Studying the Welsh Novel (Unit 1 Narrative)

The task that looks like the soft option

Unit 1 asks you to respond to your novel by writing from a character viewpoint. Next to an essay it looks like the easy one: no argument to build, no paragraphs to structure, just imagine you are somebody in the book. It is marked as analysis, because it is analysis. A response in role shows what you have understood about the novel, and it shows it in a form where you cannot hide behind essay phrases. There is no "the author uses" to fall back on. Either the person on the page could have written it, or they could not. So: writing in role is analysis, delivered in the first person. Everything you write has to be traceable to something in the text. The test to carry through this module, and into the exam, is one question: could a reader who knows the novel point to the place it came from? Your novel is one of six, chosen by your school, so nothing here depends on which one you have. That is deliberate: the skill is the same for all of them.

Five words for this task

Short list, and every one of them is doing work. The second is the one people think they understand and do not.

Two things the character could not know

Five lines from a response written in role, by a character in an invented novel. Tap the TWO that only a READER could know, not the character.

• The kitchen was cold again and I did not take my coat off
• Little did I know that this would be the last time I saw the house
• My sister said nothing, which was not like her at all
• The broken clock on the shelf stood for how our family had stopped
• I walked the long way round so I would not have to pass the shop

The conversation behind the door

A student writes in role as a character who waited outside while two other people argued in another room. In their response, the character describes exactly what was said in that argument. What is the problem?

• The character was not in the room, so they cannot report what was said; the moment they do, it stops being their response to the novel and becomes a retelling of it
• Nothing, as long as the account of the argument matches the novel accurately
• The response spends too many words on other people rather than the main character
• It should have been written in the present tense to feel more immediate

Yourself in a costume, or the character

Almost every weak response in this task is the same mistake wearing different clothes: the candidate is still the one writing, with a name borrowed from the novel. Here is how to tell them apart.

Five demands, five different tests

How to plan one of these

A student has been asked to write in role and has twenty minutes to plan. Put the stages in a sensible order.

• Choose which character, and be clear why that one is worth choosing
• Fix the exact moment in the novel it is written from
• List what they know by that moment, and what they do not yet know
• Decide what they feel about it and what they would never admit
• Decide how they would sound: short or winding, plain or careful
• Write, checking each detail against the list of what they know

What the top of the range looks like

Three habits separate a response worth full marks from one that reads pleasantly and scores in the middle. Every detail is licensed by the text. Not copied from it, licensed by it. Where the novel is silent, you may invent freely, and the invention should feel like something that novel would allow. Where the novel has already spoken, you do not get to disagree with it. The feeling is shown, never announced. "I was furious" is a candidate telling a marker something. A character who washes the same cup three times and puts it back in the wrong place has shown it, and has shown that you understood them. ⭐ And the character does not explain the novel. They have no idea they are in one. If a sentence exists to inform the reader of something the character already takes for granted, it is the one sentence in the piece not written in role, and a marker will notice it before they notice anything else.

Could this character know it

Lines from an invented novel about a family running a small shop. The character writing is the younger daughter. For each line, decide. Three lives.

The friend who was not in the kitchen

A friend comes back from a party you did not go to and tells you about it. For ten minutes it is completely convincing: who was standing where, what the music was, the moment somebody knocked a drink over and the hush afterwards. Then they describe an argument that happened in the kitchen while they were outside in the garden, word for word. And instantly you can hear it. That part is not theirs. Somebody told them, or they have filled it in, and once you have noticed it you start doubting the rest, including the parts they really did see. What made the first ten minutes good was not that they knew everything. It was the opposite. They only had one position in the room, they told you what could be seen from there, and the gaps were part of it. You could tell exactly where they were standing. ⭐ Notice that the fix is not to know more. It is to say only what could be seen from where they were, and to be honest about guessing when they guess.

What earns the marks

A student has written a fluent, enjoyable piece in role and been told it would score in the middle. Select every change that would genuinely raise it.

• Cutting the sentences that explain things the character would take for granted
• Replacing each named emotion with something the character does instead
• Checking that every detail can be traced to a moment in the novel or is something the novel leaves open
• Making it longer, with more events from the novel included
• Adding more ambitious vocabulary throughout

Finish the sentences about the task

Writing as somebody from the novel, using the word I to mean them, is writing _____, and it is marked as analysis rather than as story writing. The way that particular person would say something, including what they leave unsaid, is their _____, while how formal or informal the writing is, and whether that suits the moment, is its _____. Most of the marks sit in what the text lets you work out without saying it outright, which is _____, and every detail you add should be traceable to some piece of _____ in the novel. Your own reading of the book, shown through the choices you make rather than added at the end, is your _____.

Build the plan

A student is planning a response in role for an invented novel about a family leaving a village. Assemble the plan.

One response, four decisions

A student is writing in role for an invented novel about a family running a small shop. Each stage sets out where they are and hands you the decision.

• They have chosen the character with the most pages, and find they have nothing to say that the novel has not already said. Decide.
• A paragraph is going well and then they realise it depends on the character knowing about a letter that arrives two chapters later. Decide.
• Read back, the writing sounds like the student rather than the character: long careful sentences, and vocabulary the character would not use. Decide.
• They have one paragraph left. They want to make sure the marker sees that they understood what the novel is about. Decide.

Plan a response in role

Think of any novel you have studied, in any subject. Plan a response written from one character viewpoint at one exact moment, and explain how you would keep it inside what that character could know.

• Say which character you would choose, and why that one rather than the obvious one
• Fix the exact moment it is written from, and say why that moment
• List two things they know by then and one important thing they do not yet know
• Explain how you would show what they feel without naming the feeling
• Say what they would take for granted and therefore never explain
• Finish by explaining how a marker could tell this was analysis rather than story writing