Model Answer: Narrative Writing (Cambridge International IGCSE English Language)

For your IGCSE English Language coursework you need to complete three assignments, and Assignment 3 is the narrative writing assignment. The following guide will provide you with a narrative writing model answer.

Planning your narrative writing

Let’s take this narrative writing task as an example of a suitable task for Assignment 3:

‘Write a story which involves an injustice.’

We can use a five-part narrative structure to plan our response:

Narrative writing model answer

The following model answer demonstrates how to structure, and what techniques to include in, a top-mark response to the above task:

Commentary

• The first paragraph uses personification to set the scene
• The story then shifts to the past, with ambitious word choices
• The climax of the story indicates a shift in tone, with indirect characterisation used to make it believable
• Nature imagery is repeated throughout the story
• The falling action describes the aftermath and links to the focus of the story’s title: “injustice”
• The story finishes by returning to nature imagery and personification

Summary

• Remember, plan the order and the “flow” of your story

• Stick to one setting and no more than two main characters

• Vary your sentence and paragraph lengths

• Employ imagery and literary devices to bring your story to life

• Use indirect characterisation to make your characters realistic and believable

• Consider your story as a “scene” in a film:

  • It is not necessary to know everything about your characters
  • It is better to immerse the reader with vivid “showing” techniques, such as sensory imagery and interesting vocabulary, rather than “telling” them with direct description and characterisation

• Write with technical accuracy