintly, that he was too long, and too big, for this bathtub—he looked like a mostly grown person playing at being a kid.

As the water began to splash over his skinny but unmuscled stomach, he thought of Archimedes. When Colin was about four, he read a book about Archimedes, the Greek philosopher who’d discovered you could measure volume by water displacement when he sat down in the bathtub. Upon making this discovery, Archimedes supposedly shouted “Eureka! ” and then ran naked through the streets. The book said that many important discoveries contained a “Eureka moment.” And even then, Colin very much wanted to have some important discoveries, so he asked his mom about it when she got home that evening.

“Mommy, am I ever going to have a Eureka moment?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, taking his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“I wanna have a Eureka Moment,” he said, the way another kid might have expressed longing for a teenage mutant ninja turtle.

She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek and smiled, her face so close to his that he could smell coffee and make-up. “Of course, Colin baby. Of course you will.” But mothers lie. It’s in the job description.

Colin took a deep breath and slid down, immersing his head. I am crying, he thought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feel like crying so I must be crying, but it’s impossible to tell because I’m underwater. But he wasn’t crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she’d taken the part that cried from him.
He opened the drain in the tub, stood up, toweled off, and got dressed. When he exited the bathroom, his parents were sitting together on his bed. It was never a good sign when both his parents were in his room at the same time. 

Guilty Pleasures: Fact or Fiction? [First Draft]

Although the phrase ‘guilty pleasure’ conceptualizes a social misunderstanding laced with judgemental eye rolls and ferocious mocking, in reality, guilty pleasures are nothing but a psychological nag in the back of your mind reminding you that maybe you shouldn’t be watching a fifth episode of ‘America’s Next Top Model’ before you go to bed, and maybe listening to One Direction isn’t exactly the definition of ‘cool’. But who decided that ANTM isn’t as impressionable as BBC News? Who labelled One Direction as being lesser to the likes of The Beatles or the Jackson 5? Surely entertainment is entertainment, and whether or not it’s described as socially acceptable is another matter entirely. I think it’s time to own up to our interests, no matter how crazy or undesirable they are.

It seems that labelling things as a ‘guilty pleasure’ has become a desperate fall-back after media snobs have taken it upon themselves to decipher what exactly is appropriate to like and what is shamefully unacceptable to admire. For example, it’s okay to enjoy any film that stars the prestigious Brad Pitt, however if you were to admit a love for ‘’Desperate Housewives’ or ‘The Only Way is Essex’, you’re immediately criticized for possessing shallow entertainment levels. The undeniable issue at hand is that, 80% of the time, Desperate Housewives is a lot better and certainly a lot more enjoyable than some of Brad Pitt’s movies – including the recent crashing disappointment of World War Z, the predictable and blatantly over-the-top Mr & Mrs Smith, and the monotonous and dreary Meet Joe Black. It’s become a particular habit of the 21^st century in general to believe you are a musical aficionado, and by doing so, you’re allowed to listen to whatever the hell you want, as long as you do so ‘ironically’. I’m not sure about you, but there’s nothing ‘ironic’ about dancing around the kitchen to Justin Bieber’s latest song, but not before devastatingly persuading all of your friends that once you’re home, your Radiohead playlist is your best friend.

The notions of what is adequate and what isn’t have been automatically approved for us by the leading critics of the world – most of whom are middle-aged, middle-classed, white-haired males who seem to have permanently bored expressions and wouldn’t dare to tap their feet to the latest Lady Gaga song. They themselves have crafted a musical timeline, with little variation from angry men with guitars throughout the different stages of the 20^th century. Pop music is nothing less of a sin in their eyes, something that should have been extinguished the second it was invented. Critics are led to believe that pop music is as easy to write as a children’s storybook, the thoughtless lyrics spat onto tracks within ten minutes of entering a studio. The likes of Max Martin (the genius behind the Backstreet Boys’ Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) and Britney’s Hit Me Baby One More Time) and Brian Higgins are paid high amounts of money to pen bubble-gum pop songs, and here’s the reason why. It’s ten times easier to write a dreary, heartfelt ballad than an enthusiastic, overwhelming pop song, and evoking happiness is a far harder task than making someone cry.

I think I’m right to believe that at some point in your life, somebody has tried to give you a hard time for something you like. Whether that be a movie, a television programme, a music video, a song, an album or an artist or band in general – there’s probably been a time when you’ve been forced to justify your adoration for something. So, instead of exhausting ourselves by feeling ‘guilty’ about our interests, we should channel our energy into perfecting the art of self-confidence. The only way to truly escape the concept of unworthiness is to push away the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ and instead, replace it with an assertive positive regard.

I’m not talking about ‘casual interests’ here. This isn’t about you singing along to Michael Bublé when they play his song on the radio, or recording missed episodes of the Great British Bake Off to watch while you’re eating your Chinese Takeaway. This is about the things you unconditionally love – whether it’s Oasis’ Greatest Hits or Bridget Jones’ Diary. For me, it’s always been Coldplay, and the amount of criticism I’ve been given for this adoration is beyond unreasonable. The arguments ‘ve heard array from “every single song on every single album is slow, miserable and unpleasing to the ear,” to “they make, rubbish, pedestrian music for people who don’t like music,” – but of course, the individuals making these declarations have an immensely superior music taste to myself. My only reply to Coldplay critics is that I’m not really bothered by your opinion. The fact that you think Coldplay make ‘music for bed-wetters’ isn’t going to make me take Fix You off repeat, and the fact that I love every single album they’re produced isn’t a distressing opinion for me to admit. At the end of the day, I will not let your enjoyment, or lack of enjoyment, affect my own personal enjoyment.

As David Grohl once said, “I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you f**king like something, like it. That’s what’s wrong with our generation: that residual punk rock guilt, like, “You’re not supposed to like that. That’s not f**king cool.” Don’t f**king think it’s not cool to like Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” It is cool to like Britney Spears’ “Toxic”! Why the f**k not? F**k you! That’s who I am, goddamn it! That whole guilty pleasure thing is full of f**king s**t.” And, as a censored, more child-friendly reply, I couldn’t agree more. 

Analysing Persuasive Language

To persuade means to induce to undertake a course of action or embrace a point of view by means of argument, reasoning, or entreaty. When writing to persuade, there are a number of different techniques writers can use, for example, repetitive structures, collocation or figurative language. The four texts I studied were all written to persuade the reader into believing a certain opinion or to take action against a certain type of behaviour, and were written by four different writers; Ed Miliband, Daisy Buchanan, Melissa Bradshaw and Victoria Coren.

One technique Ed Miliband uses throughout his letter to the Daily Mail is the repetitive use of abstract nouns. By repeating words such as ‘hope’ and ‘comfort’, the mood of the text is instantly transformed into a positive one. This convinces the reader about Ed’s purpose behind writing the letter – which is to prove his dad’s love for England. In comparison to the original text, Ralph Miliband’s diary entries, there is a clear change in emotional dynamics, as his diary uses more negative nouns, such as ‘bitterness’ and ‘ferocity’. In Daisy Buchanan’s comment article on parents banishing relationships between pre-teens, she uses abstract nouns such as ‘love’ and ‘desire’ to interlink the worlds between teenagers and adults. By showing the common factors between the two, Buchanan can persuade parental readers that children ‘need to know they can turn to you and tell you what's going on, whether they feel pressured to do something they're not ready for, have their heart broken or just got bored.’ However both Melissa Brashaw’s article about Sinead O’Connor’s controversial public letter to Miley Cyrus, and Victoria Coren’s commentary  about English Language, or more specifically the recent change in the Brownie Guide promise, lack use of interesting adjectives and abstract nouns. The use of pure facts and opinion influence a more urgent persuasion rather than an emotional persuasion as shown by Ed Miliband.

At the beginning of Miliband’s letter, he uses a series of simple declaratives; ‘It was June 1944 and the Allies were landing in Normandy. A 20-year-old man, who had arrived in Britain as a refugee just four years earlier, was part of that fight. He was my father. Fighting the Nazis and fighting for his adopted country.’ This creates a powerful, effective beginning, as not only does it introduce the continuing story for the reader, but it also induces sympathy and patriotism with ‘fighting for his adopted country.’ Melissa Bradshaw and Daisy Buchanan also opt for simple declaratives as their beginning sentences, stating, ‘Sinéad O'Connor's open letter to Miley Cyrus isn't entirely helpful to women’ and ‘In Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit Of Love, the narrator, Fanny, a desperate, lovelorn teenager, fantasises about having an affair with a pig farmer.’  In Bradshaw’s text, by using the general term of ‘women’, female readers are persuaded to carry on reading the article, as the sentence hints it could affect them in some way. However, Coren’s opening sentence reads ‘Which words or phrases would make your top five list of the worst linguistic horrors in modern English?’ By opening her article with an interrogative, the reader is persuaded to question themselves before completing the article. This tends to leave a lasting impression on the reader once they have finished reading the article. As for their concluding sentences, all four writers use simple declaratives. For Bradshaw, Buchanan and Miliband, by finishing their articles the same way they started them, it leaves off with a satisfying ending, as well as a clear conclusion to the points they have both previously made.  

Miliband’s letter itself is written in a formal manner, and uses proven facts mixed with emotional assumptions as evidence for points. For example; ‘He worked as a removal man, passed exams at Acton Technical College and was accepted to university. Then he joined the Royal Navy. He did so because he was determined to be part of the fight against the Nazis and to help his family hidden in Belgium. He was fighting for Britain.’ Informing readers of the Daily Mail of Ralph Miliband’s life story is an effective way to provoke empathy, and therefore persuading their support. Melissa Bradshaw, Victoria Coren and Daisy Buchanan use a more informal approach compared to Ed Miliband. Bradshaw uses pronouns such as ‘you’ and ‘we’ to make the article more personal, whereas Ed mainly uses more direct pronouns, such as ‘I’ and ‘he’.  Although Coren and Buchanan also use ‘I’, their pieces are still informally written, as they both mix the use of ‘I’ with ‘you’, and therefore the articles seem conversational rather than official. The use of ‘you’ is more persuasive than ‘I’, as the reader feels included in the opinions Bradshaw is stating. For example, ‘Perhaps you can already see the problem here.’

Another technique which Coren, Buchanan and Bradshaw use, but is absent in Miliband’s letter is the use of rhetorical questions; ‘Why should this be the case?’ and ‘But even if there is some reason why God must be dropped entirely, was there really no better alternative?’ and ‘So how should we deal with this phenomenon?’ are all examples of rhetorical questions used in the texts. Rhetorical questions are persuasive because they subtly influence a certain response from an audience as they involve the reader within the world of the text. Although the intended effect isn’t to actually be answered, most readers would in fact answer rhetorical questions as they engage their attention, whereas writers use them to emphasize their points and opinions. 

The Ghost Orchid

"Do you know what sucks?" the seventeen year old asked, blue eyes fluttering underneath the dull lighting of the room.  Aside from the single swinging light bulb that hung from the dusty ceiling of the church hall and the unstable sunlight that threatened to break through the sealed curtains, the room was considerably dark compared to the typical summer’s day outside. "Having cancer sucks," she answered her own almost-rhetorical question with a heavy-hearted sigh, her shoulders sinking desperately underneath the dusky blue cardigan that her mother had wrapped cautiously around her petite frame. "Life shouldn't have a time limit, you know? I mean, sure, we're all going to die eventually - I'm not an idiot, but, I guess I just don’t want to be defined by a disease. I want to live without having to worry I'm going to die in 365 days and counting," she shrugged harmlessly; her comments, although brimming with guilt-ridden truth,  slightly controversial within the support group. The group was made up of ten or so different teenagers, all of whom were well aware of time limits, all aware of the monotonous ticking of the clock. Athena herself was suffering from stomach cancer. A cancer that was easy to pronounce but difficult to understand - just like her, she thought.

Athena Rennison was a girl of little talent, few hobbies and sadly, little interests asides from watching the Great British Bake Off and reading her dad’s dusty novels written by authors who had long since died before her own footsteps had even graced Earth. "People say nobody cares unless you're pretty or dying, but even now, people don't really care about me. I mean, sure, my mom and my dad do, but those people on Facebook?  They pretend to care. You know, since I've been diagnosed with cancer, I've gained 100 friends? I wasn't aware I even knew 100 different people," Athena muttered carelessly, unsure of how to continue considering the support group leader's face resembled something of a thunder storm at her current proclamation. Before she could attempt to continue, the rusty cough of Bob, the group leader, cut her off. “I think that’s enough for today,” he announced, clapping his hands as if he were trying to destroy the atoms of negativity which had settled in the room. “I’ll see you guys next week!” he added cheerfully, his chair scraping against the cold stone floor with a shriek. Athena couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. Although her agility skills had been seriously tampered with, she willed herself to escape the eagle eye of Bob before he could reach out a wrinkled hand to pat her condescendingly on the shoulder.

As soon as she escaped into the sunlight, the glistening rays of gold blinded the delicate retinas of her eyes – casting her temporarily sightless as her eyelids fluttered closed in defence. Finding an adequate seat on a bench that sat in front of the church hall, Athena sat down, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for her mother to arrive.

“Hi.”

She glanced to her right, surprised at the sudden interruption; the source of the voice being a curly-haired teenage boy she recognized from the support group. Although she didn’t know his name, she was aware that he was suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Like she said – defined by an illness, not a first name. 

“Hello,” she replied cautiously, trying to emit an air of disinterest as she used a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. 

“I’m Fletcher.”

“Cool.”

“You’re Athena.”

She merely nodded in reply. He took the seat next to her, sliding across the bench until the proximity between them was far enough apart to not be awkward, but close enough that Athena could see the light hairs on his arms.

“Tell me, Athena, are you normally this talkative?

“Only on Sundays.”

“It’s a Friday.”

“I guess it must be your lucky day then.”

“Can I show you something?”

She turned to face him, an eyebrow raising in confusion at the sudden jump in conversation.

“My mum told me not to go anywhere with strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger. We’ve been going to the same support group for two years. Plus I was in your year nine chemistry class. I was the kid at the back whose hair always caught on fire when we used Bunsen burners.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a yes?”

She shook her head. No.

“Why not?”

Fumbling for an excuse, she replied, “My mum should be picking me up any second.”

A vibration. 1 next text message.

“Who’s that?” he asked nosily, standing on his tiptoes to look over her shoulder.

“My mum,” she wrinkled her nose, shielding the screen from his prying eyes.

“And?”

“She can’t pick me up anymore. She had to go to work.”

“Great!”

“Is it?”

“I can drive you.”

“Home?”

“Home. Via somewhere else.”

“Fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And that’s how she ended up with her lower legs dangling over a cliff edge, marvelling in the scene that lay below. It seemed like she was surrounded by everything and nothing all at once. The incomprehensible thrill of the waves; crashing, pulling, flying across land and sea and just barely scraping the inner lap of the swirling blue sky. Dotted with the vicious shimmer of the burning sun, streams of light cast an angelic glow onto the ocean; silvery tones washing in with the crusted white and azure turquoise waves. All around her was a brilliant silence. The kind of silence that filled her ears with a loudness of nothing. The lapping of water on the shore, the atomic crash of wave after wave, the shrieking of a bird that rested high on the cliff face; nesting, preying, watching - it was all silent to her ears. If it weren’t for the teenage boy sat next to her, Athena would probably have been tempted to lie down and sleep, the grass beneath them soft against her skin, lulling her into a state of exhaustion.

“Do you really believe everything you said this morning?”

Fletcher interrupted the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. Athena shrugged in response, fiddling with her hands in her lap awkwardly.

“I think so. Looking back, I suppose I took it too far, but sometimes it’s just like, my mind clings to thoughts in this obsessive way – mostly the bad thoughts. The ones that you can’t run from, because they haunt you. And they won’t stop. They never stop until you turn around and face your fears. I know that now.”

She took his silence as a sign to continue.

“Do you ever just wish you weren’t who you are right now? Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t me. I don’t mean I wish I was Beyoncé or someone like that. I wish I was like, a daisy or something. Their lives are meaningless, but at least they’re not aware of it. I get reminded every day. I have to look at my mum and see the heartbreak in her eyes, and look at my dad and see the heartbreak in his eyes, and then I’m reminded that they’re dying too. In the end, that’s all we do. We live to die. But daisies – daisies live for the sunlight. They live for the rain and the soil and growth. And then maybe one day, when they’re just lying there in a patch in a meadow, a girl will run through the tall grass in a white dress, her hair braided and a smile on her face, and she’ll pick a daisy, just one. And she’ll sit under the shade of a tree and pick the petals with a dreamy look on her face as she mutters “he loves me, he loves me not.” And even though that would mark the end of the daisy’s existence, it would have been a good one. It would have made someone’s day a little bit brighter, or a smile a little bit wider. What do people do when they see me? They feel sorry for me. If I were a plant, I wouldn’t be a daisy. I’d be one of the weeds that lie around the daisies – choking them of air and water and happiness.”

They sat in silence for a while, their legs dangling off the edge of the bridge, swinging in a rhythm that was unique to only themselves.

“I don’t think you’re a daisy. But I don’t think you’re a weed either. I think you’re something special. Something pretty. Something like a Ghost Orchid,” he said with a smile.

Admittedly, her knowledge of flowers and gardening was limited, but it didn’t stop her from asking of his reasoning behind his choice.

“Ghost Orchid’s aren’t like other plants. They don’t photosynthesize. They need a special type of fungus to grow. It’s like you. That’s what you need.”

“I need fungus to grow?”

He shook his head, biting his lip to capture a threatening laugh.

“You’ve been trying to be like everybody else, you know? But you shouldn’t. You should be Athena – the impossible girl with the beautiful smile and the kind of scary get-away-from-me-before-I-kill-you stare. And I know that we’re probably both on the verge of death, so why not do something reckless like fall in love? I could, you know, I could be your fungus,” he blushed, running his hands through his hair.

Stuck for words, Athena turned to him, trying to disguise the smile that threatened to break out onto her lips.

“What was the point of the flower analogy?”

“I don’t know. I just thought it would be romantic.”

And they sat on the cliff, legs dangling - silent, but not lonely, severe, but not sad. And for a second, Athena almost felt like everything was going to be okay.