: Re: How to creatively handle intoxication when you yourself haven't experienced such a thing? Now I wouldn't call myself a true writer. I'm about 14 now and I'm currently preparing for my IGCSEs

@Kaufman555

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Writing 'soppy prose' is an entirely separate issue from writing accurately about intoxication.

If your examiners are primarily interested in your writing skills and language use you should focus on the soppiness rather than the accuracy.

I don't know what marking schema they work to in your area but it would be incredibly harsh if they were to mark down someone in their early teens for not writing accurately about prostitution and drug abuse rather than for writing about it in a stilted or poorly expressed way.

If your profile is up to date and you are still just 13, they really are not going to be expecting you to write with a maturity significantly beyond that age. You are talking about them testing your creative writing skills, not your skills in journalism or philosophy. They are most likely looking for your writing to be 'appropriately mature in its use of language' rather than for you to have a precociously mature personality.

For my taste your prose is often on the overblown side, but that is because I am both a different age and in a different culture. I don't expect you to write like I would and your examiners will not expect you to write as though you have the life experience of a young adult in the west.

So my suggestion is that you focus on the language use. if you want to assume that someone sees coloured blobs, fine (though personally the only thing that has ever made me see coloured blobs is a classic migraine with aura)... just work on the description. eg 'impossible colours' is good , but how does that impossibility relate to 'technicolour'? What does 'technicolour' mean to you, what will it mean to the examiners? Are the colours usually described as technicolour in any way 'impossible'?
How do coloured blobs blur your other senses? I'm not saying they can't but my mind snags on that because I want to know how a colored blob blurs smell... what would a blurred smell be like?

If you describe a wondrous experience of watching coloured shapes swirl and distort other senses then it becomes redundant to describe them as 'wondrous things', you've already shown us that.

Look out for redundant words generally as they make your prose more pedestrian; does 'part fear and part awe'add anything that 'fear and awe' doesn't? Does the 'rush of noise' need to also sound? Couldn't it just 'jolt'? 'A rush of noise jolted her from her reverie'.

So, my advice is don't worry about the detail of the accuracy of things you can't be expected to have experienced. Focus on the quality of your language usage, internal consistency and avoiding things that pull the reader out of the flow. Don't write like someone padding word count.

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