To bring everything together, your strategy in your exam should be to:

Complete your full writing piece in the time frame .

To do this successfully, I would:

• Plan out a simple story that relates to the question at hand.
• Write that story well.
• Use adjectives.

Let's look at planning that simple story:

There is a specific type of planning I advocate that you should undertake for a creative writing question under exam conditions, and I have outlined it here:

1. Establish what the major requirement of the question/topic is and then decide on what your story will be about in one sentence. For example, "This story is about a boy who ends up crashing his older brother's new motorcycle."

2. Start planning your story, using the framework detailed below:

Beginning

This is where you set the scene of your story. Present to the reader a description of how things are when your story begins: the location, the characters, the reason someone is there, the atmosphere, the sounds, sights and smells. Here you are trying to describe the situation that is happening before the action starts.

For example:

Inside my brother's house, me and my older brother, older brother's house is fun – has loud music and he rides a brand new motorcycle.

Middle

This is where the action starts. Something unusual, unexpected, dramatic or important happens, or something is set in motion. It's where the "issue" or "problem" arises. This part of your story is where the conflict is; it is the climax. In this section, the main event occurs, which somehow disrupts the scene or situation where your story began.

For example:

I decide to try out his motorcycle when he's in the backyard chatting to his neighbour and crash it into his front gate.

End

This is the conclusion, or the resolution, of the conflict or major event of your story. It is the return to normality or the end of the action. It is usually satisfying, comforting or relieving in some way, but can also be mysterious (as in a twist, or a cliff-hanger).

For example:

I get taken to the hospital and my brother tells our parents.

Now… let's do some examples to show you how to maximise your use of time within the exam as a strategy.

Question Prompt	Planning to Maximise Use of Time

Other things:

• Skip a line when writing.
• Write in pen.
• Do not use write paper/rubber – just neatly cross out the area that needs crossing out.
• Write neatly.

Now it's time to do your assignment.

1. Download the assignment question here.
2. Print it out or if you want to do it electronically, save it.
3. Complete the questions to it.
4. Then check the solutions on the video below.
5. To get the worded solutions/sample essays, download them here.