Selective School Exam Tips and Tricks - CREATIVE WRITING!

if you want to get into Melvin high mcro nosul or Susan Cory then on the selective entry exam writing is one of the big sections that a lot of people really struggle with they struggle to come up with creative ideas they struggle to write consistently and so in today's video I'm going to share all the key test tips that you need that will allow you to really improve your creative writing skills and consistently write pieces that will get you eight nine and 10 out of 10 so you have the best possible chance of getting into

these schools for a super quick introduction my name is Charlie I'm the head shoter of the select entry accelerator program in the last 12 months I've helped well over 500 students prepare for this exam so I've seen a lot of students improve their creating writing skills and I've seen what's worked what allows them to get top scores but also what doesn't work quite as well and so that's what we're going to be sharing in today's video now the most basic thing is what is creative writing or what is narrative writing now really when we say

creative writing on this exam most of the time when I say most of the time every single time I've seen the exam so far which is last 10 15 20 years they always require you to write a story essentially and so that's kind of what the focus of this video is going to be on how to write a really good narrative how to write a really good story cuz that's the key skill that you want to have going into the exam so you're ready for that type of question now narrative pieces they require you to

write a story based on a provided prompt for example the problem might be something like this you're the toughest student in your class write a story based on this now the hardest thing a lot of people initially find is well how do you come up with really good ideas and the key thing is you have to understand what is a story what is a story what is a narrative narrative story means the same thing what does a really good story have and there's two key things that every good story has it has a character and

it has a problem and the second part there is really the most important there has to be a problem if there's no problem you don't really have a story you just have a boring series of events if I told you this morning I woke up I walked down the street had a look around and then I came home you would say well okay that's not very interesting that's not an interesting story at all because there was no problem whereas if I said I woke up I walked down the street as I got downstairs I noticed

that the window was smashed I looked around there was nothing walked a little bit towards the end of my driveway and there on the floor I saw a massive rock well now that's the start the story because there's a problem and So Stories really do need problems to be interesting and so to write a story you need two key things you need a character who's facing a problem and that's why when you know you need those two key things when they ask you write a story write a creative piece that's what you want to be

thinking you want to be thinking okay what problem could there be around this prompt so for example you are the toughest student in your class maybe you're normally the bully you're normally picking on people but then another student has come up to you you and they've cornered you and and you're in a bit of an uncomfortable situation that could be the start of a story another example this here is a prompt the local fish and chip shop now when you look at this this initially comes across as a very boring prompt it's a fish and

chip shop what could possibly happen there but there's so many things that could happen for example maybe you go to this fish and chip shop every single week every Tuesday night it's your habit it's your routine you finish school you go there to have your favorite fish and chips then you walk across the beach and relax this time though you walk into the store you look over to see Greg who normally serves you store's empty there's sort of looks like there's been a few people around but there's no one in the store and you think

well where's Greg he's always been here I've been going here for a long period of time what's happened there's a bit of a sense of mystery there there's a problem there something that's gone wrong here we could also have it that maybe you're the owner of the store and you turn up and you've been robbed maybe you're you go into the store and you're set up for the day and you hear someone in the back room doing something dodgy there there's so many problems that you could come up with and it's so easy to come

up with ideas once you know that a story needs a character who's facing a problem they're the two key things now the structure that we normally recommend for stories to make it a little bit more engaging because yes you can use a normal structure which a normal structure for a story is you have a beginning then you have a middle and then you have an end but what that leads to for most students is they start their story with something like John is is a tall boy who lives in the area of Brighton he loves

eating fish and chips and one morning he wakes up and walks into his store now that's not particularly interesting it's not a very interesting start to the story and so we recommend a slightly different structure it still has a beginning middle and somewhat of an end so it still has a story structure it's still a story but it's designed for tests to make the story really interesting in 10 15 minutes 20 minutes which is got what how much time you've actually got to write on the selective entry exam and so that's probably one quick thing

before we go into the structure of the story how I'd recommend you structure it on the selective entry exam in Victoria so if you want to get into melan high mcrob NOS suzan Corey generally you're given 40 minutes for writing and you got two pieces to write one of them is generally more of a creative story which is what we're going through here the other one is normally more of an essay a persuasive essay or a discussion essay which we'll talk about in another video and so You' got 20 minutes you don't have a huge

amount of time and so what that means is in that 20 minutes you need to really fast with being able to come up with what's the problem what's the problem that your story is going to be centered around and you want to generally have a clear structure that you use every single time if you just walk into the exam and come up with something random and just structure it in a random way yes it could definitely end up being good there's no doubt about that but most of the time it's probably not going to be

good the way that you get really good at writing and you write 8 n 10 out of 10 pieces every single time even when you hate the prompt or even when you're tired is you have a clear structure that you follow it makes it a bit formulate yes but this is what the best students do on the selective entry exam I'll show you a good example from one of our past students from this year on what they did with this structure but it's also what people do in years 11 and year 12 to write consistently

well they don't just make something random up on the exam day they have a structure that they use and they tweak it and adapt it to the prompt and so what we normally recommend is you want to have five paragraphs each paragraph has a very specific purpose the first paragraph is a problem paragraph and so in this paragraph The Story begins with your character facing a problem so rather than having a really boring beginning like I told you before we could have the beginning that let's say the local fish and chip shop Jenny she went

to a local fish and chip shop but it was unexpectedly closed and so in this first paragraph Jenny she's always been to this fishing chip shop every single week she turns up she looks there and it's closed and as she peers inside she can see it looks like there's been some sort of disturbance in there there's a fish on the floor there's some chips on the tables and that never happens the owner is very careful with keeping everything clean so she immediately knows there's some sort of problem here so for this prompt paragraph one Jenny

turns up to the fishing chip shop it's closed but she looks inside side and she can see that something's a bit off something's not quite right in the second paragraph now this one is really important it's where we learn about the settings and the characters and set a bit of the backstory because the first paragraph should hook people in because there's a problem turned up to the fish and chip shop and it's closed but you probably wondering well what is this fish and chip shop why is she going there how often does she go there

does she know the owners where are they you've got all those basic questions and so in the second paragraph that's where we then fill in all that information which makes it interesting then and so in that second paragraph We could say well Jenny had been visiting this shop for years and she had a special connection with the owner Mr Collins and maybe maybe she goes to the store every single week and normally it's always open it's never not been open for the last 5 10 years and the owner Mr Collins is very careful to make

sure that things are always clean before he closes the store and so the fact that she's turned up it's closed that's one warning sign but then also there's mess in there that's a second warning sign and so a radi start to think okay something's gone wrong here I wonder what it is now the third paragraph This is where the problem gets worse so this is probably the easiest paragraph to write because whatever the problem was at the start of the story now it's just got a whole lot worse so in the example that I just

gave you there maybe Jenny notices more things about the store that make her worried she sees unen food glasses on the countertop maybe some smashed glass on the floor and so things are starting to not look very good for Mr Collins and the fish and chip store the problem is getting worse and worse and worse and then the fourth paragraph is a really important one because at the end of the third paragraph things should not be looking very good you got this fish and chip shop Jenny turned up it's closed it's normally always open there's

a lot of suspicious things fish and chips on the floor broken glass things look a little bit a Miss no sign of Mr Collins and the reader should be thinking okay this is not good fish and chip shop is in big trouble Mr Collins is not in a good situation what the best stories do is they offer the reader a glimmer of hope they temporarily trick the reader into thinking the problem has been solved it hasn't been but they tricked the reader into thinking it has and so in this fourth paragraph what you want to

do is you want to solve the problem but then not solve it for example she notices a light on in the storage room so for example she's looking around the fish and chip shop she looks into the back of the storage room she can see the lights on she thinks she can see maybe someone in there it looks a little bit like Mr CL and she thinks oh that's good he probably just got here maybe that was a bit of mess he was tired he was sick to day before it's all good I'll go in

there and have a look at it and just help him out get himself set up and so the start of this fourth paragraph We want to trick the reader into thinking the problem's almost been solved there's a light on looks like Mr CL is just in the back room all good I'll go there and help him no problems at all but then you want to not make it solved so Jenny walks to the cupboard she opens the door she looks inside lights on no sign of Mr Collins at all and so then you're thinking oh

wow what's happened here and so this fourth paragraph is really important because we want to almost solve the problem that's why we say it's called The Almost solution but then we want the character to hit a brick wall where the problem looks even more unsolvable than ever before and so we have a look at a quick recap of this problem one The Story begins with her character facing a problem Jenny turns up to the store it's closed things look a bit suspicious paragraph two we learn about who Jenny is and where she is she comes

to the store all the time she knows the owner it's normally always open this is very suspicious paragraph three problem gets worse she looks inside she sees even more things a missed than what she first expected fish and chips on the floor glass on the ground things are looking really not that good fourth paragraph We tricked the reader for just a moment into thinking that the story is all done that it was just there was nothing wrong at all in the first place by saying she can see a light on in the back storage cupboard

often Mr Collins is out there she thinks all good going to go out there I'm going to see him I'll help him maybe he was sick the day before or whatever but she goes there and she opens the door and the lights on but he's not there which is even more crazy than even before and then finally in the final paragraph We want to leave the story at an element of climax and so this is where Jenny says that's it I need to go upstairs Mr CL lives above this door I'm going to go up

there right now and see what's happening and so she walks upstairs she opens a door to his room she looks over and her jaw drops that's the end of the story now there's one key thing that we've done there so we have ended the story at the climax the reason why we do that is we leave it at the highest point of tension if I told told you she opened the door and Mr Collins was there and he was a bit sick and he said sorry about that you would be like that was it that

was the whole story it ends it at a bit of a point of okay which is not what we want when it's an exam we want to leave it at a point of intention where you're wondering what's happening but we do want to give a hint of the solution we do want to give a hint of the solution just to show the examiners that the piece is complete if I said I walked upstairs and I opened the door and then I just sto writing there The Examiner would probably just assume that you would run out

of time whereas if you say I open the door and fear gripped my body tension howled through my body at an alarming rate it's clear to examiner that some you've seen something there's a resolution there but there's an element of question in the reader's mind and so the key thing is in the final paragraph we do want to leave it at a point of climax we do want to give a hint as to what the solution is that's kind of the key thing there and so this is a structure we really recommend using you can

get really good at writing this structure and it will become very easy with you but it all stems down to one thing which is there should be a character who's facing a problem that's kind of the core thing and so what I'd recommend doing is just when look at different prompts that could come up look at different images like this one here and think what's every possible problem that could occur in a fish and chip shop there's a lot maybe even something really basic you order some fish and chips and it's cold and you're scared

about telling them do you mind if I have some more fish and chips or you order some fish and chips and it makes you sick or you order some fish and chips and a bird comes and swoops and tapes your fish away as soon as you sit down at beach there's so many problems that could come and it makes it very easy to come up with ideas now that's the structure that we want to use in terms of how you actually structure your time so you've got 20 minutes to write this is normally what we

recommend we recommend the first probably 3 minutes so about 15% of your time which on the selective entry exam is going to be about 3 minutes you want to spend planning now planning is very important because when I say planning what I mean is figuring out what's going to be in paragraph 1 2 3 4 5 if you have that clear if you just write down a few notes on okay this is what's going to be in paragraph 1 2 3 4 5 it's very easy then when you start writing just to churn through it

just to get it out there and it will be structured really well what normally happens when I run in person exams and there's hundreds of people in the exam Hall and I walk around looking at their writing the people who start writing right away probably 95% of the time their writing is not very good at all it it's not structured very well because they just started writing they were so anxious to get something on paper that it it's not structured very well it's barely a story whereas people who spend a little bit more time they

plan it properly then you can just churn through your writing really quick get it all down on paper and it's going to be structured really well and have a good story to it and so spending 3 minutes to the T start just relaxing yourself planning your story making sure there's a clear character facing a problem you know it's going to be in each paragraph is very crucial then you're going to jump into the writing time this is probably normally about 15 minutes or more so you've spent about 3 minutes on planning about 15 minutes or

more on writing where you just write what's based on the plan you don't have to think you just write makes it nice and easy then at the end you do want to spend a little bit of time for editing now personally I like to edit as I go so I edit as I go and I write a few lines and then I read and edit but the biggest thing I'd say for editing by a mile which normally most people in our programs would have heard me say this a lot of times is you want to

read your writing out loud in your head you want to read it out that's really where you determine the sentences that are bad cuz what happens for most students once they know how to structure the piece okay the next thing is that very often the sentences don't sound too good they're really long they're lacking punctuation if I read them out aloud I'd run out of breath or people would just s sounds a bit weird and so in this editing time this is where you can pick those things up you can read it out aloud think

okay doesn't really make much sense I need to fix that and you can tweet a little bit so this is important particularly when you're still learning how to write really well before the exam you want to spend a lot of time editing afterwards understanding how you can improve it because the thing I always say is if you can't write a 10 out of 10 piece in 10 hours you're not going to be able to write it in 20 minutes you're going to write it an even worse piece and so at the start it's probably worth

just not worrying about the time limit too much just being able to write a good piece overall and then you can condense that down into 20 minutes later on because ultimately if you can't write a 10 hour 10 piece in 10 hours no hope in 20 minutes so that's that's one key thing there so in terms of how you structure your time 3 minutes of the start for planning very important 15 minutes of writing where you just whip through it and then a few minutes left at the end there for editing where you want to

read it out loud in your own mind obviously you can't speak in the exam Hall to try and find those sentences that don't sound too good now we're going to have a quick look at a sample piece before we wrap up today's session this sample piece really is as good as it gets you'll get 50 out of 50 in our internal feedback scale but that leads me to an important thing which is you want to get feedback on your writing if you're writing and they're not getting feedback I can almost guarantee because I've seen I

think we've had close to 2,000 essays marked in the last 12 months the people who just write 10 essays over the course of a week and don't get feedback every single one has the same problem they do the same issue again and again and again and again and again and ultimately it's annoying because it just wastes your own time and so I really would recommend once you write a piece get feedback of some kind if you can't for some reason get any external feedback then at least read through it yourself and think okay this is

what I've written maybe compare it to the piece I'm about to show you this is what they wrote how is it from a structure standpoint was it structured well how were the sentences if I read them out aloud do they make sense do you really want to the very least do that otherwise you're just going to do what a lot of people do write a bunch of essays and see no improvement from them which is just a waste of time at the end of the day now this piece here you don't have to write a

piece this good to get into selective schools this piece is realistically 50 out of 50 it's a year 11 12 beyond that level piece but this student was able to ride in the 20 minute time limit so we'll have a look at it now and most importantly we'll look at well how did it follow the structure that we spoke about earlier today so it says here the rusty pickup truck rattled down the deserted Street dust swirling in its wake so one key thing they've done here is descriptive language rather than just saying the pickup truck

drove down the street they've created a vivid image in our mind they painted a picture in our mind which is what the best writing does the once Lively town was now a ghost storefront shuted paint peeling and a sense of Forgotten memories lingering silus parked outside his childhood home the weeds choking the once vibrant flower beds his chest tightened like a knot Tangled in time he came to mil Road at the corner of Brightstone for a reason a reason which had haunted him for decades and so right away here this student has done it in

a bit of an advanced way there is a problem though this paragraph is really setting up a problem which is this person's returned to his childhood home and for a very specific reason and a reason that's haunted him for decades so there's a problem there he's actually teased the problem a little bit he hasn't really exactly told us what that problem is but we know that he's returned there and there's some sort of issue there's some sort of mystery there's some sort of internal problem that he's had which has prevented him from coming back here

so this is quite an advanced problem most of the time I'd recommend just choosing quite a simple problem particularly when you're starting so for example there was a really good prompt which a lot of our students wrote on which was just a tram just a tram on the tracks now you could do an advanced problem like this but a lot of people who wrote good pieces they just did the problem where you're on the tram you see a ticket inspector you reach down to your pocket you don't have a ticket and you think oh no

I've got to get off it's very easy to ride on something like that and so I would recommend at the start pick an easier problem than this this is fairly Advanced but eventually you can do things like this if you would want key tip with problem try make it something that happens in about 5 to 10 minutes don't make it the problem is that you need to invade another country or some ginormous big thing make it very very small you forgot your ticket you don't know what to do your fishing chips are cold you don't

know if you should go up to someone and say that it's cold cuz you're scared something really simple like that says keep reading half past his lifetime now silus hadn't been back in 40 years so you can see what they're doing in this second pass paragraph here is they're giving us some context on who the characters are and where they are mainly who the characters are so far back then the town buzzed with laughter and Adventure his heart ACH for his best friend Gideon they were once in separable their dreams echoing through the streets yet

a petty argument broke out of the weekly Sunday lunch once it turned into a violent fight where their rivalry burned hot for weeks silus and his family eventually moved out of town leaving Gideon in the dust the guilt had fested a con reminder to the friendship he had lost today he was determined to find Gideon to make amend so now things are starting to make sense we know there's a facing a problem they're coming back to Childhood town to make amends we know a little bit about him we know why he hasn't been back this

second paragraph here does a good job on filling Us in on the back story and so this third paragraph now should be where the problem gets worse to some extent sillus fumbled a rusty padlock the door creaking open inside the room was filled with the old chicken seasoning Gideon's mother would always cook with so you can see when when you give specific details like that it makes it feel very real it pains s us to see the house completely abandoned to his right was a child's painting clung to the wall with two stick figures labeled

sillus and Gideon signed with a tag of Forever by his teacher so again this is quite an advanced way of advancing the problem in that it kind of makes his internal sense of Despair or concern become even worse seeing that there in the tram example you just thought that the ticket inspectors are walking towards you and you feel stressed they're getting closer and closer they're eyeing you off and you don't know what to do so that's probably a simpler way of doing it let's keep ready then a creep from the floorboard upstairs could a beon

hope surged a fragile flame against Decades of guilt Sil hands trembled on the attic ladder he hesitated as a door hung a jar yet the attic was just as he remembered boxes dusts and shafts of sunlight so this student's actually very effectively done in very few sentences what we want to do in that fourth paragraph where we teas that the problems about to be solved so Gideon's about to be there that he here's a creek could it be Gideon hope surges he opens the attic ladder and door but then the attic was just empty and

so he teas the solution but then he pulled it back and now there's no sign of solution in sight so they've done that very well here in the case of the tram inspector the more simple example it could be the ticket inspector they're eyeing you off they're walking towards you but then they walk past you and you think oh that's so lucky I don't need to worry about them but then actually two of them walk who who were in plain clothes and they say can I see your Mikey and you go it's not good finally

he looked around and was stopped by a mysterious cloaked figure hunched in the corner of the room it wasn't Gideon's familiar form but a man just as weathered as this town very nice language their eyes met shock a Tremor in the man's hands a flicker of recognition Gideon that cause barely a whisper heavy with unspoken words as you can see here they've ended well on a climax there's this figure that comes up to us we assume it's probably Gideon but we don't know for sure but definitely feels complete that's for sure so this is a

very high quality piece of writing in terms of the more simple example that I was giving around being on a tram how i' probably structure that one is in the first paragraph you would have the character facing the problem you're on the tram you realize you don't have the ticket and you see the ticket inspectors and you say oh no that's not good backstory you're on the way to an important exam you can't afford to get off because you're going to be late for the exam and so you need to stay on the tram but

you can't really you don't really want to get get a fine third paragraph problem gets worse you see the ticket inspectors walking towards you you're feeling stressed fourth paragraph problem almost gets solved looks like they walk past you but then there's two others standing right in front of you and you go oh no didn't get away with it final paragraph the tram holds to a stop it's the it's the at the stop and you get up and you start running could be the ending start running towards the exam Hall and so that's a simpler way

of structuring the story that's not quite as advance of this one here but still good still makes sense and so just before we wrap up today's video there's one final thing which we will go through is what to do from here so we've covered quite a bit in today's session we've spoken about what is creative writing in the first place how to structure your writing how to spend your time how we need planning at the start then we're going to write in the middle then we're going to do editing at the end we've then looked

at a good example piece that's quite Advanced and we've broken it back and looked at a simpler example which I came up with about a ticket inspector and so the final thing is what to do from here now what I would recommend is there's a few stages of development to writing we're not going to be able to start writing a piece on this level right away but we can work our way towards it and this really what this here is for so the first thing you want to get right is just structure I wouldn't worry

about anything else I wouldn't try and make a writing sound amazing just get the structure right just learn the structure from this video Master it make sure you're confident with it you can do it every single time even if you hate the prompt you can still do it and that's going to guarantee you probably about a 5 out of 10 if you're you can just write a structured story that's the first thing the second thing is then you want to just iron out any punctuation spelling and grammar errors you're so focused on structure it's inevitable

there'll be a few of these errors that's okay just polish them get to the stage where you can write according to the structure with basically no errors punctuation spelling and grammar so things sound fine there's no spelling errors there's no grammar errors CU these things do take away from the quality of your writing that's going to get you about a six out of 10 if you can do these two things next level up is then sensory imagery so really what this is is the difference between let's have a look at an example here the difference

between the town was busy and the town Buzz with laughter and Adventure it's saying the same thing but the town was busy is just really blatantly telling us the town was busy whereas the town Buzz with laughter and Adventure is showing us and so sensory and imagery is really about showing rather than telling making it very Vivid rather than just saying joh was sad showing well if joh was sad what would he be doing what would he look like what would he what would he be doing exactly and describing that in Viv detail so it

can paint an image in our mind and so that's kind of the next level up adding that into your writing if you can do that realistically you're probably going to get at least seven out of 10 if you can do these three steps you may well get an eight out of 10 already but I'm just going to say seven out of 10 just to be conservative fourth thing then is character development so this is really making the reader care about your characters which in this case they certainly did we really developed a bit of a

s a sense of connection for silus we kind of felt bad for him we hope things worked out okay and so character development in this piece was really good then the final one is language and expression which is adding more advanced vocab making the flow of the sentences more advanced and nuanced and subtle and sophisticated but they're really the final things to worry about most people don't really end up getting towards that point and so first step nail structure then make sure punctuation spelling and grammar is good then do sensory imagery if you can do

these first three most likely that's probably enough to get in realistically write a piece that's good enough to get in these two ones here are just a cherry on top that can Elevate you to the next level and that's what I'd recommend as a starting point from here and so thanks for joining us for this video where we ran through all the key tips that I've seen over the last 12 months that helped students find creative writing a whole lot easier if you're looking to join one of our tutoring programs and get tutoring from me

and our other tutors there's a link below this video where you can book in for a call with us and get more information otherwise we're going to be posting more videos like this on YouTube for all the other sections as well and so you can stay tuned for those as well so thanks for joining us for today's session I'll see you in the next video very soon and otherwise good luck for your next writing piece