Writing an essay or a story under examination conditions can be stressful and mind draining! We can feel as if our words have left us-and fled to some faraway place where we cannot find them, let alone spell them properly!
So my tip today is a practical tip. It works just as easily with GCSE writing too and with adaptation can be used for critical essays as well.
STEP ONE: Make a list of the TYPES of essay or story that you enjoy writing.
STEP TWO: Then take a piece of paper for each and write down as many words and phrases as come into your mind and check their spelling.
STEP THREE: Arrange them together in different ways with coloured pens.
STEP FOUR: Play with the words so that they become familiar and STRONGLY present in your imagination.
For example let us work with a story involving a significant meeting. It could be realistic and so draw directly from your own experience or it could be a fantasy meeting. In either case, the words we have in our heads when we come to write, will powerfully shape and affect the atmosphere and ‘plot’ of the tale.
LIST WORDS YOU LIKE AND WANT TO USE!
HEAR THEIR SOUNDS!
- A dark November morning.
- The clocks had altered.
- Lost my trusted watch. Felt oddly out of time.
- Rain seemed sharp.
- Almost too wide awake?
- Musty smell as I climbed on the bus. No one waving. Everyone slumped dozing except me.
- Steamy windows. Words scribbled on them seemed to make no sense.
- The bus crowded with damp human beings at 7-30am.
- Smell of shampoo and then something odd.
- Patchouli oil on a leather bag a woman with crimson nails.
- Woman carrying the bag very closely.
- Her name embosssed on the leather handle.
- Evangeline Markham.
- Secretive.
- Reading a book with gilt letters and that strange smell again as if something escaping as she reads.
- One eye different colour than the other.
- Restless feet.
- Some thing stirring in the bag.
- As if it liked being read to?
- The bus journey went on and on.
- Time stretching out so the woman can read to the hidden, murmuring creature.
- As she reads, the sound in the bag is increasing.
- Humming. Music starts to make the letters on the window make sense.
- I can read the message.
- It’s my future name. My destiny.
- With a date!
Janet Lewison.