English Entrance Examinations: The Creative Writing essay with a little inspiration from Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book.

Writers are often questioned about their early, formative  ’influences’ or about other writers who may have inspired their work. For students undertaking the entrance examinations for schools such as Bolton School, Withington, Manchester Grammar and Manchester High, inspiration still matters. In fact inspiration is a KEY to writing success.

Indeed to borrow a major  component of NLP, English students benefit enormously from MODELLING their own writing upon EXCELLENT ‘others’.

So in my English Tuition, I encourage students to play with extracts and openings from successful writers, rewriting them in their own way and identifying too, the key techniques by which powerful openings are created.

For why should an examiner be any different from you and me in a book shop? For in Waterstones for example, we may pick up a book, read the opening paragraph perhaps and then read on, buy it or put it back in the pile.

What will the examiner do with your opening?

• Buy it.
• Read on.
• Put it back in the huge pile.

You have to grab the examiner’s imagination. 

You have to show that you know what a story really is and HOW it works.

You can do this through MODELLING other writers and IDENTIFYING the PIVOTAL techniques by which INTEREST is created.

I will now give a superb example of the EXCELLENT opening.

This extract is from the opening to Neil Gaiman’s superbly Dickensian thriller, The Graveyard Book.

Chapter 1.

How nobody came to the graveyard.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

We are intrigued by the title of the chapter.

Who or what is ‘nobody’ and WHY would they come to the graveyard?  ‘Nobody’ seems a slightly derogatory, negative, even humiliating name. And it creates unease when linked so strongly to the place of the dead; the graveyard.  Graveyards are full of bodies. This seems tension making-wickedly sinister.

So, putting things( words) together in unusual ways creates tension and interest.  

Then we read the first line. The independence of the ‘hand’ from the rest of any ‘body’ raises the tension still further. Can hands act independently of bodies?  Students love this use of alienation through synecdoche and can even go home singing with the joys of metonymy and metaphor!

We can rearrange the sentence. If ‘knife’ becomes ‘flower’ then what happens to the sense and to the atmosphere of the tale?

And if ‘hand’ becomes a ‘foot’ or a ‘mouth’ then again the story alters in menaing and tone.

When ‘darkness’ becomes ‘sunshine’ then we might wonder if the sinister aspect of the tale is increased, decreased or altered?

These simple exercises really inspire students to write better stories.  And they are fun!

GCSE and A level, even Undergraduate Creative Writing students can beneift from playing with openings.

MODELLING reaps SIGNIFICANT benefits for writing.

Dr Janet Lewison MA , English Tutor, Bolton, Bury, Manchester and online.

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