 Writing creative stories is something that a lot of GCSE students really, really struggle with. In fact, if you're somebody who usually finds yourself staring at the sheet of paper, either an image or a question asking you to write a story and you don't even know where to begin, you're not alone. In fact, a lot of students really, really find this question quite challenging. Therefore, I'm gonna go over firstly how to effectively plan a creative story and a creative writing exercise and essentially the framework, the structure that you should use every single time, which will guarantee you, number one, a really strong essay writing structure for your creative story. But most importantly, number two, if you practice it enough, you will find that you are really securing some top level marks. These are level nine's and level eight grades, okay? So, as you can see behind me, essentially, you will see a mountain. And maybe you've kind of heard your primary school teacher mention this before, the story mountain structure. This structure is so important. A lot of people learn it and actually practice it a lot in primary school and then when they go to secondary school, they just forget it. They think that, oh, actually, that belongs in primary school and they don't realize that all stories, when you look at even novels, films, they are fundamentally the same. They have what we call a story mountain or a story arc structure. This, the fancy jargon for it, the fancy word for it, is actually what we call the hero's journey. So when you watch any film, the hero, the main character, the protagonist goes on a journey. This is the same for stories and this should be the same for your creative writing exercise. Actually, what you learned back in primary school, that is still relevant in GCSE level, okay? So firstly, the one thing that you have to remember when you're writing an amazing creative writing story and writing a really powerful story is you want to adopt the hero's journey, the story arc, okay? And there are five components to a creative writing story that therefore means actually, when you're planning this and you're considering these five components, that therefore means your creative writing story and every creative writing story should have a minimum of four or five paragraphs and each paragraph should include an element of this. As I mentioned, these five elements are, number one, what we call the beginning in the hero's journey, then number two, what we call the build-up in the hero's journey, then number three, this is the problem, number four, the resolution and then number five is essentially the ending of the story. This is basically the structure that you should take when planning and ultimately writing a very powerful creative story. Now, what goes into each of these paragraphs, what goes into each of these sections in your creative writing story and as I've mentioned, you want to be writing minimum four to five paragraphs, however, you can combine some of these sections. For instance, you can have your beginning and your build-up in the same paragraph, you can have your problem and your resolution in the same paragraph and then your final paragraph can be the ending, however, to make your life much easier, it's better to kind of have it in five separate paragraphs. Now, in the beginning, you essentially set the scene, so you describe the setting, you introduce the character and then you also introduce the atmosphere. I would suggest for the beginning of your story, try to make it really promising, really positive and keep your characters to just one maximum two. Do not start adding five different characters, you only have a limited amount of time to write your creative writing story, okay? You can't, you're not writing a novel, you're writing a very brief story under time conditions, therefore keep it simple, okay? Then the second component is the build-up, this is where your character, your main figure goes on an adventure, they go on a new journey, okay? And the setting, and I would suggest keeping the setting the same, so for instance, if it's in the forest or woods, they start on one point of the forest or woods, they go through and they start an adventure. Also, I will suggest in the build-up, this adventure is quite positive and promising, therefore the atmosphere should be really positive, promising, pathetic fallacy, so in this instance, for instance, you can have the sun smiling down, there's birds twittering in the air, that kind of thing that conveys a really positive atmosphere and it makes us as readers really excited. What's going to happen? How is this character, the main character, what are they going to experience? Then of course, you now have the twist, you have the problem, this is the third element and what you want to do is now gradually shift the atmosphere, make it foreboding, ominous, foreboding and ominous meaning scary, you get the sense, it's not necessarily you're telling your reader that there's something that's hidden or some danger that's coming, but you're gradually introducing elements that make your reader think, okay, something is about to happen, okay? So this is what we call foreboding and ominous atmosphere, you gradually building it up, it goes from being maybe sunny to being dusk or twilight, okay? So this is the kind of weird time of the day around five or six PM where the sky turns kind of this orange, darkish, purple color. This is an indication maybe to your reader that things are about to get really bad, okay? Also in your problem, of course, this is now where you can gradually introduce either the villain or the obstacle that the person faces. Maybe they walk through in the forest, there's a hole that they don't see covered with leaves and then they fall through that hole, okay? But before that, you've built up the atmosphere, you've kind of created some kind of ominous feeling. Then the fourth element is the resolution. Does your character fight the villain? Do they fight something an animal? Or do they run away, flight, so fight or flight? How do they resolve this issue? Do they resolve the issue at all, okay? Again, don't forget, this is timed conditions so you don't have that much time to be having lots and lots of different resolutions, different things, keep it simple, keep it interesting but simple and that is possible, okay? And the final element is your ending. So how does the character change? Bear in mind, for instance, as you can see here, the character starts here, the mountain then ends here. It ends at a different point because your character is somehow different. They have somehow evolved throughout this process, okay? Or your ending can be a cliffhanger. Something can happen and then you end with a cliffhanger, something sudden can happen and everything goes dark, okay? So you've got a choice of that kind of ending too. Now, when you are planning this story, always remember a few things, okay? As I've mentioned, the creative writing story, especially when you're writing it in timed conditions, you don't have that much time, okay? So firstly, adopt the five paragraph structure, beginning, build up, problem, resolution and ending. Then the other element to remember is, have a maximum of two characters. I would even suggest keeping it simple to just one character and then maybe there's a villain so that would be the second character, okay? Then maximum of two settings, again, I would suggest keep it really simple, keep it to just one setting and then the setting can change. The color and the sky and so on can change, okay? But keep it to one setting. Don't start off in the forest then you find yourself in the city. Then you find yourself in the beach. That's too much and you don't have enough time to do that, okay? Keep it really simple but go into lots of depth. And the final thing is, make sure you use figurative language and powerful adjectives. When I say figurative language and things like similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia, powerful adjectives could be, for example, when you're talking about crepuscular, for instance, which just means like a very weird darkening color, using really interesting adjectives which are a little bit advanced, a baleful night, baleful meaning menacing, sinister, that kind of thing. And this is part of expanding your vocabulary. It's so important. Don't say, for example, the character feels sad, maybe they feel melancholic, okay? And this comes with reading and preparing, okay? So hopefully this explains to you how to structure your creative writing answers. I would always encourage when you're writing a question, make sure you pause for a second, have five separate points, okay? Don't spend too long planning the story, okay? You need to actually write the story. This should take you no more than five maximum seven minutes of planning, but you need to have a clear plan. What goes into your beginning? What goes into your buildup? What goes into your problem? What goes into your resolution? And what finally goes into your ending? Really brief bullet points. And then maybe as you're making the bullet points, you can write really interesting adjectives or just very brief one word terms that you can relate to in the story. And then of course you go into writing your story. Keep it simple, but very detailed at the same time. So now let's look at some examples of creative writing questions that I have written some really strong model answers.