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Success in Creative Writing Exams Made specifically for the NSC Matric English Home Language Paper 3 Exam

Success in Creative Writing Exams

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A very helpful and insightful slideshow providing unconventional tips, help and information specifically for writing essays and transactional pieces in English Home Language or English First Additional Language for the Matric NSC Paper 3 examination. It can be helpful for any grade, any curriculum, any country and any language. Includes information on long-term and short-term preparation for essays and transactional writing, general writing tips, ways to get 'inspired', and various examples. This presentation was collated by someone who achieved very high marks in creative writing, and would like to share her secrets, tips and ideas with anyone who needs help. This slideshow WILL change the way you approach your creative writing exams - I hope it helps you!

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Page 1: Success in Creative Writing Exams

Success in Creative Writing Exams

Made specifically for the NSC Matric English Home Language Paper 3

Exam

Page 2: Success in Creative Writing Exams

What does the Exam require?• It is a creative writing exam consisting of 3 pieces – a long

essay, a longer transactional piece, and a shorter transactional piece.

• Check the mark allocation and plan your time carefully beforehand.

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Preparing for Transactional Writing• You can always review the formats needed for specific

transactional writing, e.g. formal letters, editorials, dialogues etc.

• HOWEVER, I cannot for the life of me understand why some people CHOOSE to do transactional writing with complex formats. It’s very easy to make a careless mistake and forfeit marks.

• You get to choose the topics for the transactional pieces. There’s always an easy option with very few formatting rules (diary entries, editorials, speeches). I advise you to choose this option: more room for creativity and less room for mistakes.

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• As I’ve said before, choose a good topic – one that doesn’t entail a complex format, and is versatile.

• Transactional writing can be boring, so I like to shake things up a bit. Write something you’d love to read.

• It might be too short a space to develop a good storyline, but it’s not too short to create a bit of a mystery or create something interesting.

• Sometimes the topics are very specific. This always sucks, as you have less space to be creative. However, if you come up with a very creative twist to an otherwise lame topic, you’ll impress your marker even more.

Transactional Writing

Page 5: Success in Creative Writing Exams

• Make a diary entry reflect a life as thrilling and exciting as you’d like your own life to be. Remember that diaries are for secrets. Make those secrets interesting. Nobody wants to read about your boring day at school and your boring friends. Truth.

• Imagine you’ve just found a diary lying on the side of the road. You don’t know who it belonged to. There is only one entry. Write something as exciting as what you’d like to read.

• Leave a bit of mystery without being too vague. Leave a bit to the imagination so that the reader WANTS to turn over the page (which is unfortunate for them because, if they do, they’ll just find your other essay… mwahahaha)

Transactional Writing: Diaries

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Topic: You have just moved house. Describe your feelings at leaving your home and friends behind (BORING)

18-05-2013My room is just a fold-out bed surrounded by ugly brown cardboard boxes; my closet, a tiny suitcase full of the crumpled clothes I threw in the night before.I was lucky to find a place so soon.I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take Anna’s saddened smile from the other side of the street – she was wishing, waiting for her husband to come home. I knew if I stayed there I would have been weakened by her gift of fresh-baked cookies on a lonely Sunday afternoon. I’d have snapped and told her that her husband was buried beneath the wisteria in my back yard.

Transactional Writing: Diary Entry Example

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• Editorials are cool because you get to pretend you’re the editor of an awesome magazine or newspaper.

• For a magazine: write an editorial that drops names of articles that you’d like to read. Perhaps let the ‘issue’ you’re writing for have a theme – such as ‘love’ for the month of February, ‘horror’ for October, or ‘strong women’ for August. Let your articles link to this theme, and perhaps tell a short story/analogy to tie it all together.

• For a newspaper: deliver ‘intelligent opinion’ on the latest news. This is cool because you get to be opinionated about a recent topic. Call on discussions you’ve had in history/around the dinner table/with idiots on News24 for inspiration.

Transactional Writing: Editorials

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• Always had an excellent idea for a movie/book and never had the motivation to make it happen? Here’s your chance to put those ideas to good use. I’m sure you wont have to write a blurb on a book that already exists in the NSC exam – they can’t assume you’ve all read a specific book.

• Write a book blurb that makes YOU want to read the book. • Keep the tone similar to that of the book. Leave a bit of

mystery in it: this is a blurb, not a spoiler.

Transactional Writing: Blurbs

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Evil in the VeinsProfessor Amy Harris has it all: a lucrative contract with a world-class publishing company, a reputation as one of the country’s leading criminologists, and a loving relationship with her adoptive parents. As a consultant for the NYPD, she’s helped put many heartless criminals behind bars, working on instinct alone.But when her DNA appears on a series of slain and mutilated corpses around her hometown, she has no explanation.In order to find the killer and clear her name, she must return to the orphanage where she was abused as a child for answers. How are the victims of this serial killer related? Why is she so good at catching killers? And… How did the killer get her DNA?

Transactional Writing: Blurb Example

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• It may seem strange: how can one prepare oneself for creativity and imagination? How can you inspire yourself to write an excellent piece – especially under so much pressure?

• To be honest, the best way to prepare yourself to write a good piece is to write an excellent essay beforehand and use that. It’s unconventional, but it’s not unethical and it works.– Write an essay whenever you feel inspired. A detailed outline will do.– Remember the important points, and any figures of speech or

particularly poetic descriptions you’d like to put in.– When the exam rolls around, you’ll have a number of very general topics

to choose from. Choose one that relates to your prepared essay, even in a very small/symbolic way.

– Sometimes, its helpful to mention the exact words of the essay topic in the essay – it shows the link.

Preparing for the Essay

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• Read a few particularly inspirational essays or poems beforehand. You might want to try reading English Alive, creative writing pieces from old school magazines, Poemscapes, creative blogs, essays found online, quotes on weheartit or essays written by classmates.

• If you come up with a few awesome lines you might want to use in the essay, write them down and read them beforehand. Don’t be ashamed to recycle old quotes. If you used a particularly cool line in a previous essay, you can always use it again.

• If you prefer writing argumentative essays, read some of the latest news articles. If you really want to get your argumentative muscle pumping, take a look at the comments on News24 articles.

More Short-Term Prep Techniques

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• Read. A LOT. If you don’t read, you have no advantage over those who can’t read.

• Keep a creative writing journal and use it to record all the awesome stuff your brain comes up with. Write down dreams, cool lines, ideas, etc. I’ve based many of my essays on dreams (not only my own dreams, but my friends’ dreams, too).

• Learn and record cool words: “sporadically”, “malleable” and “mortuary” are cool words that make you sound well-read.

• Keep in touch with good spelling and grammar. I know it’s boring, but it’s important. On that note, sorry for all the spelling and grammar mistakes in this presentation

More Long-Term Prep Techniques

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General Essay Writing Tips• Planning is important. To be honest, I sometimes wrote the

essay and THEN did the planning. Not always a good idea: it’s great to write all your cool ideas down before they slip out of your mind.

• Have a genre chosen in your mind. This will remind you of the purpose of your essay: is it to scare? Excite? Create suspense? Convey heartache? Convey happiness?

• Be an honest writer. The best way to write is to be in touch with your feelings, to be vulnerable, and to show raw emotion. Deep.

• Be confident. No matter how terrible you are as a writer, you’ll be better than you were a few years ago.

• Don’t just write to get marks. Write to entertain both yourself and the marker.

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• It has been said that the best writers are those who write on what they know. Don’t take this literally.

• Do you think J.K. Rowling was once a little boy who went off in a magic bus to a school of Wizardry in a crazy magic land accessed by an imaginary platform? Probably not.

• If people only wrote what they knew, we’d have no sci-fi, fantasy, or horror, and a great deal of fiction would be bland.

• To ‘write what you know’, immerse yourself in your imaginary world. Empathize with your characters. Draw on your own experiences to make your descriptions more genuine, but you don’t have to use your life as a basis for the storyline.

Essay Writing Tips: Write What You Know

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• HOWEVER, don’t write about something you know NOTHING about.

• For example, if you’re going to write something about the Cherokee people of America, make sure you actually know something about them. Making things up and going on stereotypes and clichés is literally the worst thing you could do. Not only would it be offensive, you’d end up looking like an uncultured, egotistical idiot.

Essay Writing Tips: Write What You Know

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• Really good writing reflects the ‘spirit of the time’ – the zeitgeist. If set in the past, your essay should evoke some kind of nostalgia for that time.

• For example, a good friend of mine set a love story in 1970s South Africa. She reflected the spirit of the time through subtly mentioning music icons, technology, fashion, and of course the political situation at the time.

• Roaring 20s (a la Gatsby): flappers, jazz, speakeasies, glamour and decadence.

• 90s: Dawson’s creek, payphones, “I know you are – but what am I?”,Gameboy, no internet (aaah!)

Zeitgeist: the Best Writing Tip Ever

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• Zeitgeist may be difficult to capture if you’re young, and especially if you’re writing about the era you’re currently living in. But, it can be done!

• I wrote an essay that spoke of a love story set in our time (2012) from the perspective of someone in 2022. I mentioned Typo shopping bags, hipster glasses, Instagram, the Lumineers, Ed Sheeran, anklebiters, brogues, Affinity, Twitter and the current political situation.

Zeitgeist: the Best Writing Tip Ever