11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi

The area my DC struggles with is creative writing, particularly getting started and showing not telling ie. instead of stating a fact such as I fell over, writing something about pain, blood, hard concrete etc (if you see what I mean?). Is there any suitable material I could buy, including short story books, which might help?

We have read books together such as Watership Down, Harry Potter, Heidi amongst others but out of choice DC would much prefer Diary of a Whimpy Kid, fact books and First Choice Newspaper for kids and re-reading Harry Potter over and over again. Some books we started such as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase we have not finished as DC didn't enjoy it.

I tried searching amazon for short stories but not sure what to get. DC has a creative writing part to the 11+ exam but I am not sure whether it will be to finish a story, describe a picture, newspaper style report or even write a poem? I logged onto this fantastic site this morning to post this and saw that there is another short story thread regarding very short stories and I am hoping to obtain some examples which DC can enjoy reading and see that the story doesn't have to be too long or complicated and it could give lots of ideas.

Any advice gratefully received thank you.

Hello. If you post the schools/ area, we might be able to give you some indication as to the type of creative writing task based on past exams.

The BBC creative writing 500 word challenge site is great too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rfvk1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;