Tips To Help Prepare For The 11+ Creative Writing Exam
11+ creative writing is arguably one of the most difficult components of the 11+ exams for candidates.
Planning
At My Tutor Club, our tutors are fanatical about essay planning. It takes 5 minutes of your time but it is time so well invested. Having an idea of how your story holds together, and ends, before you start writing gives you a sense of direction when you write. Unless you are a very able writer, navigating your story to a well-structured conclusion while you are writing, having avoided the initial planning section, is incredibly difficult to do.
Keep it simple
Descriptive writing that is deep and meaningful will always win the day over action packed stories. Most candidates at this level write about action. The stories tend to be “action packed thrillers” talking about how this happened, and then that happened and then this happened. Writing about action well is actually a very difficult skill to acquire. It is much better, and simpler, to write about one object, say a “tree” or a “mountain,” and talk more about emotion, feelings, sentiment and description. In these stories very little will actually happen but the level of descriptive writing and attention to emotion will result in a piece of 11+ creative writing far more impressive, mature and sophisticated.
Brainstorming
If you are having trouble thinking of a story, don’t panic, start brainstorming. The best way to do this is to take a blank sheet of paper in the exam and just start noting down anything that comes into your head relating to your title. Spend a couple of minutes putting anything down, don’t hold back. Ideas are more likely to come to you as you write down snippets that come into your head.
Structure
All creative writing pieces need a beginning, a middle and an end. At My Tutor Club, we use the “hamburger” analogy: the top bun for the beginning, the 100% pure British beef (or veggie bit if you’re vegetarian) in the middle, and the bottom bun for the ending. When brainstorming, think which of the three sections your ideas will fit into.
How to be descriptive
Revise your key lists of adjectives, adverbs, similes, metaphors, colours and emotions. As an emergency, have a couple of phrases that you can use. Of course the idea is not to learn phrases by heart, but if you have a couple of “golden phrases” up your sleeve that can be applied to many circumstances, then they are worth remembering in case your writing flow starts to cease up.
Timing
Leave 5-7 minutes to read through what you have written. It is so much better to write less but higher quality (with no silly grammar or spelling mistakes) than to write more but with mistakes. Less is more (to an extent). It’s amazing how you will probably pick up 8-12 silly errors when you read back through your work. Don’t let these silly errors drag your mark down. Check your work.
Next steps..
Below is a list of 11+ creative writing titles that have frequently appeared in past 11+ papers:
- The Day Trip
- Power
- The Broken Window
- The Abandoned House
- Lost Boy
- The Voice in the Darkness
- The Garden
- Sleeping
We are more than happy, a gratis, to take a look at a 11+ creative writing piece over the coming weeks if you email them to us so that we can mark them and offer suggestions for improvement.
At My Tutor Club, we emphasise the importance of writing about description over action. Using a range of literary techniques such as adjectives, adverbs, metaphors and similes we can make our writing more rich, detailed and ultimately unique.
Below are some example template sentences in order to give you an idea of what you should be aiming for in your 11+ creative writing. They should not be learnt off by heart and used in your creative writing! Rather use them as inspiration and as a guide to ignite your own imagination in coming up with your own sentences that you can use in a variety of 11+ creative writing situations.
- He installed himself in the tiny lounge and loomed oppressively over the settee…
- Sick and shaken he was unable to make sense of what had happened. How long had he been lying there? Only a minute surely?
- The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations
- Along the advancing clearness of the shore, I could see strange, moon-beamed bodied creatures with fiery eyes.
- She looked out of the window of her hut. She lifted a corner of the mosquito net and saw fireflies – a hundred points of dancing light – and heard the croaking of frogs.
- She ran upstairs into her room and slammed the door with a crash that shook the entire house. When her tears subsided she stayed sitting with her back against the wall, hugging her anger.
- The house was surrounded by neatly gravelled driveways which wound through immaculate wide-spreading lawns.
- At the back of the house were the stables, where the grooms and boys worked, rows of servants’ cottages, and long lines of grape vines, green pastures, orchards and berry patches.
- His strength ebbed and his eyes began to glaze as the cold finally began to take its merciless toll.
- His clothing was threadbare, almost transparent with age.
- I began to wriggle under by brown blanket like a mole who burrows away from noise.
- I was not quaking with fear but rather tingling with it – it was a prickling sensation on the skin like having a temperature.
For further details about 11+ preparation, 11+ creative writing, targeted 11+ tuition, or My Tutor Club’s 11+ revision courses between now and January 2017, please contact us.