Chapter 1

An Introduction to Writing : some key terms and ideas

Imaginative writing1

In this section we’ll look at some of

the techniques writers use to create
their effects and you’ll start to
practise them in your own writing.
Learning how to write creatively will
help you with your reading, too.
You’ll be introduced to some key
terms and ideas in this chapter that
will help you throughout the course.

Do you enjoy a good story? I know I do. There’s nothing I like more than getting lost in a
book or listening to a story tape. I love to imagine the lives of the characters, getting
absorbed in their adventures, stepping through the wardrobe into a magical and imaginary
world. I can feel an enormous sense of loss when I reach the end of a book. I remember
putting off reading the last few pages of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials because I
didn’t want the story to end and the characters to leave my life. It had taken me a year to
read the trilogy (out loud to my son), and as we turned the last page it was like saying
farewell to an old friend.
Good writing can have this effect and if you’ve ever had this experience, you might
have wondered how writers work their magic. How can they create characters that are so
believable, they can feel like friends? Or summon up monsters that make us afraid to turn
off the light? How can they make Narnias and Wonderlands appear in our imaginations
just by covering a page with words?
Well, in this part of the course you’ll start to learn to do what professional writers do.
You’ll find out how to make stories really interesting and believable so that readers won’t
be able to put down what you have written. But, before we start, let’s look at what goes
into making a story. There are actually only a few key things you have to remember, but
they all have to be there, so let’s look at them one at a time.
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Exam note: This chapter underpins the whole course but will prepare you specifically for Paper 2 Section B,
where there will be a choice of imaginative writing questions.

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 Key fact: You probably already know this, but the word fiction refers to
made-up stories. Harry Potter is an example of fiction. Non-fiction means
any form of writing that is based on fact, or something that has actually
happened (newspaper articles are an example of non-fiction). We’ll be
looking at non-fiction later in the course.

Characters
I know this is probably stating the obvious, but it’s important to
remember that stories are always about people (or characters,
as writers call the people who inhabit their books). Well duh! I
can hear you say, but can you imagine how boring a book would
be if it just went on and on describing a scene and there wasn’t
anyone in it? If you’ve ever read a book that was really boring,
chances are it spent too long going on about the landscape and
scenery in the opening pages. If a writer really wants to grab your attention they’ll
introduce a character in the opening sentence. So a writer’s first job is to create
interesting characters and to find out how to do this, look at this sentence.
Mrs Brown walked towards me.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel this sentence tells me very much about
Mrs Brown. I can just about picture her, but I don’t know how old she is, or why she’s
heading in my direction. Maybe she’s a neighbour. Or a traffic warden. Maybe she’s
brandishing a deadly weapon. I haven’t a clue. Besides, Brown is a boring sort of a name,
too, so I can’t get very excited about that either (hope it isn’t your name…). But what about
if I read…

If Mavis Brown had been a pudding, she would have been a trifle. She was fat,
in a bobbly sort of way, with big bosoms and a wobbly bum. Her cheeks were
like two red cherries, and her hair was a topping of whipped cream. She could
easily have been ninety, but her sparkling blue eyes belonged to someone half
her age. Large though she was, her legs were white and spindly, like a pair of
giant tooth picks, so when she hobbled towards me I found myself holding out
my arms, in case she should over-topple and fall

We certainly learn a lot more about Mrs Brown from this version. Both pieces give
me the same facts - that Mrs Brown is heading in my direction – but in the second version I
can picture Mrs Brown much more clearly. What makes the second piece more interesting
is that it is more descriptive. This means it uses plenty of describing words (or
adjectives, to give them their proper name). Describing words or adjectives are words
that tell us what something or someone is like. So, for example, fat, red, big, large tell us
what her face and body look like, and twinkly and blue tell us what her eyes are like.
Adjectives tell us what something looks like, smells like, sounds like, feels like and so on.

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As long as you don’t overuse them, they can make it easy for a reader to imagine what
you are writing about.
There are also some original and imaginative ways of describing things, such
as If Mavis Brown had been a pudding, she would have been a trifle. Writers try to think of
original and imaginative ways of describing something to make a picture of what they are
describing appear in your mind. We’ll talk more about original ways of describing in a
minute, but it helps to remember that when words are used to make a word picture like
this, we say writers are using images. In this piece of writing we also get a sense of
another character – the person who is telling the story (or the narrator). We are told I
found myself holding out my arms, in case she should over-topple and fall.
So, the first thing to remember is that writers make characters interesting by using
adjectives, original words and phrases and strong images. As you can see, these help
a picture of Mavis Brown to appear in your mind. Writers hope this picture will be a
memorable one. (Another word for this sort of descriptive language is figurative
language.)

Try it yourself!
Can you think of two memorable characters you’ve come across in a book?
Take a few minutes to flip through a book you’ve read and find a paragraph
that describes these characters. What are their names? What words does the
writer use to describe him or her (or it!)? Does the writer use any original
words and phrase to really bring them to life?

First character:

Second character:

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Perhaps as you were reading what your favourite authors had written, you got inspired
about original ways to describe characters. Well, now’s your chance to try! Study the faces
in each of the boxes. Write a paragraph about each face, giving it a name and making
sure you write something about what the face looks like, sounds like (if you think it is
making a sound!) and the mood it is experiencing. You might want to write what the
character is thinking about. Don’t forget to use adjectives, and imaginative and
interesting language. (By the way, don’t feel you have to fill the box! I’ve just left plenty of
room in case your imagination really gets a grip. But sometimes it can be very effective to
describe someone in just a couple of very revealing sentences.)