Writing is Rewriting: Checking Your Story in an Examination

Inventing Characters Read! Journal Word Notebook

Choosing Titles The Fab Four Golden Rules Generating Ideas Stealing Ideas From an Idea to a Plan Planning from a Picture Stories Based on a Passage Stories Based on a Sentence An Example of Good Planning

Describing a Location Longer descriptions Describing a character's appearance Dialogue Distinctive Voices Show, Don't Tell Characterisation: Shown Feelings More Characterisation Techniques Playing with Sentences Playscripts Action Suspense

What is story structure? 1 Exciting opening line 2 Set the scene 3 Talking and describing character 4 Characterisation 5 Suspense 6 Action 7 Cliffhanger Standing Out: How can you stand out from the crowd? Clever Clogs: Non-Linear Clever-clogs: Two perspectives Clever-clogs: Narrative voice Practice 11+ exam titles

Checking your story in an exam Redrafting = improving your story What if I run out of time in an exam? The Grumpy Examiner's Pet Hates

Year 2 into 3 Lemony Snicket After Harry Potter Must-Read Authors Spy Novels Horror Stories Classics Animal Stories Adventure Historical Fiction Myths & Legends Fantasy Family Stories & Comedies

You must read your work aloud – it is the easiest way to check your work makes sense, and you’ll soon spot any errors!

Silently mouth the words! Cup your hands over your mouth, and ‘read’ your work, moving your lips and tongue without making a sound! If you do this, you’ll discover four things:

	You’ll have made spelling mistakes – so neatly cross it out (one stroke of the pen, only!), and write the correct word above it.
	You’ll need to add punctuation. Make sure you’ve punctuated all your direct speech correctly, and ensure you’ve got enough full stops!
	Some bits don’t make sense – so use an arrow or an asterisk (a little star) and add a sentence or two so the Grumpy Examiner can follow your plot!
	You may have used dull adjectives, like ‘big’ and ‘cold’ – so cross them out and put something more interesting

A good writer will realise she wants to add more characterisation. Remember, you can never have too many thoughts and feelings in a story! Just use an asterisk and add more shown feelings, thoughts and questions about the character.

It is difficult to check spellings in an exam, because you tend to be worrying about whether your story makes sense.

One clever trick is to read the story backwards! Study the following sentence

I would read it like this: “horse – his – onto – balcony”. By reading backwards, I’m making sure that I don’t get distracted by the story, and I can just concentrate on my spellings. Hopefully, I would have spotted that you spell ‘balcony’ with one ‘l’!

Last updated on August 13, 2007