Reasons behind "Emily"

The commentary of Halloween flash fiction story “Emily” written for Year 7-9 within a school.

Lexical choices:
The lexical choices of the story are of a scary descriptive nature as the purpose of the story is to scare/ spook the audience. Whilst the purpose is to scare and also describe, due to the audience being of a young age the story can’t be too scary of gruesome, but it does need to make an impact and leave an impact on the audience. Some of the lexical choices from the story are many adjectives in order to describe. Some of the adjective picked from the story are: “Darkness”, “Deathly”, “Abandoned”, “musty”. The verbs used are: “Suddenly”, “Scurrying”. Also in the story first and second person is used. By first and second person being used it allows the audience to feel a part of the story and allows them to place themselves as the narrator due to them being nameless and only referred to as “I” or “You”

Discourse structure:
The discourse structure of this flash fiction story is of narrative, however, due to it being flash fiction the writer has to write a whole story within 500 words. Whilst the story still has a beginning, middle and an end it has been significantly reduced in order for it to still fit in with the term ‘flash fiction’.

Sentence Types:
In this flash fiction piece there are a range of different sentence types. In the very opening sentence we see the writer use single word sentences “Cold. Darkness.” By the writer using single word sentences it adds emphasis to the text and allows the writer to take a pause between each word and create a scene in their mind. In the story we see repetition of the word “Emily” due to her being the main character, “Halloween” is also repeated due to this being significant to the theme of the story and because this is the day that the story takes place on.

Phonological Features:
In the flash fiction story we also see a lot of phonological features such as: Sibilance and Onomatopoeia. The sibilance that we see in the text is “stupid school”, “stripy sea”. We also see the use of alliteration in the text “Wind whistling” “rats running”. 

Graphology features:
The features of graphology we see in the text is that the word Emily, is in a different font with red colouring.  There is also a picture included of a boy standing in front of a mirror with a ghost/scary looking girl behind him.

The reasons why I included all of these features were to appeal and create an impact on the audience. I wanted the audience to whilst feel tense and left wondering, due to them being of a young age I didn’t want them to be too scared. By including things such as alliteration it creates an emphasis on what is being described and leaves an impact on the audience. I chose the title “Emily” because it is the main character and by it being a single word, I felt that it would be more intriguing and bring more interest than a sentence or descriptive title.