Fun With Dialogue

[I wrote this with my friend Clarissa in our Creative Writing class to practice integrating dialogue correctly.]

“Hello,” said Ms. Madison, startled to see her student Jeffrey outside class.

“Hello,” said Jeffrey. He wasn’t used to seeing his teachers outside school, especially at 11:00 on a Saturday night.

“Well,” Ms. Madison said, awkwardly standing up straight and folding her arms across her body.

She looked around awkwardly as Jeffrey responded “Well, what?”

Ms. Madison glanced behind him and saw Jeffrey’s friends checking out her coworkers. “How did you guys get in?” she asked.

Jeffrey shrugged, fingering the fake ID in his pocket. “There isn’t really anything else to do in this town on a Friday night.”

“Still,” his teacher said. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Sure tells us something about each other doesn’t it?” He said as she returned to the stage.

She turned her head and said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looked around at the strippers on the poles and gestured to her lack of clothing. “Oh come on!”

AP Poetry Essay (an analytical writing sample)

Many argue that humans fear the dark for the same reason we fear death; it contains the unknown. Not knowing the possible challenges we face is, for some, even worse than being sure of the ones we do. Thus, darkness and night, as well as the reactions of people in relation to them, have been popular themes of poems and other written works throughout the years. Two such works: “We grow accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson and “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost examine humans’ responses to the night that surrounds them. While Dickinson’s poem uses darkness to reflect an unfamiliar or unfortunate situation a person might face, Frost’s vision of night is that of an environment of isolation; both poems, however, use night as an obstacle to whoever must face it.

For Dickinson, this obstacle is uncertainty, or unfamiliarity of a situation. The speaker does not analyze one event, but responds to the behavior of people in general, using an objective observational tone. “We grow accustomed to the Dark–” the first line, is an excellent example of this attitude that the speaker takes. She is commenting on the behavior of people and then proceeds to examine details of the night that back up her point. These details are mostly descriptions of people’s reactions, using diction that paints vivid images of various movements and actions. When describing people’s behavior, Dickinson uses phrases such as “we uncertain step” and “grope a little” to give a physical visual but also a metaphorical representation of how people respond to unfamiliar situations awkwardly and uncertainly at first, but then inevitably come to adjust to them the way our eyes adjust to the dark.

The speaker in Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” however, has a different attitude. While darkness is still used as an obstacle challenging the narrator, rather than a mere unfamiliar situation, the darkness here is a metaphor for the speaker’s feeling of complete isolation in a sometimes dangerous world. Rather than commenting on behalf of all people, the speaker refers only to what he has experienced personally with respect to the night. The imagery is much more visual than “We grow accustomed to the Dark–” describing sights the speaker specifically takes in. When he refers to “the furthest city light,” the speaker is saying he walked to the outskirts of the city, where civilization is more spread out, but he is at the same time commenting that he has been to places that isolated him, where his only acquaintance was the night in which he was submerged.

Both poets address the night as an obstacle in this fashion, making its existence almost an event in and of itself, but Dickinson’s attitude toward it seems much more confidant in the capabilities of man. Frost, on the other hand, uses night to represent the painful experiences the speaker has had, looking back at them with the attitude of a grizzled war veteran. Both ideas, however, offer some amount of solace. Neither poem paints the dark as an obstacle that is impossible to overcome, no matter how much we fear it.

AP English Doesn’t Leave Time for Creative Titles (an analytical writing sample)

Young love is condemned by cynics and writers alike as a situation that is too fleeting and idealistic to truly last. Maybe this is true; just ask the Montagues and Capulets. However, the significance of a first love should not be dismissed because the effects can last long into a person’s life and even beyond. Thus is the case with Sybil Vane, the young beauty adored by the title character in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Though she only appears for a few chapters, the effect Vane has on Gray resonates throughout the entire novel and is the cause for most of his major transformations.

Before Dorian Gray really changes, he meets Sybil Vane and immediately falls in love with her. He is still young, energetic, and rather narcissistic about the appearance of his face that friends and acquaintances alike praise. When it comes to love and romance, Gray is also extremely idealistic, raving about the purity of his love for Sybil and how the play he met her at, Romeo and Juliet, could only mean good things for their future (rather ironic when the ending of this play is considered). His love, however, proves shallow, and when Dorian Gray dismisses her because of bad acting, Sybil commits suicide. This begins the course of Dorian’s fall from grace as he first feels guilty but after some talking to from his friend Lord Henry Wotton, decides that this is the most romantic thing that has ever happened to him. The attitude towards the suffering of others as pleasure for himself leads Dorian down the path of debauchery and seduction, forever erasing the innocence he once had.

Without this innocence and the idealism of his youth, Dorian Gray seems to have no morals or fears regarding the consequences of his actions. He frequents opium dens, has indecent relationships with men and women alike, and even kills his best friend, Basil Hallward. After committing the murder he does not even seem to have qualms about blackmailing Allan Campbell into disposing of the body. Throughout all this, he does not ever even seem to remember Sybil Vane until her influence reenters his life in the form of her brother, seeking revenge. For the first time, Dorian is forced to face potential consequences for his actions in the past. Though he escapes death and Sybil’s brother is killed instead, her influence–and possibly even the memory of her and his past love–promotes yet another transformation within Dorian. He begins to fear consequences and even to feel guilt, eventually causing him to destroy the painting that has been keeping him so innocent and young-looking all these years, in effect destroying his own soul and killing himself.

Dorian Gray’s life is destroyed by his own susceptibility to influence. He is influenced by his friends, influenced by vanity, influenced by literature, and–to arguably the greatest extent–influenced by the love he once felt as a youth. The destruction of this young love and the death of Sybil Vane destroyed Dorian Gray’s own innocence. Though she was not in his life (or the book) very long, Sybil Vane influenced Dorian Gray throughout the rest of the story, as do the effects of young love on a person’s life.