What would be a good topic for my english oral, something interesting?

High school english!! help asap please. Creative writing/short story. Urgent as well!?

• Well we got this internal creative writing short story. Minimum 600 words. I did about double. It got conflict which we need in a good story. But i failed and so I have to re sit but barely have much time. Teacher failed me BECAUSE i tell too much instead of the text being a story, But i dont full understand. so please help eg. recomend how i can change sentences to make it more of a story. Ive been failing so far this year in english and this is worth four credits! story is below. Thanks “Nice lay up bro”, is what I shouted to Justin on the day we first meet at the school basketball courts. Ever since the beginning of high school four years back, Justin and I had been best mates. We shared the same interests which were basketball, cars, and of course the ladies. We would often watch the NBA games together on ‘ESPN’ and root for our favorite team the Boston Celtics and on the weekends we would party hard and just chill out together. He was a popular guy who was always cheerful and cracked some lame but funny jokes. He was well toned like an ancient Greek solider and had glowing green eyes and sleek brown hair which forced together made eye lashes flutter. He did indeed haul in a nice catch. He didn’t hang out with many girls besides his pretty blued eyed, brunette girlfriend named Brooke. They were pretty tight knit as they had been going out for four months. Around Brooke it was like he was under a love trance and he becomes a real gentlemen around her. For the both of us it was our last year of school. “We gotta end school with a bang!” Justin would say. I totally agreed, thirteen years of school we had to achieve something grand. Justin and I both played for the boys under 19s social basketball team, it was fun and we would train Tuesdays after school and then compete on Friday nights. It was a great having the balance of school work and basketball. One afternoon after we had finished training, as we were waiting for the sluggish public transport, he brought up the topic of moving up to the premier team. Justin’s face jazzed up with excitement about this idea and I must say he was probably the best player in the team. He had the handling of Allen Iverson, the assists of Nash and the lay ups of Kobe. However the premier team’s Nazi regime was on a whole other level. They had grueling training sessions that starts at 6:30am–8:30am just before school starts every Monday and Wednesday and to top the whole value breakfast meal off a two hour super combo on Tuesday afternoons. “Don’t forget the sauce”, finally the games on Friday night. Soon after he brought up the topic of switching teams the bus came and he departed, while I had to wait an extra twenty minutes in the chilling drizzle. I knew I wasn’t going to attempt to make the premier team. I had seen the lanky boys in that team around school. They either looked drained of energy or they were the boys mucking around and failing class. Justin did well academically and the thought of him moving up a grade I think was a bad idea. But if he did decide to move up I knew he would fit in quite well with his basketball skills upon him. As the school week progressed, he told me as we were feasting on our lunch that he had joined the team. “Good luck mate”, is what popped out of my mouth as I instantaneously replied back. But really behind my blue eyes I was sadden about his choice but I knew ultimately it was his choice so I kept my lips sealed. The next training I had for the social team felt somewhat empty without the presence of my cheerful mate and together we made such a good team. The second term blew past quick and along with it Justin’s bubbly persona. I could really see the physical strain upon him which he never had prior to him joining the premier team. In math’s class his ‘A’ grades dropped to a disappointing ‘D+’. Most importantly our strong friendship started to deteriorate. Usually we would hang out on the weekends and go to a mate’s party or just hang out and do whatever came. But now all he said was “I’m too tired man and I got a sack full of homework I have to catch up on, sorry”. I wasn’t surprised by this answer, so I just hung out with my other mates but he was always in the back of my mind. At school there was barely any chat between us, I suggested that we should catch up and watch a NBA game on Thursday night, he nodded. Thursday came by quick and after dinner I biked over to Justin’s house and he already had drink and snack ready and the comfy leather chairs looked oh so inviting. The 50” Sony plasma screen crowded with vibrant colour screamed out “look at me!” It was the American play off season so the teams were going all out, Boston versus the Nuggets. The atmosphere was not the same Justin still didn’t seem as bright and cheerful as before. The game was intense the Nuggets were leading for the first two quarters but Boston started to creep back up during the third quarter and were almost tied, so it was all down to the fourth quarter as both teams knew how important it was to win and move up to the next round. Our anticipation started to grow as the TV commercials aired before the last quarter. Suddenly the rumpus room door blasted open and Justin’s dad stormed in and with out thinking he ripped the TV cables out even though the lazy remote was clearly lying on the coffee table. “I’ve had enough of this stupid game! Bloody hell look at this report card! It’s your last year of school Justin, how could you after what all your mother and I have done for you”. His dad was obviously upset as he was a successful accountant and came from a family of education. Justin suddenly jumped out of his seat and barked back “back off! It’s my life dad, I do what the I want”, I was stunned by all this commotion and as a good guy I stepped in and attempted to calm the situation down. “Look Justin, maybe your dad is some what right I personally think you should quit the premier team and play social again, look at yourself now man and to be frank I don’t think you can ever make it to the NBA and you’re too short for the league”. Justin shouted to the both of us “I can pull off doing both, watch me!”, then he stormed off out of the house. We never got to see the end of the game but now our relationship was on the line. At school he wouldn’t even say “hi”, he just ignored me fully. Well I was just trying to help and now he treats me like this, “what a bit” is all I could say. I didn’t sit with him in math’s class or hang out with him but I noticed he was still failing maths and did not look any bit happier or energetic. The silent weeks between us had pasted by quick. I heard he was doing okay in the team, not as good as I predicted though. I was still in the social team and we only had two games left until the final match of the year. I had gotten use to training without Justin in the team but no one replaced our game connection we once had in the team. After an intense chain of suicides we had a five minute break. I took a breather outside on the sun drenched bench. Out of nowhere somebody drained out their water bottle on me, I had my fists clenched and turned around to meet the eyes of my prey. A startled face was upon my eyes which then turned into an earnest smile. It was Justin! “Mate I’m sorry about being an asshole, your right I couldn’t juggle everything at once”, and then he mumbled with a cheeky smile “my girlfriend said she would dump me if I kept behaviour like a low life”. I was so happy that my best friend came back from the dead and returned to himself. “Alright man how many more trainings we got left?” he asked me energetically.

• Answer:

  You definitely need to clean up your grammar and mechanics, and you have a few spelling/homophone errors. Most importantly, though, I would focus on what your teacher said about telling too much. Have you ever heard the phrase "show, don't tell" related to creative writing? It's very important. The entire first paragraph, except for the dialogue, is "telling." You tell us that the narrator and Justin are friends, you tell us what Justin looks like, you tell us their interests, you tell us about Brooke. It's not a story, it's a personal ad. If you really want to get this information across, SHOW it (but first, analyze whether it's important to the story — at 600 words, there's not a lot of room for extraneous detail). SHOW us that the narrator and Justin are friends by the way they interact. Let us see, gradually, what Justin looks like, by dropping in details when they're relevant. Get rid of Brooke entirely, since you don't use her for anything. You also spend an inordinate amount of time on basketball. It's a central theme, yes, but we don't need all the details of times and dates. It's not important. The vital information (that premier team is more demanding than social) can be gotten across with descriptive words rather than a quantitative list. That's true of a lot of things in this story — for example, the narrator's assertion that Justin's under a physical strain: you need to show (Justin looked pale, he'd lost weight, he had dark circles under his eyes, he moved slowly, he fell asleep in class) instead of tell ("I could really see the physical strain upon him"). Use descriptions that give us a mental image of what's going on. Just keep that in mind, and you shouldn't have any trouble cleaning this up.