Extended, Descriptive and Narrative Writing
This domain assesses composition: your ability to shape a whole piece with control of structure, style, tense and detail. Descriptive writing builds a place, person or mood; narrative writing builds a sequence with conflict and change.
Core rules
- Plan a clear arc: opening, development, turning point, resolution.
- Show, don't tell: replace general statements with specific sensory detail and action.
- Use varied sentence lengths and openings; avoid a series of short, identical sentences.
- Keep tense and point of view consistent.
- In description, organise details by space or mood rather than listing everything.
- In narrative, create a problem early and let the ending feel earned.
- Use dialogue sparingly and punctuate it correctly.
Worked example
Weak sentence: 'The market was loud.' Improved: 'A hawker's shout split the crowd; spice and diesel hung in the heat.' Reasoning: the revision replaces the adjective 'loud' with a specific sound, adds smell and heat, and uses a semicolon to balance two vivid clauses. It shows the market rather than announcing that it was noisy.
Traps that cost marks
- A story with no conflict or a description with no controlling mood.
- Shifting from past to present tense without reason.
- Overloading a description with adjectives but no action.
- Ending with 'Then I woke up' or another cliché.
- Writing dialogue that does not advance character or plot.