Planning and crafting your writing
Planning in five minutes
Spend the first five minutes planning. It saves time later.
- Choose your task.
- Jot ideas: the setting, the character, the mood, and a few striking details or images.
- , one line each. Give each a clear focus: a new shot, a new moment or a shift in mood.
- Decide your opening and ending lines before you start. Knowing where you're going stops you rambling.
Cross out your plan neatly when you've finished, so the examiner knows what to mark.
Key terms
Sentence variety for effect
Vary your sentences on purpose, so each one does a job:
- A creates shock or tension: The door was open.
- A can build up detail or slow time down: She walked past the empty desks, the stacked chairs, the board still covered in Friday's notes…
- A makes a moment stand out: Nothing.
- Start sentences in different ways: with a verb (Running…), an adverb (Slowly…) or a subordinate clause (Although…).
Don't start every sentence with ‘I’ or ‘The’.
Key terms
Ambitious but precise vocabulary
- Instead of She was scared, write Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
- Choose precise verbs. The dog lunged says more than The dog moved quickly.
- such as ‘a shiver ran down my spine’. Invent your own images.
- Use one strong adjective, not three weak ones.
Remember
Ambitious means precise, not long. The best word is the one that says exactly what you mean.
Key terms
What the top level rewards
For (24 marks), the top level asks for writing that is compelling and convincing: a tone and style that fit the task, ideas that are ambitious and crafted, and paragraphs and structural devices that are used deliberately.
For (16 marks), the top level asks for a used for effect, accurate spelling and punctuation, including ambitious words, and extensive, ambitious vocabulary.
Accuracy matters as much as imagination: 16 of the 40 marks are for technical skill.
Proofreading in the last five minutes
Save the last five minutes to read your writing back. Check:
- full stops in the right places, and ;
- capital letters for sentences and names;
- commonly confused words: their, there and they're;
- spellings of words you've used more than once;
- missing words, where your hand was slower than your brain.
Make corrections neatly: cross out once and write above. A neat correction gains marks; an untidy page doesn't lose them.