CIE IGCSE English Language: Section B: Writing To Narrate

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CIE IGCSE English Language Your notes
Section B: Writing to Narrate

Contents
Narrate: T he Basics
Setting
Plot
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Narrate: The Basics

Your notes
A Bank of Ideas
For a lot of students, this is the fun part of the exam and where you can get creative. But that doesn’t
mean you don’t need to study for it! It just means you need to prepare rather than revise.There are
lots of tricks you can learn to help bring out your creativity, and that doesn’t mean being spontaneous.
In fact, the first rule for this question is not to create new ideas in the exam.Instead, give yourself a
head start by having a bank of ideas ready to go into the exam with. So when you’re preparing for this
section, develop ideas for:
Five objects
Five characters
Five settings
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Ideas Generator: Objects

In order to get those objects, we need to generate some ideas.So start with a central image – a Your notes
suitcase always works well – they’re very versatile and fit into most settings, and operate as a
good springboard for your story. If the question is for you to write a story set on a train, you can z oom
in on your suitcase – let’s say, your old, battered-looking, well-travelled suitcase – and start your
story there.
Perhaps this case has been left by somebody?
What’s in it? A bomb? Some old books, clothes,
gold?Equally, of course, that object could be a
brown paper bag or an umbrella, a dirty wine
glass or some spectacles, a torn up photo or a
child’s toy.You can use one or more of these
objects in your scene to add that important
detail, or to inspire an entire narrative.
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Ideas Generator: Characters

Now get a loose idea of some people to bring into your story – we can think about their personality Your notes
traits later on:For example, my characters are:
An old woman
A young boy
A busy woman
An old man
A trendy dad
You should only need to focus on one or two or your characters in the exam, but like your objects –
and everything you need to study for in fact – it’s good to be prepared with a few extra.Now if you’re
struggling to come up with your own ideas, just head to Google Images and search for, say, an old
man – pick one you like and give him a name.
You can also get inspiration when you’re in a café, on a train journey or from social media.
You could base a character loosely on somebody you know.
Wherever you are, look around you for inspiration.
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Putting Them All Together

Now you can start putting your people and objects together. For example: Your notes
“An old man sat by the window wiping his glasses.”

“The young boy was falling asleep and slowly losing his grip on his teddy’s paws.”
“The woman stopped typing then looked out the window and smiled. The boy noticed and gently kicked
her chair so she’d smile at him, too.”
We’re now part way there to developing a story. So if the question asks you to write a story about a
character who is new to the area, think about which of your characters would best fit the scene, then
decide what objects they have on them when you first introduce them to the reader.
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Setting
Your notes
Immerse Your Reader in the Setting
There will usually be a question specifying the setting. For instance, it will ask you to write a story in a
busy train station. That’s where you decide which of your objects and characters you want to bring in.
If you are given the setting, then think about what senses are going on. This helps to immerse your
reader and brings your scene to life a lot more. It involves a lot of the skills covered in the Writing to
Describe pages. So you’ll know that when you specify the senses being stimulated in the scene, it
helps set a mood for your writing.
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Using the Senses for a Setting

Here’s a really good example of creating a mood for your setting from Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Your notes
Testaments’ – it’s taken from a scene where a girl realises her mother is seriously unwell.
“Her room no longer smelt like her – that light, sweet smell, like the lily-flowered Hostas in our garden – but
as if a stale, dirtied stranger had crept in and was hiding under the bed.”
The smells there are familiar to us – even if we don’t know what Hostas are, we generally know what
flowers smell like. So the contrast between that familiar and pleasant smell against the stench of a
stale, dirty stranger, is really effective to emphasise an unwelcome atmosphere of sickness and
pending danger.But the smells also say a lot about the characters in a small number of words: the
‘light, sweet smell’ shows how delicate and feminine the mother is, and the astuteness of the girl to
recognise all that shows her intelligence and sensitivity – and how close their relationship must
be.Senses can be a really good place to start your story as well.For example, “The smell reminded
me of…” throws the reader straight in and creates some intrigue.Even more so if you add some
contrast and juxtapose the sense to the setting:
“The smell reminded me of my step-mother smoking at the breakfast table.”
Firstly, we don’t expect someone to be smoking at the breakfast table, so we start making some flash
assumptions about the characters, which may or may not turn out to be true. We’re intrigued by these
two characters and whatever story is going between them, all because of a smell that wouldn’t
normally fit the setting.
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Ideas Generator: Settings

Sometimes in the exam you’ll be given a sense to write about and the setting will be up to you. For Your notes
instance the question might ask you to write a story starting with “There was complete silence…”.Well
where is that silence? And that’s for you to decide.Here’s where it’ll help for you to have some
‘Setting’ ideas up your sleeve. So mine are:
A wooded forest
A crowded beach
Inside an elevator
A wedding reception
Inside a car
On the surface, it might not look like there can be silence on a busy beach or in a car. But again
that contrast and incongruity makes for a really interesting plot. So perhaps the beach has gone
silent because there’s an eclipse happening or the music’s stopped at a wedding because someone
is about to make a dramatic announcement.It helps if you have 1 or 2 generic spaces like an elevator or
car because you can easily adapt them to fit most questions.
It’s generally a good idea to stick to what you know with your settings.
If you’ve never been to a wedding or a funeral before, maybe avoid writing about those as there’ll
be lots of details you won’t know about.
Having said that, if you get a question set at a wedding and you don’t like the other question
options, then practice ways to get around it – could the weeding be on the beach or in your
family’s garden?
Enclosed spaces tend to be really fertile ground for creative writing too because the
atmosphere can be intense.
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Plot
Your notes
The Narrative Arc
The plot for pretty much every story ever told follows the same narrative arch. A very basic formula that
consists of three phases:
1. Normality – everything’s going OK and people are going about their every-day lives.
2. Disruption – there’s been some drama or an event where normality get turned upside down.
3. New Normal – things have settled down and, while they’ve not gone back to exactly how they
were before, a new normality has been established.
The technical term for these phases is:
Equilibrium -> Disequilibrium -> New equilibrium
You don’t need to know these terms for the exam, but it does sometimes help students to remember
the narrative arc when they know the proper terms.And that’s it! That’s the magic formula for creating a
story. Think about any of your favourite films or books or plays; they’ll always follow this three-phase
formula.
Start in the Middle

But often stories start in the middle, at the point of
disequilibrium, where we’re thrown into the story during the crisis
or straight after. So we might get introduced to a character
stranded on an island, for instance, and we’ll have no idea why
they’re there. Or a plane has crashed in the jungle and we won’t
know what’s happened.We’ll usually then be given a flashback to
before the event, so that we know what that character’s
equilibrium looked like and the events that led up to the
disruption.Then after that, once we care about the character and
know their backstory, we’ll want to see what happens next for
them – what their new equilibrium looks like, and how they’ve been
changed by the experience.This method can be a really intriguing
way to start your story.
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Plot Development
Your three-phase narrative arc doesn’t always need to involve a dramatic event; sometimes the Your notes
disequilibrium of a story can be quite subtle. Sometimes the disequilibrium can be a petty argument.
This is where a story is more character-based rather than plot-based, and the story is more about
the maturing of a person or a relationship, so the change taking place is
more emotional and psychological, rather than any big external event.That’s particularly true for a
coming-of-age story or a romance plot.
Transformations
You can also transform your setting to follow the narrative arc. Twilight works very well for that: either
going from day to night or night to day – that way, the change in your setting mirrors your plot, which
can also allow for some pathetic fallacy.
Exam Tip
Make sure your tenses are consistent. Ask yourself if the action is taking place in
the past, present or future. Just because your scene is transforming to night, that doesn’t mean
you switch to future tense! If the action is still occurring in the present, stick to present tense.Just
make sure you don’t chop and change tenses for no reason.
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Parallel & Intertwined Narratives

Once you’re confident practicing different Your notes
plots, you can start to intertwine narratives. For
example, perhaps your story starts on a boat and
they discover a plane wreck. Or perhaps you
have two characters in separate cars and their
lives come together some how.Do the two cars
crash? Do they pull up to traffic lights and they
recognise each other?Writing can be really
entertaining when we’re offered different
perspectives and there’s a plot twist like that –
it shows the writer is ahead of the reader.
The Ending
It’s sometimes better to leave the
ending open and let the examiner interpret it
however they like. You don’t even need to know
how your story ends! That’s sometimes the
beauty of a great story, that the ending is very
personal to the reader when it’s left to their own
imagination.That’s a great way to make sure the
examiner LOVES your story.
Exam Tip
Remember you only need to write 350-450 words for this section – you’re not expected to write
the new Harry Potter!
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CIE IGCSE English Language Your notes

Section B: Writing to Narrate

Narrate: The Basics

Ideas Generator: Objects

Ideas Generator: Characters

Putting Them All Together

“An old man sat by the window wiping his glasses.”

Using the Senses for a Setting

Ideas Generator: Settings

Start in the Middle

Parallel & Intertwined Narratives

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