You probably know that I took my GCSE English Language GCSE this year. And that I loved it. Because I ditched the cluster-bucket that is AQA and sat Edexcel 2.0.
I was not asked to write a pointless description!
I could “write an imaginative piece” in any form I liked. It just had to start with the line: “This place was like nowhere I had seen before”.
Or:
I could write about a time when I or someone I know had to be brave. This could be real or imaginary. There were also two photographs I could use if I wanted to.
Now, I had prepared two story outlines. One was about a park ranger saving a bull elephant from drowning. The other was about a daughter coming out to her mother, with a twist at the end.
Both fit the idea of being brave.
The elephant is unconscious in a river, so the ‘place’ was definitely unlike anywhere I had seen before.
I could make these stories fit any question. Win, win, as I had predicted going into the exam.
I had thought about these two stories, and 21 others, when I wrote a guide to include 23 story plots for anyone who wants them.
It gives you 23 story plots to adapt to any question. Students tend not to like this - they want the fully written stories.
This isn’t what this guide is for - it is to give you story ideas you can simply steal for any exam. It means you can steal 100% of the story without risking plagiarism.
(I’m actually rewriting it this week - the customer is always right).
It’s my other guide that’s full of complete short stories - they teach you what good story writing looks like. But it is harder to steal those ideas without being accused of plagiarism.
My Story From the Exam
The blue Doc Marten boots were vibrant and called with an almost techno-electric Siren call.
Becky stared at them, unaware of the delight and desire reflected by her eyes and face in the shop window.
Gemma, her mother, looked first at the boots, then at her daughter, then at the boots once more. Becky’s face glowed, almost with a blue reflection, like a face lit up by a computer screen in a movie, where the main character is about to press a keystroke which will change the third act.
Gemma spoke unthinkingly. “There is such a clash of styles. I think they’re the gayest boots I’ve ever seen.”
Becky turned.
Her mother’s smile was genuine, warm, loving. It was amused. But the cause of her amusement troubled Becky.
It was her first Christmas home from university. Becky was thriving, but her mother was struggling with divorce.
It had been six months. Becky knew she was loved, and loved both her parents in return. She took no sides, and knew they would tell her anything, should she ask.
But she didn’t ask.
She was 18, and life lay before her, a journey of self-discovery, a rite of passage, the usual clichés. But Becky didn’t think in those terms. She thought in terms of tribes.
Becky‘s first tribe was netball. She stood a striking 5’10” tall. An athlete, coordinated in thoughts and movement, and the netball court had been her home. Yet she was too tall to be a conventional centre, and too short to dominate the circle in defence or attack. While the rest of the team straightened their hair, she held proudly to her curls.
They bonded on court and nights out. The high-fives and buttock-slapping energised the team around a common purpose. At night, tall, athletic, make-up applied just-so, and dresses sprayed on perfect bodies, they were exotic. Unreachable. A spectacle of unmet desire.
But on court, she often struggled. Her competitive desire and muscular physique demanded contact in a non-contact sport. She had a powerful, feminine grace, but moved more quickly than her teammates.
She anticipated space, demanding the ball in front of her, but her teammates too often targeted her height, throwing it straight at her. Her own powerful pass wanted girls to run onto it, a yard or two ahead of their own special cues.
She never quite fit in. She played for an elite team, but was always at the mercy of judgement. Your face fit, until it didn’t.
For Becky, curly haired, mixed race, and too tall for centre, too muscular to be stereotypically attractive, the feminine conventions of the game began to chafe and restrict her.
She’d gone to Bath, because it had an elite netball program, as well as a degree path that all but guaranteed success in career and life.
She turned away from these thoughts now, and smiled back at Gemma. Arm in arm, mother and daughter walked on, more window shopping and Christmas buying ahead.
“Oh, look,” exclaimed Gemma, as a couple of girls in their 20s, walked towards them, holding hands. They strode confidently, proud, happy in each other’s company. A world of their own. They both wore Doc Martens.
They both laughed. But still, Becky felt uneasy. Was her mother delighting in what she saw, or was there a hint of mockery?
Becky‘s thoughts turned again to her tribe. It had happened so unexpectedly.
The netballers had formed cliques. She was better than the first team centre, but she wasn’t blonde, and she wasn’t established. It would take months to prove her worth, build the relationships, negotiate her way in with positivity and sisterly support.
Talent should count. Performance matters. “We are athletes,” she had said to herself, and turned away.
In freshers’ week, she’d been accosted by the rugby team. Three of them had taken one look at her height, balance and wide shoulders and literally pursued her down the corridor.
They were all smiles. They joked. They barged each other, and laughed some more. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.
And so Becky had relented. She went to training and relished the change. On court, she had looked every inch the star in her lycra dress, the sweep of her athletic legs hypnotic to watch from the stands. Here, her top clung to her unattractively. Her shorts were instruments of movement, not fashion.
And she loved to tackle. God, the joy of lining someone up and legally chopping them to the ground. It released emotions she didn’t know she had. The excitement of space, a pitch to be free in, unconstrained by the zones of a netball court.
The pre-match mosh pit of the changing room, Eminem blasting out “lose yourself”, the girls singing at the top of their voices, celebratory, psyched, ready.
She had found herself.
And of course, that had meant her desires too. It meant Vicky. It meant the first explosive kiss, and then the luxury of passion.
Her body had reacted unexpectedly. She had had two boyfriends and sex, which was, she reflected like a shower. Brief, invigorating, a great start to the day. But with Vicky sex was a bath, metaphorically warm, soothing, a transport away from thought, a luxury, candle-scented; steam which reached every pore. A bath was the highlight of the day in the way a shower never was.
Gemma interrupted her reverie.
“Look, you’d look fantastic in those boots. Let me buy them.”
But Becky was still unsure. Should she come out now, just before Christmas? No, better to wait till after the family festivities. For the calm after the tsunami of food and fellowship.
And so it was that Christmas morning arrived. Becky sat at the kitchen table, as her mother walked and sang towards her.
“These boots are made for talking,” she sang.
On her feet, she wore electric-blue Doc Martens.
Not in Becky’s size.
Her mother had bought them for herself.
Their eyes locked in recognition and surprise.
997 word
So, I’m going to put this story in the 20 Plot Guide. But, is it any use to you?
For Your Exam
Ok, I just enjoyed myself writing that story in the exam. I’ve been a netball and a rugby coach, so I introduced a lot of that into my story.
You could write the same story without any of the sport, if you wanted. Becky’s tribe might play Quidditch, or write poetry, or be folk singers - whatever takes your fancy.
This would also help you make the story much shorter.
The shower and bath as a metaphor for sex? Yep, you could get rid of that too. I kept it in partly to test the exam - would I be rewarded for good writing, or penalised for content? It was also a way of describing something entirely through metaphor and simile. This should always work as an approach to anything you write. But would the examiners agree?
Well, they gave me 40/40. Phew.
My Marking and Feedback
The blue Doc Marten boots were vibrant and called with an almost techno-electric Siren call.
Becky stared at them, unaware of the delight and desire reflected by her eyes and face in the shop window.
Gemma, her mother, looked first at the boots, then at her daughter, then at the boots once more. Becky’s face glowed, almost with a blue reflection, like a face lit up by a computer screen in a movie, where the main character is about to press a keystroke which will change the third act.
This is a strong beginning. We know who, what, where. We can guess at when - techno-electric suggests possibly present day.
It is always great to start off with imagery - here I’ve gone with the metaphor of the boots calling like a mythical Siren.
For readers who know their Greek myths, the Sirens called their listeners to their destruction - their boats were dashed against the rocks. This element of danger fits very well with Becky’s emotions.
If my reader is also a fan of films, they will also know that film scripts are written in a 3 act structure, and the third act obviously is going to involve the resolution. This lets the reader know that the boots are going to be part of the resolution to this story.
Even if the reader doesn’t know this, the blue glow from a computer screen is a common enough motif in film and television, so the simile will work.
These images mean I’ve already wowed the examiner with “with sustained crafting of linguistic devices.” (This is from the AQA criteria, but I know that any exam board will value the same skills, regardless of their wording).
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