GCSE English Language (AQA)

Paper 1, Question 5: Creative Writing

This question can involve descriptive writing or narrative writing.

  • Aim to spend 45 minutes to 50 minutes and write 550 to 750 words.

  • Write clearly.

  • Pay attention to grammar.

  • Show off vocabulary.

  • Show case a number of writers techniques that you learnt for questions 2 and 3 of paper 1. The include structure and language:

Organisation/Structure

  • Aim for 7 to 9 medium length or long paragraphs

  • The paragraphs can be organised by geography so that you draw the reader’s attention to different parts of the scene you are creating. For example, when describing scenery, you can include a paragraph focusing on the front and a paragraph focusing on the far horizon. You can take the reader’s attention from left to right or focus on the sky or sky line or the ground.

  • Use interesting ways of linking or moving from one paragraph to the next. Some descriptive paragraphs can be linked with connecting words:

    • Beyond the field, a mountain range could be seen ..’

  • You can also shift forward or backward in time, either by imagining the future, or remembering the past.

  • You can shift attention from the external world to the author’s inner landscape.

  • Zoom into some detail to create interest.

  • If needed, include1 to 4 short one-line type paragraphs (for example one line conclusions or one line statements for emphasis, inner dialogue, rhetorical questions).

  • Use a variety of sentence structures including both long and short sentences, as you have analysed in question 3 of paper 1.

  • Include structuring techniques that you have learnt such as rhetorical questions, foreshadowing and juxtaposition.

  • Create an emotional and/or thematic journey.

Use of language

Try to incorporate some of the following :

  • Choose your words (semantic field) to suit the mood or atmosphere you would like to create.

  • Write detailed and vivid and/or nuanced descriptions of colours, sounds, touch or touch-related senses and smell so that your writing is multi-sensory.

  • Use imagery including similes and metaphors. If possible include an extended metaphor, where the same concept appears in more than one paragraph.

  • Use personification or pathetic fallacy

  • Write using sound techniques such as alliteration, sibilance, onamotopaeia.

  • Create contrast via juxtapositon

  • This is not an exhaustive list so feel free to use any other techniques you have learnt.