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books to read to improve on creative writing

J.is.mine

I'm a year 10 about to do my mocks. I find English difficult mostly the language paper 1 creative writing part.
So what reading books can help me improve.

(edited 9 months ago)

Reply 1

username6995547

Literally any book, although if you’re preparing for mocks you would want more time to revise than reading so I would recommend reading shorter books at aimed at younger children. Look at and analyze the structure of the text and try writing some q5’s from past papers which follow the same structure/devices!

Reply 2

princesschip

While shorter books are a good idea since they can be read quickly, if you can intersperse some books aimed at older readers that might help too. Generally in an exam your target audience is the examiner, who will be an adult. English is tricky to mark, but a piece the examiner enjoys will likely score higher than one they feel is childish or oversimplified. Best of luck!

Reply 3

Aijahdj

Original post by J.is.mine

I'm a year 10 about to do my mocks. I find English difficult mostly the language paper 1 creative writing part.
So what reading books can help me improve.

to simply answer your question, i don't think u have enough time to be reading books at this point (i know ur in yr10 but u have plenty of other subjects and presumably hobbies). Read creatjve writing exemplars - some exam boards will provide them

i've always struggled in creative writing but the reality is u don't need to be amazing at it to get a high mark on this section of the paper. u should read through lots of exemplars and learn from their styles. usually the timeframe of the story is no longer than a few minutes. this structure is really good - i stuck with this: drop (straight into action), shift (back in time, like a flashback to give the reader more info on why this is happening), zoom (return to the action and zoom into the details), link (to the bigger picture/narrative - resolve it).

the checklist i always followed was:

a single sentence paragraph for dramatic effect

colon

semi colon

metaphor/simile

dashes/parentheses

exclamation/rhetoric

compound sentences

short sentences

this willget you marks for VSPAG but u must know how to use them. you can add speech to but only do it if u can punctuate it correctly. you should aim to use a good range of vocab (consciously adding adverbs, adjectives to description because i know for some of us this doesn't come naturally). if your vocab is limited, learn a few "big boy words" for different scenarios (think of different scenes u might write about: action packed? haunted? funeral?) this is what me and my friends called it; it's just "impressive" words. and make sure your conflict is resolved generally the best pieces are like 600-800 words (from personal experience i can't say for sure).

No one tells you this but unofficially the biggest hack to english language creative writing is to write a few really good pieces and memorise 1 or 2 of them. when you're in the exam you can just make adjustments to the story to fit the prompt. if it's too different to do this, at least you have the really emotive and evocative descriptions you memorised to give you something. i found that it also helped with structuring because you can think about what you memorised (for example: 3 sentences to describe the setting, 1 for action/context of the character... etc etc).

Finally, stick with 1 character. Two at a maximum. You don't have time to be introducing more.

AND ALWAYS TRY TO ADD A MOTIF.

this is my advice as someone who has never been good at english (i got a 7 in year 9 and a 6 in year 10). i haven't done paper 2 yet as i'm doing my gcses now but i can tell u i banged paper 1 and creative writing and i'm on track for an 8/9. if it matters at all for context, i had almost straight 9s in my mocks, english has been the only subject ive really struggled with. i hope my personal experience genuinely helps u out as i never really read much and so sucked at creative writing.

Reply 4

CCCU Official

Official Rep

Original post by J.is.mine

I'm a year 10 about to do my mocks. I find English difficult mostly the language paper 1 creative writing part.
So what reading books can help me improve.

A great book for creative writing is a short novel called:

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

The descriptions are so simple and effective. It's also a really quick read.

Reply 5

Super Sprinkles

Original post by J.is.mine

I'm a year 10 about to do my mocks. I find English difficult mostly the language paper 1 creative writing part.
So what reading books can help me improve.

Basically any novel that you ENJOY reading as then you'll want to continue to read more.
There's no point me recommending Charles Dickens' books if you're not going to get past the second chapter!

Reply 6

JDINCINERATOR

With all due respect to books, you don't really "need" them to improve your creative writing. I think you need to fully immerse yourself in media and what you enjoy and integrate that into your writing. For example, I love WWE especially from the early 2000s and I love listening to witty videogame-related content from Zero Punctuation/Fully Ramblomatic and Videogame Dunkey-and I find the characters and the personalities in these interests has helped me garner an insanely weird and strange creative flair. I think you should take what you love to read/watch/play/listen to as inspiration to spark your creativity.

Reply 7

urmm

i reccomend
the throne of glass series and the assasin's blade series
:smile:

Reply 8

urmm

Original post by J.is.mine

I'm a year 10 about to do my mocks. I find English difficult mostly the language paper 1 creative writing part.
So what reading books can help me improve.

However as a gcse student reading books don't help me with my cretivity. however everyones different and it may help you. how i revised for creative writing -i do eduquas- is that i memorised a story. so when a topic comes i write the story i memorised however i slightly adjust it according to the topic. -idk if tht made sense but hopefully it did

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