Service Description

The course is intended for very able students or those who have completed creative writing phases 1 and 2. It will focus on advanced skills of character description, storytelling, picture description, and transactional tasks such as writing a letter, article, essay, argument or autobiographical piece. The focus will be how to get A and A+ grades by using figurative language and detailed description, not action. We will also focus on the need for accuracy in spelling, punctuation and grammar. Remember: technical accuracy constitutes 40% of the creative writing language mark. We will also look at the difference between work that gets C, B, A and A+, as well as what is meant by ‘advanced vocabulary and phrasing.’ Lesson 1: What makes a piece of writing A*? We will then zero in on the assessment criteria: tension, imagination, accuracy, imagery, detail, sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure. Lesson 2: Describing a place: Picture. Focus on adjectives, colours, movement; covering every detail in the picture and inventing others that aren’t there. Advanced technique: adding weather, temperature, smell, sound etc to create the pathetic fallacy. Lesson 3: Creating a structured story. We will look at the basic structure of a story: exposition, character, rising tension, epiphany, falling tension, conclusion. Advanced techniques: metaphors and similes; show, don’t tell; creating a moment of realisation; creating a circular narrative. Lesson 4: Persuasive writing: Advanced focus: structure. Students to practise writing an organised essay format including the following: thesis statement, logical argument, sequence markers, facts and statistics, conclusion. Lesson 5: Speeches: Advanced focus: tone and register; persuasive arguments; sophisticated vocabulary. Lesson 6: articles: Advanced focus: grammatical accuracy. Lesson 7: essays: Advanced focus: personal writing about dreams or significant moments. Building tension; explaining in detail. Lesson 8: Changing focus and points of view: Present a situation from two different points of view; writing from an unusual viewpoint using personification Lesson 9: Using dialogue. How to use dialogue effectively in fiction. Advanced focus: using dialogue to drive the story forward. Lesson 10: Creative task/self-assessment. Write a response to an exam question and use the assessment objectives to see if you have reached an A*