Top Selective School Graduate’s Tips on Excelling in Creative Writing for Selective and Scholarship Exams

As one of the most commonly tested text types in selective and scholarship entrance exams, it is crucial to understand the tips and tricks to crafting a solid narrative. See below to learn how you can stand out rom the rest:

1. Understanding and applying your stimulus.

For a selective school and scholarship writing sections, you will always be required to respond to a stimulus
and explicitly applying this stimulus throughout your piece is of utmost importance to show
your markers that you are engaging with the question. There are many ways to apply your
stimulus, for example, if the stimulus is a quote you may choose to use it as the start of your
story and as a driver of your character’s actions. If the stimulus is an image, you can instead
choose to form an extended metaphor or a motif based on this image and implement this
throughout your narrative.

2. Show not tell.

Students often, when faced with timed conditions, resort to ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ in
turn making their writing lack depth and engagement. It is important that you focus on
demonstrating your characters’ traits by describing their actions, appearance and
relationships, rather than simply saying that they are ‘smart’ or ‘kind’.

3. Use figurative language.

Figurative language forms the basis of creatives, and will help you ‘show not tell’. You should
apply metaphors, personification, similes and imagery where possible.

To describe your character’s personality and abilities, metaphors and similes are especially
useful. For example instead of saying ‘The girl was clumsy on the balancing beam’, you can
say ‘The girl flailed her arms about, grasping at the air as she walked across the balancing
beam, not as a graceful gymnast would but like a toddler’. The use of simile implies the trait
of clumsiness whilst adding depth to your writing.

Personification is especially useful for describing inanimate objects, so if you want to
world-build and add to your setting you can personify what is in it. For example, if you
wanted to set your story in the middle of the woods and make it scary, you could personify
the trees – ‘The mangled roots relentlessly clawed at the ankles of those who walked past,
and the fallen branches screeched when walked on’.

4. Grammar, punctuation and spelling

Maintaining correct grammar, punctuation and spelling throughout your piece is key to
gaining marks for your writing. Take a few minutes before the finish time to read over your
piece fully and make edits where necessary. Some common mistakes you could take notice
of include:
● Lack of commas where needed
● Sudden change of tenses, for example, changing from present tense to past tense
for a few sentences
● Misusing homophones, such as interchanging their, they’re and there, or too and to
● Not capitalising proper nouns such as names and places
● Forgetting to use quotation marks for dialogue

5. Keep your eye on the clock

Creative writing is all about pacing, and whilst depth is needed in your story, it is important to
remember that your story should not detail the history of all the characters, especially when
writing under timed conditions. Instead, choose to focus on one main climax and elaborate
on that. Also make sure you are looking over at the clock to ensure you are halfway through
your story at the halfway mark and so on. This will allow you to smoothly conclude, rather
than resorting to a rushed and cliche ending such as ‘it was all a dream’.

Interested in learning more? Enrol in our selective trial test and intensive writing programs where you can get access to targeted theory notes, exemplars and individualised feedback.