Write a story about:
Write a story about:
From only £5.99
This book is ideal for helping students improve their creative story writing for the GCSE English Language exams. Each chapter contains an exam task and a planning checklist designed to help students do regular timed writing practice.
There are also twelve complete model stories to help students understand what a good exam story looks like. Each model story demonstrates the powerful vocabulary choices, the insightful characterisation and the technical accuracy the examiners are looking for.
The book is rounded off with in-depth exam board information and suggestions for further reading.
Click Plan Your Story! and see a story plan appear before your eyes. Click Copy Plan to copy the plan to your clipboard for pasting into other documents. You can change individual parts of the plan by simply clicking on the section you want to change – a new random element will be chosen. Or, you can reset the whole plan by clicking Reset to clear the plan and start again. Feel free to keep planning stories. You won’t run out!
This tool is designed for students preparing for the GCSE English Language exams. Specifically, it exists to help students with the planning process for stories which are a part of every GCSE English Language course and account for around 25% of marks available (depending on the exam board). The aim of the plan is to provide a model for good story planning whilst also speeding up the planning process, getting students’ imaginations whirring and suggesting new, intriguing and challenging ideas for stories.
Of course. Click View Options to see a blank plan. Fill in as many of the blank options as you want and then select Complete Your Plan! to finish the job.
Most students find it easier to write stories where characters are the same age. For that reason, although the age range is chosen at random, it will be the same for both characters. If you have a great idea for a story with characters of different ages, use the View Options button to enter the ages yourself before selecting Complete Your Plan! to get the randomiser to work its magic for you.
The generator chooses names at random from a list of 698 names. These are names that have appeared at least once in the top 100 baby names registered in England and Wales since 1904. The data is available from the Office for National Statistics. Of course, if you prefer, give your characters names of your choosing by selecting View Options before selecting ‘Complete Your Plan’ to get the randomiser to work its magic for you.
The personality pairings are adapted from a number of theories of personality ( The Four Temperaments, Myers-Briggs, The Big Five, HEXACO) and offer a range of possible personalities for your characters. I recommend giving contrasting personalities to your two characters as that will likely lead to drama and complex characterisation.
It’s true that some of the plan combinations will be unusual (but not impossible). This is because of the random nature of this plan generator. For example, you could get ‘Season: Winter’ and ‘Weather: Heatwave’ which would be an unusual situation for winter. Or, you could get ‘Character’s Age: 80s’ and ‘Theme/genre: Science Fiction’.
If this happens to you, there are a couple of possibilities. You can simply re-run the generator to get a different plan. Better still, you could challenge yourself to write the story. In fact, it might encourage you to write a truly new story. After all, why aren’t there more science fiction stories where the protagonists are in their 80s?
My exam guide offers a range of excellent, Grade 9, model exam answers. You could also consider buying a recent anthology of short stories.
Follow @gcseenglishuk on social media and have a look at my model answers.