In order to excel at creative writing, you need to have great ideas AND be good at communicating them. That means understanding the basics of reading and writing.
You must always have in mind the genre, audience and purpose of your piece.
Genre – the form you are writing in, e.g. a newspaper article, a poem, a letter, a story?
Audience – the people that you are writing it for, e.g. children, males, females, adults, elder generation
Purpose – what is the motivation behind the piece? E.g. to inform, to persuade etc.
Once you know these factors, you can then identify the style that you are going to need to adopt – will you be chatty or more serious in your writing? Would slag be appropriate or should you stick to a very formal register?
Good marks will be awarded to those who have shown that they understand and can demonstrate all of the above. You should be clear about your genre, audience, purpose and style.
The exam will require you to choose two tasks from three options. These are:
- Moving images – writing for or about a film or TV programs
- Commissions – here you will respond to a set brief e.g. writing a report for a newspaper
- Re-creations – you will get given one genre and need to rewrite it in another e.g. newspaper article to poem