Writing for Purpose: Creative Literary and Non-Fiction

Decide before you write

Section B of the Unit 1 paper offers two writing tasks, and you answer one. One is usually creative literary writing, such as a story, a description or a monologue, and the other non-fiction, such as an article, a review, a leaflet or an audio guide. The form could be any of a long list, including some you may never have practised. Most weak answers go wrong before the first sentence, because the writer starts without deciding anything. Four decisions come first. Which of the two tasks gives you the most to say? Who is speaking, and to whom? What does this form expect a reader to find? And which method from the poems you have studied could you borrow? The specification says your writing should take account of audience, purpose, genre, narrative voice and context, and the unit is built so that what you learn from reading poetry feeds your own writing. A few minutes spent on those decisions saves the whole answer.

Five words for planning a task

These are the words that turn a task into a plan. Learn them as questions you ask of every task.

Match each form to what it expects

Which task would you choose?

Task 1 asks for a story that begins with a door closing. Task 2 asks for an audio guide to a place you know well. You have vivid memories of the allotment your grandmother kept, but no idea for a plot. Which choice is wiser?

• The audio guide to the allotment, because you already have the detail it needs
• The story, because creative writing always scores higher
• Whichever task is printed first, to save time
• The story, because the closing door gives a ready-made plot

Two kinds of writing, one choice

The two tasks in Section B ask for different kinds of writing, and the difference is not only the form. It is how meaning reaches the reader.

Find the sentences that break the form

Six sentences from a draft audio guide to an allotment. Tap the TWO that break what the form expects.

• Stand with your back to the gate and look up the slope.
• The visitor walked slowly towards the shed.
• On your left, the bean rows climb their canes like ladders.
• Take your time here, because nobody is hurrying you.
• In conclusion, allotments have many advantages and some disadvantages.
• Now turn right, and listen for the stream behind the hedge.

A five-minute plan

Put these planning steps in the order that makes each one possible.

• Read both tasks and choose the one you have most to say about
• Pin down the audience, the purpose and the form
• Decide who is speaking, to whom, and in which tense
• Jot four or five sections in the order the reader needs them
• Pick one method from the poems to use, and mark where it goes

Borrow the method, not the words

Unit 1 sets your writing beside the poetry you study, and the poems are a store of methods you can carry across. A poem that returns to the same line gives a speech or monologue a refrain to hold the audience together. A poem built on one sustained image shows how a description can follow a single picture instead of piling up adjectives. The turn in a sonnet, where the poem changes direction, becomes the moment a story shifts, or the point where a review admits a doubt. Line breaks teach you where a short sentence lands hardest. And a poem with a clear speaker shows you how to hold a narrative voice steady from start to finish. What you borrow is the method. Copying a poet is never the aim; the aim is to use what you noticed as a reader to control a reader of your own.

Explain a borrowed method

You are planning a speech for a school assembly. Choose the option in each gap to explain one method you will borrow.

The planning run

Five quick decisions about forms, voices and tasks. Three lives.

Two baskets in a kitchen

In a cookery competition, each cook is offered two baskets of ingredients and has a minute to pick one. The cook who wins rarely takes the basket that looks most impressive. She takes the one she can do most with, because she already knows how those ingredients behave. Then, before she lights a burner, she settles who she is cooking for and what they should taste first. Halfway through, she lifts an idea from a kitchen far from her own: the slow smoke of a barbecue pit, made in a small pan with a lid. She has not taken a recipe from anyone else. She has taken a method, changed it to fit her dish, and used it at the point in the meal where it does the most.

Complete the planning rules

Section B offers a _____ of two tasks. Before writing, settle the audience, the _____ and the form. An audio guide speaks to the listener in the _____ person. A method borrowed from a poem, such as a refrain, should be adapted rather than _____.

Which plans adapt to their reader?

Choose the THREE plans that show a writer adapting for purpose and audience.

• A leaflet for worried parents uses headings and a calm, reassuring tone
• An audio guide for a museum tells listeners where to stand and what to notice
• A monologue lets a character reveal a secret without ever stating it
• A blog for teenagers is written in the same register as a report to governors
• A review retells the whole plot and never gives a verdict
• A factsheet uses long paragraphs of description and no headings

In the exam room

You have about forty-five minutes for Section B. Work through three decisions.

• Task 1 asks for a story called The Last Train. Task 2 asks for a speech to a school assembly about a place that matters to you. You give yourself a minute to choose. What do you do?
• You chose the speech. Your plan has five points, but they read as a list with nothing holding them together. Which change do you make?
• Ten minutes remain and you are part way through your fourth section. What do you do?

Write an audio guide opening

Write the opening of an audio guide to a place you know well, to be played to visitors on headphones as they arrive. Aim for about 200 words.

• Second person and present tense throughout
• Directions that tell the listener where to stand or look
• One sustained image rather than a list of adjectives
• Varied sentences, including one very short one
• Accurate spelling and punctuation