GCSE English Language Week 5 Exam Preparation Tips

My tips for creative writing

Hi everyone, welcome to the last week of my GCSE English Language blog! Hopefully, you are all starting to feel a bit more confident with this course as you approach the start of your exams. As my last four posts have focused on the reading section of both papers, I wanted to talk about creative writing today. I know, shudder. I think it’s a pretty universal experience that having someone else read your creative writing, especially in a school environment, is horrible, so it can make a lot of students a bit reluctant to practice. I pretty much refused to do any of the creative writing activities we did in preparation for our GCSE English because I hated doing it in timed conditions and didn’t like my classmates reading my work to give me feedback. This very quickly came back to bite me in the butt, as it meant that I didn’t really know what I was doing when it came to section B of either paper. I took a shot in the dark and luckily it worked, but the results could have been disastrous and I know plenty of people who weren’t so fortunate. I’m going to be sharing my creative writing advice today so that you guys don’t have to take the same risk I did.

As I’m sure you’ll all know, your creative writing is worth half of your entire English Language grade. You’ll have to do a piece of fiction (paper 1) and non-fiction (paper 2) writing, so you need to make sure you’re familiar with both ways of writing.

Using section A to help you

When the examiners ask you to do a piece of creative writing, what they are essentially looking for is the kind of texts that you will have read in section A. Obviously, AQA isn’t expecting you to be as confident and talented yet as these professional writers are, using section A as a bit of a template can be useful. You’re not allowed to steal quotes from the texts you have read (DO NOT DO THIS, THIS WILL LEAD TO YOU GETTING A FAIL, OR WORSE EXPELLED – my legal team), but take inspiration from the writers’ use of:

· Imagery

· Structure

· Tone

· Perspective

Fiction and non-fiction

As I said in one of my earlier blog posts, analysing fiction and analysing non-fiction aren’t so different. To a certain extent, this is also true of writing it: you want to be using imagery in both, and being conscious of structure and the effect your writing may have on the reader. However, there are some very distinct differences between writing fiction and writing non-fiction.

In Paper 1, you will be given the choice of writing either a description or a short story. The main things you will be aiming to do are engaging the reader, keeping your writing interesting, varying your language and punctuation and using literary techniques. You are marked primarily on your content and organisation (which is to say, what you write and how you write it), but the examiner will also be looking out for your accuracy with regards to spelling, punctuation and grammar. This means that taking the time to read through your story or description at the end is a very good idea – you need to check for any silly mistakes!

Paper 2 is marked in the same way, but the key difference is that you will be asked to write for a purpose. You have a bit less freedom to write what you like, as the exam board will stipulate the type of text you need to write (a letter or a newspaper article, for example) and a statement that you need to respond to. You will need to adapt the way you write to suit the form, so you’d want to open a letter with ‘To whom it may concern…’ and you’d want to give your newspaper article a headline. You also need to consider your audience. Often, the non-fiction text will be aimed at someone of high status. For example, they might ask you to write a letter to the Prime Minister. In this case, you need to use elevated language and a tone appropriate for someone in this role – don’t write the same way you would talk to a friend.

Creative writing is quite hard to teach because ultimately it is very personal. My best advice is to practice as much as you can and try to develop your own voice and style. Another very useful thing to do is read a lot because the more you read the better you will write. Taking inspiration from other writers is perfectly okay and, in fact, encouraged, so getting yourself used to the kind of texts you’ll be having to write very soon is a good use of your time. Good luck with your exams, you’ll do brilliantly!

Have any questions about how to prepare for your GCSE exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Addie. Addie will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Addie will answer them in these sessions.