Putting Pen to Paper - Beginning Stories in the GCSE English Language Exam
So - how are you going to write a high quality, self-contained story in in 45 minutes, under exam conditions? You should aim to make your story highly engaging, or even ‘compelling’, as the top level of the mark scheme requires. Ideally, the examiner should almost forget they are marking your efforts, and merely be enjoying them!
Lets face it, it’s never easy beginning a story - or even a blog entry about writing stories! It can be made lot easier, however, and once the first few sentences are done, and with a little planning, the whole task becomes less daunting. The more you can enjoy it, the more the reader will feel the emotions in your story, and be drawn into your world.
Planning
The text or image given in the exam to get your story started will be very open-ended, and will allow you to write almost anything that has some kind of connection to the stimulus material.
Deciding on your narrative voice and tense/s
Building on my previous post, the main point here is to decide these in advance of the exam, so you can just concentrate on writing a fantastic story. Try the various techniques out when you are not time-pressured, and see which you prefer.
Use third person if you want to tell your story from several different perspectives, and first person if you want to focus your whole story through one character’s experiences.
Past tense is more traditional, while present tense can give more of an immediate, intense feel to your story. Both tenses can be combined, for example when using flashback, but be careful not to confuse yourself or the reader.
Planning your Story Structure
I’ll tackle the different aspects of structure in more detail elsewhere, but it is sufficient to have simple structural ideas memorised in advance.
For Example:
Introduce a character and their situation
Give them a problem or conflict to deal with
Make your protagonist work to sort out their problem
Give your protagonist a hard time - They will fail, probably more than once, inevitably making the problem even worse
The final solution works - if it is a happy ending - and the reader breathes a sigh of relief. Phew!
A planned structure should ensure that you actually write a story which moves forward, avoiding too much static description.
Writing your Opening Scene
In an exam situation, you must get the story started quickly. There is rarely time for long introductions or detailed scenery description.
I’ve given two examples of introductions below which quickly establish character, setting and problem whilst also ‘teasing’ the reader - they have to guess what is going on, so that the rest of the story can reveal, develop and resolve the situation.
Example 1 - Third Person, Past Tense
‘Peter trudged wearily homewards along the dirty streets in his frayed school trousers and scuffed shoes, glancing around nervously to see if he was being followed.’
Example 2 - First Person, Present Tense
‘I have no idea how long I’ve been here. The last thing I remember is lying on my beach towel reading the paper, squinting in the late afternoon sunlight, then a huge shadow looming over me. My head hurts. All I can see is a small crack of light in the blackness. It must be coming through some sort of wall, but I can’t reach it - something is stopping my feet moving.’
You can use these, or any other story starter, to help you create a structure for the whole story, and then draft out a short story to see how well the structure works when you read it back. remember - you are the first reader of your story, and hopefully you should be excited by it.
If the story makes sense and has an emotional sense of conflict and resolution, you can finally improve it further by zooming in on your language and changing any ineffective words for words or phrases that have more emotional charge, or convey richer information.
Have a look at my Instagram feed for more examples of story settings and starters to use to kickstart your own ideas.