Why the Story Might be a Better Choice than the Description
The examiners were very excited that students wrote longer, more developed stories. This is probably because they chose a topic which would appeal to boys as well as girls: conflict, crisis and war.
Every year they claim that more students are planning their answers. But, whether that is true, or if it is true, that it actually leads to higher marks, I don’t know. Find out for yourself in exam practice. I never plan my answer to the description or narrative question, but that might just be because I have read a lot. Try it with and without planning and see which leads to higher quality for you.
How to Structure the Narrative
The best stories start straight in with the action, with a crisis, and don’t waste time letting you know who everyone is. The reader has to catch up and work things out in the middle of the action. This is how real writers write too.
Students who had prepared descriptions of the weather were able to weave these into the conflict and action, to provide atmosphere.
The examiners were particularly exited by the level of emotional detail in the characters’ feelings and thoughts. Whether that is because most examiners are women, I cannot say, but anyway, it is what they want. This is, in fact, the main reason to introduce a character even if you are doing the description question.
Having a character also helped students craft an ending. It meant that they could look at the crisis from a different perspective. They could also look back at the beginning with a different perspective, and so have a circular structure.
The most popular ending was a cliff hanger, which mostly worked with this question, but not as well as having the character’s perspective.
Weaker writing tended to solve the crisis too quickly, instead of focusing on slowing down time. Focusing on a character’s thoughts and feelings, or memories helps to do this.
Weaker writing involves murders, death, or massive disasters, none of which fit a short story you can write in 45 minutes. Don’t do it!
If you want a tragic end, stop before the crisis is over, and hint at the tragedy to come.
Vocabulary
Some good writers lost marks by describing things in a way which made it really difficult to work out what was going on. Don’t overcomplicate things. Examiners are in a hurry. They don’t want to have to guess what a description means.
No mention was made of The Priest story from students who had watched Mr Everything English!
Punctuation
Students don’t know how to use speech marks and semi-colons. So learn!
That’s all they said.
If you want to read over 20 top grade stories with examiner’s comments, click here.
Cumulative Percentage of Students at Each Grade in 2022
9 = 3.6 %
8 = 10.2 %
7 = 20.3 %
6 = 36.4 %
5 = 54.3 %
4 = 70.5 %
3 = 88.5 %
2 = 95.7 %
1 = 98.9 %