SKILLS

Overview of our key creative writing skills

Creative writing is one of the most difficult things both to learn and to teach. For some it comes naturally — their talent just shows up on the page — but for others it requires discipline and hard work. To help those who fall into the second of these groups, we have decided on a selection of key skills which we teach from Year 7 through to Year 11.

Fiction: writing to describe/narrate (Year 7 onwards)

  1. Creating a character. In a very short story you need to have singular focus on character: you need a protagonist who the reader can understand and relate to quickly. You must do your early characterisation deliberately with a mixture of ‘show’ and ‘tell’, introducing the core characteristics of your protagonist and giving them some thoughts and personality, all while you begin to tell the plot of your story.

  2. Describing a setting in vivid detail. In any piece of creative writing, you need to help the reader form a picture in their imagination of the story you’re telling. For this reason, you must vividly describe the setting, providing small, specific details that bring it to life, helping to situate the reader. You need to do this using effective prose, with varied, well-chosen vocabulary and varied sentence structures.

  3. Writing direct speech. Direct speech is a useful tool for creating character. It’s also an easy way to move a plot forward. However, there are several rules about how direct speech works, especially around punctuation and paragraphing; you need to ensure you learn these rules before you put direct speech into your writing.

  4. Using 3rd person limited narrative voice, with free indirect narration. This narrative voice is incredibly useful for assessed creative writing. You tell the story in the 3rd person but with your narrator only able to access the thoughts and feelings of one character: your protagonist. You will need to ‘show’ the thoughts and feelings of the other characters.

  5. Controlling time in a story, including using timeshifts. Controlling the way time passes in a story is essential. It can move fast, summarising key events, or slow, presenting a vivid scene. And it can jump forwards or backwards to make a more interesting structure. Make sure you get the tense right.

Non-fiction: writing to argue/persuade (Year 9 onwards)

  1. Writing an opinion paragraph for a given text type. At GCSE you will need to be able to write argue/persuade non-fiction in several forms: articles, speeches, letters, leaflet and essays. These will include 3 to 5 opinion paragraphs which need to be written in the correct style for the text type, using persuasive techniques to add flair.

  2. Writing an opening and matched closing for a given text type. The opening of your non-fiction piece is perhaps the most important part. You need to engage your audience right away by coming at the topic in a creative and indirect way, while matching your writing to the text type you’ve been asked to create. There are three different styles we recommend for openings. You will then need to match this style in your closing to create a circular structure.

General (Year 9 onwards)

  1. Creating an effective structure (fiction and non-fiction). Structure is essential for all writing. You must plan first, thinking about the whole piece before you start writing. You need to have something engaging at the start, and you need to develop your ideas / characters across your piece. You also need to bring your piece to some kind of satisfying resolution, ideally one which links back to your opening.