Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences
Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts
Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation
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It is important to remember that writers plan their texts deliberately to make the reader respond in certain ways, and think and feel certain things. This task in Question 5 asks you to think about how you can effectively engage your reader and produce a cohesive piece of creative writing.
When you reach Question 5, you will already have read an example of creative writing. You can use the ideas and structure to inform your answer. You should spend some time thinking about the question: not only the content, but also the order of your ideas. An effective piece of creative writing considers plot, setting and characterisation .
In your answer you must:
Question 5 tests your ability to create a text which is constructed in an appropriate manner.
The creative writing question assesses your skill in crafting a convincing piece of creative writing or short story. The question will be worded according to a specific task, for example:
It is worth remembering that you will be given a choice of two tasks in the exam: one will be a creative writing task, and the other will be a descriptive writing task. One will also give you a picture as a prompt for your piece of writing, but this could be to write a story or a description, so it is important that you read both options carefully.
Below are some points on how you might approach the task “Write a story with the title ‘Abandoned’”. It is divided into plot, setting and characterisation.
This task asks you to write a short story. This means you are required to plan your response carefully as you have limited time to create a cohesive plot. It is best to plan how your story will end before you begin writing so that you are in control of your story. Writing a response which has not been planned is likely to have an abrupt ending, or no ending at all, which does not satisfy readers or get you high marks. Your character development will lead the plot; you should decide if your story ends with a clear resolution or with a cliffhanger. Your resolution could be happy, or you can create a tragic ending.
There are lots of different narrative structures or arcs you could use to plan your story. Bearing in mind you only have 45 minutes, including planning time, your story needs to be controlled and concise. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to consider Freytag’s Pyramid:
| Stick to one main setting and start at the location: |
Hook your reader: | |
Decide which narrative perspective and tense you are going to write your story in: | |
Employ the five senses to create an atmosphere: | |
This paragraph could end with an “inciting incident”, which prompts the rising action and moves the story forward | |
| This paragraph should build tension, drama or interest: |
This paragraph should also develop your character(s): | |
This is the turning point of your story: | |
Your protagonist could face an external problem, or an internal choice or dilemma: | |
You should vary your sentence structure, length and language here for dramatic effect | |
What happens in this paragraph should be as a direct result of the climax paragraph: | |
It also should focus on your characters’ thoughts and feelings as a result of the climax of the story: | |
You can choose to resolve your story, or end on a cliff-hanger: | |
Your setting and atmosphere could reflect a change from the setting or atmosphere you established in your opening paragraph: |
As this task assesses the ability to communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, it is important to consider how to use language constructively in a short story to convey an atmosphere or mood. Building an effective setting is key as it contributes to atmosphere and mood.
Remember, Question 5 requires an extended written response. Therefore, the most effective stories will demonstrate a well-planned response which has considered what information is relevant to the reader and the most effective way to order and structure the narrative.
This question asks you to create a short story and therefore you will need to build some elements of detailed characterisation. This means you need to consider what your character(s) represent. They may represent an idea, such as being the victim of abandonment, or as a villain to represent injustice or evil. It is best to limit yourself to two characters in the time you have.
Well-rounded characters are taken on a journey in which a character undergoes some form of development or change. The mark scheme rewards answers which clearly and effectively convey ideas, meaning that you need to consider the most effective ways of building a character in a short piece of writing. Ideally, you should focus more on indirect characterisation than direct characterisation:
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Here, we will consider how to effectively plan your character(s) to engage your reader. This is what the examiner is looking for in your answer:
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| Your character’s appearance may not always be relevant: , remember that it is rare we describe our own appearance perspective can describe appearance more effectively |
| One of the most effective ways to describe a character is through their movements: and can be used to effectively build characterisation |
| If you use the perspective, a monologue helps readers engage with the character: will help your reader understand your character better |
| Dialogue can convey the relationships between your characters and provide insights into what other characters think about each other: |
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Sam is a graduate in English Language and Literature, specialising in journalism and the history and varieties of English. Before teaching, Sam had a career in tourism in South Africa and Europe. After training to become a teacher, Sam taught English Language and Literature and Communication and Culture in three outstanding secondary schools across England. Her teaching experience began in nursery schools, where she achieved a qualification in Early Years Foundation education. Sam went on to train in the SEN department of a secondary school, working closely with visually impaired students. From there, she went on to manage KS3 and GCSE English language and literature, as well as leading the Sixth Form curriculum. During this time, Sam trained as an examiner in AQA and iGCSE and has marked GCSE English examinations across a range of specifications. She went on to tutor Business English, English as a Second Language and international GCSE English to students around the world, as well as tutoring A level, GCSE and KS3 students for educational provisions in England. Sam freelances as a ghostwriter on novels, business articles and reports, academic resources and non-fiction books.
GCSE English: 3 tips to improve creative writing
Picture the scene: a published author sits down at a desk and knocks out a fully formed story with no prior planning. In 45 minutes. By hand.
It has all the components that make a story a story: interesting characterisation, rich and detailed description, a plausible plot.
It just wouldn’t happen. So why is it that we expect this of pupils?
At secondary school, the lower year groups have the luxury of immersing themselves in rich examples and then time to craft their narratives, honing their characterisation and playing with structure.
In an ideal world, we would extend this to GCSE - but with 25 per cent of the final grade involving unseen story-writing or descriptive tasks, how can we best prepare students for success? Here are my favourite strategies:
Sending students into an assessment or exam in which they have no idea what they’re going to be faced with is counterproductive. As teachers, we know the structures required for success. In creative writing, the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful short story is a sense of a “complete” story - one that follows Freytag’s pyramid .
This is a good starting point for preparing students, as it lends itself to sections that can be included in a checklist or a structure strip. We can’t say what the topic or title of this story will be, but we can give students the bones of the story.
I like to ensure that students know that they need to write within a set of parameters: they need to describe a snapshot of a moment in time; there needs to be detailed description, a finite amount of characters and sparse dialogue (I suggest no more than three lines in the entire piece).
Writing to these “rules” is freeing, as it reduces the realm of possibilities and allows students to focus on the task at hand.
JK Rowling is on the record as saying that Harry Potter “just sort of strolled into my head…fully formed”. This is not likely to be the case for students in the midst of an exam.
Authentic, sympathetic characterisation is difficult: we may identify character archetypes through the study of stories, but the creation of these under pressure, from scratch, is a big ask. We have to question what, realistically, the average 15- or 16-year-old can come up with.
Think of it like this: over their time at school, students have read, been taught or seen literally hundreds of stories, all with rich and varying characters whom they could incorporate into a story of their own.
By including or referring to a character from wider literature, they are showing the examiner that they can manipulate characters and events to create something new.
I have seen wonderful stories in which Jennet Humfrye from The Woman in Black has been transported to a modern-day black cab, her Gothic demeanour pervading the atmosphere around her, or a paranoid Macbeth has been seen, ranting to himself in an empty bus station.
Another powerful way to stimulate story-writing is to get pupils writing from moving image. I have found that short clips in which there is no speech can often be the most powerful.
In the past, I have used the music video for City Girl from the Lost in Translation soundtrack. The rich visuals of the Tokyo cityscape and the relative ambiguity of the female protagonist mean there is a lot to write about.
In a similar vein, a clip from 28 Days Later , in which the male protagonist finds himself alone in a seemingly abandoned London, provides much food for thought. The repetition of a single word - “Hello” - provides a recurring motif for pupils to structure their words around.
Another powerful clip is taken from the TV series Lost and starts with the snapping open of a human eye - a fascinating place to start and play with structure for students of all writing abilities.
Whichever you use, you’ll find that students respond positively to the movie providing them with ideas, and allowing their focus to be on using their writing skills.
Laura May Rowlands is head of English in a secondary school in Hampshire
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Tips and strategies for writing a high scoring GCSE creative writing paper: 1. Learn the formats. Know the different formats and conventions of the different GCSE writing tasks. There is a standard layout for a leaflet, for example, where including contact details and a series of bullet points is part of the mark scheme.
Retold Fable. Prompt: Modernize a classic fable or story, such as the Boy Who Cried Wolf, in a contemporary setting. Potential Story Directions: The story could be set in a modern city, exploring current social issues. It might be told from a different perspective, offering a fresh take on the moral of the story.
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2 Grade 9 Creative Writing Examples. I recently asked my year 11s to pen a piece of description and/or narrative writing for their mini assessment. I gave them the following prompts: Your school wants you to contribute to a collection of creative writing. EITHER: Write a short story as suggested by this picture:
In Paper 1 Question 5 you will be presented with a choice of two writing tasks and a stimulus image. One task will ask you to write descriptively, most likely based on the image, and the other question will ask you to write a story, based on a statement or title. The task requires you to write for a specific purpose and in a specific form.
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Before embarking on your creative writing journey, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the assessment criteria is imperative. The evaluators of your English language GCSE creative writing piece will scrutinise several key areas: the coherence of your narrative structure, range of ideas you explore, the variety and complexity of your sentence structures, and the precision of your spelling ...
Focus: Description / Narrative Marks: 40 Time: 45 mins. Ideas for creative writing can come from various places. The picture. There will always be a picture to inspire you. It could be linked to a description or a narrative. Remember that you can go beyond the picture and interpret it in any way you like. It's there to help you, not restrict you.
AQA GCSE English Language Module Two: Exploring Creative Writing 7 cannot 'know' about it unless someone else in the story tells your character about it. In this way, it can be a restricted narrative. Some writers use this potential limitation for particular effect, as with F Scott's Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, where the narrator's
Overview of Paper 1 Question 5. Paper 1 Question 5 is the writing question. It asks you to apply what you know about imaginative and creative fiction writing, such as in the text you read in Section A, and use these same techniques in your own writing. AO5 rewards you for your ideas, as well as the style and the fluency of your writing.
Chapter 8: Writing creatively 117 Chapter 8 Writing creatively English Language GCSE Which AOs are covered? AO5 Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support ...
Break down GCSE English Language Creative Writing into an accessible format with our series of dedicated lessons, beginning with Lesson 1 on structure. The key focus of this lesson is to explore how students can structure a narrative for maximum effect. After completing this GCSE English Language Creative Writing lesson, students will be able to: Understand the different stages of a story ...
Practise GCSE Creative Writing Questions with our Whole Unit Pack, featuring all eight of our Creative Writing lessons designed for GCSE English Language students. With each lesson pack included and relevant supplementary resources, this resource contains absolutely everything you need to develop your students' creative writing skills. Show more.
1. Give students the steps in the story. Sending students into an assessment or exam in which they have no idea what they're going to be faced with is counterproductive. As teachers, we know the structures required for success. In creative writing, the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful short story is a sense of a "complete ...
5.0 (9 reviews) Use Beyond's GCSE creative writing prompts in English lessons to help your students to move through any creative blocks that might be preventing them from writing. Including a range of GCSE creative writing prompt lessons, with a focus on titles, openings, endings and more, everything you need to break down creative writing ...