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.
Question 5: narrative writing summary | |
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Top tips | |
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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:
Change | Reason |
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Instead of being asked to write “a story”, you will be asked only to write the “opening” of a story | This is to help you create a well-structured and controlled piece of writing |
Even if you are given a picture prompt, you are still encouraged to write “from your imagination” | This is to encourage students to be more free and creative with their writing, and not feel like they have to describe only what is in the image |
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:
Read the two task options carefully:
Highlight whether you are writing a story or a descriptive piece
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
Write down some reminders of figurative language or literary techniques to include to add interest and detail to your writing
Write your story, sticking to your plan
Try to leave 5 minutes at the end to re-read your writing carefully, correcting any obvious mistakes you have made
Examiner Tips and Tricks
It is worth remembering that you will be given a choice of two tasks in the exam: one will be a narrative writing task, and the other will be a descriptive writing task.
One will also give you a picture as a prompt for your piece of writing, but this could be to write a story or a description, so it is important that you read both options carefully.
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
Examiner Tips and Tricks
When you reach Question 5, you will already have read an example of creative writing in Section A. You can use the ideas and structure to inform your answer.
This task in Question 5 asks you to think about how you can effectively engage your reader and produce a cohesive piece of creative writing. How did the writer of the source text do this? Could you use some of the same methods?
Below are some points on how you might approach the following task:
Write the opening of a story about a human being meeting an animal. |
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It is divided into plot, setting and characterisation.
Plot
This task asks you to write an opening of a short 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 cliffhanger
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:

5-part narrative structure | |
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Exposition (setting the scene) | Stick to one main setting and start at that location:
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Hook your reader:
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Decide which narrative perspective and tense you are going to write your story in:
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Employ the five senses to create an atmosphere:
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This paragraph could end with an “inciting incident”, which prompts the rising action and moves the story forward | |
Rising Action | This paragraph should build tension, drama or interest:
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This paragraph should also develop your characters:
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Climax | This is the turning point of your story:
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Your protagonist could face an external problem, or an internal choice or dilemma:
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You should vary your sentence structure, length and language here for dramatic effect | |
Falling action | What happens in this paragraph should show the consequences of the climax paragraph |
It also should focus on your characters’ thoughts and feelings as a result of the climax of the story:
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Resolution or denouement | You can choose to resolve your story, or end on a cliff-hanger:
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Your setting and atmosphere could reflect a change from the setting or atmosphere you established in your opening paragraph:
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Examiner Tips and Tricks
Planning your plot carefully can help you structure your narrative writing, which helps you reach the top end of the mark scheme. For more details, check out our revision note page on how to structure creative writing.
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
Examiner Tips and Tricks
When creating your setting, don’t give too much away at once.
Keep your reader guessing and asking questions, such as “What is going on?”, “Why is this like this?” and “Who is this?”. This helps create a sense of mystery or tension and engages the reader.
For more great tips and tricks on how to create great settings in your narrative writing, check out our revision note on how to create setting in creative writing.
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:
Direct characterisation | Indirect characterisation |
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The writer tells us directly what a character is like through description and narration, which gives quick detail but can feel shallow if overused | The writer shows us what a character is like through their actions, speech, thoughts, and how others react to them, helping create deeper and more engaging characters |
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.
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