Paper 1 Question 5: Creative Writing (AQA GCSE English Language): Revision Note

Paper 1, Section B: Question 5 has two options: narrative writing or descriptive writing. This is an overview of the narrative writing question.

How to answer Paper 1 Question 5: narrative writing 

Let’s look at Question 5 from the June 2023 exam:

There are two changes to the wording for the exam question from 2026 onwards:

Let’s look at an example of the new wording for this question:

Step-by-step guide to Question 5

In order to achieve 40 marks for this question, you should:

1. Read the two task options carefully:

   • Highlight whether you are writing a story or a descriptive piece

2. Spend 10 minutes planning your writing:

   • Use a mind-map or a simple narrative structure to do this

   • Plan your characters — who they are, what they represent and how you will convey this

   • Decide on your narrative perspective — first or third person

3. Write down some reminders of figurative language or literary techniques to include to add interest and detail to your writing

4. Write your story, sticking to your plan

5. Try to leave 5 minutes at the end to re-read your writing carefully, correcting any obvious mistakes you have made

How to get full marks on Paper 1 Question 5

• Avoid confusing ideas in a paragraph:

  • Each paragraph should focus on one idea

  • Ensure all words are chosen to contribute to the effect you want to create

• Do not confuse the tenses in a paragraph:

  • If you use a flashback, ensure it is in the past tense

  • If you use present-tense verbs for effect, ensure they are all consistently in present tense 

• Do not over-use dialogue:

  • Only use dialogue if it drives forward the plot and you are able to punctuate it correctly

The highest marks are awarded for students who use complex and sophisticated vocabulary

How to plan your narrative writing

It is important to remember that writers plan their texts deliberately to make the reader respond in certain ways, and think and feel certain things. 

You should spend some time thinking about the question; not only the content, but also the order of your ideas.

In your answer you must:

• Plan the structure of your piece of writing:

  • Order the information into roughly five to six paragraphs

• Plan your setting:

  • This should create an effective mood

• Consider the relevant information you need to give in order to create engaging characters:

  • Do you need to reveal everything at once, or can you withhold some information?

• Use language techniques relevant to the style of writing:

  • You can plan what language features you will use

  • But these must reflect the overall mood or tone of your writing

Below are some points on how you might approach the following task:

It is divided into plot, setting and characterisation.

Plot 

The opening to a story

This task will ask you to write the opening of a story. This means what you write will be the beginning of a longer story.

It is still important that you plan this out. The opening of a story only really needs to establish three things:

• the setting

• the characters

• the complication(s) - to build tension

You might find the following suggested plot structure helpful:

A whole story

If you are sitting your exam in November 2025, this task asks you to write a whole story. As you have limited time to create a cohesive plot, it’s vital that you plan this out before you begin writing.

Writing a response which has not been planned is likely to have an abrupt ending, or no ending at all, which will not get you high marks. You should decide if your story ends with:

• A clear resolution

• A cliff-hanger

Your resolution could be happy, or you can create a tragic ending. 

Your story needs to be controlled and concise. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to use a narrative structure such as Freytag’s Pyramid:

Setting 

Building an effective setting is key as it contributes to atmosphere and mood.

• Your setting should reflect your main character’s mood:

  • You may know this as pathetic fallacy, which reflects the character’s mood in the environment, e.g., “the lonely road”

• As your setting reflects your character’s mood, your setting may change as the story progresses:

  • For example, your story may have started on a sunny afternoon, but may end as the sun sets or as a storm approaches 

  • However you decide to contrast the scenes, ensure this change reflects your character’s mood

  • Avoid mixing moods — for example: “The graveyard was dark, cold and smelled like fragrant flowers” is confusing for your reader

• The best answers have built a clear setting before introducing other information, such as introducing character:

  • Describing setting is best done with sensory language as we experience places with our five senses

  • This means you could describe the dark, light, colours, sounds, smells and weather

  • The best way to clearly create setting is to allow an entire paragraph to describe the scene without confusing readers with other information like who is there

Characterisation

To get top marks, you will need to build some elements of detailed characterisation. This means you need to consider what your characters represent. They may represent an idea, such as ambition, or be portrayed as a villain to represent injustice, or evil. 

It is best to limit yourself to two characters in the time you have.

Well-rounded characters are taken on a journey in which a character undergoes some form of development or change. Ideally, you should focus more on indirect characterisation than direct characterisation:

For more great tips on how to develop your characters, including examples of direct and indirect characterisation, check out our dedicated page: Top Tips for Creating Characters in Creative Writing.

Learn more and test yourself

For more great tips and tricks, check out our fully annotated narrative writing model answer. 

You can also test yourself on Paper 1 Question 5 by building your writing skills with our Paper 1 Question 5 multiple-choice questions and by writing your own narrative writing and getting it marked by Smart Mark, our AI model created by English Language experts.