Original Writing Unit Guide

AQA B AS English Language

Unit Handbook ENB3

Original Writing Coursework

Final submission deadline: [date]

Introduction

This handbook aims to give you helpful guidance to support your study of Original Writing. This is an important part of your course for lots of reasons:

1)The coursework you produce for this unit is worth 30% of your AS Level grade, so it can make a big difference to your result.

2)Effective study of this unit is essential preparation, if you decide to continue, for the Editorial Writing unit in the A2 course.

3)Improving your own writing skills is A Good Thing, helping you to become a much more sophisticated communicator, but also opening up all kinds of cool career and university pathways.

And for all those of you thinking of becoming best-selling novelists, cutting-edge journalists, screenwriters, playwrights and lyricists, it’s a fantastic opportunity to create, to experiment, to learn the craft and the discipline of writing for a real audience, and to generally cut your teeth!

How to approach this unit

It can seem a bit daunting when you are told you can write more or less whatever you like as long as your teacher agrees to your plans. Suddenly, the mind goes blank – either that or you start trying to think simultaneously about all the 76 brilliant ideas you’ve got and the top of your head explodes!

Whatever happens, when you start this unit, the most important thing you can possibly do is to READ! Right from the start, you need to have a reading plan – think of it as research, and commit regular time in your private study programme to do it. Twenty minutes a day could make all the difference in the world to the development of your ideas and understanding.

What to read? Make a list drawing on the following factors:

Writing for different audiences / Specifically for men; for women; for children of specific ages; for young teenagers; for parents; for elderly people; for people with a specific hobby, interest or occupation; for people from or living in a particular place.
Writing for different purposes / To persuade or argue or reason; to advise or instruct or guide; to entertain or scare or amuse or cause people to reflect; to inform or explain.
Writing in different styles / Using formal, academic, or technical language, or jargon; using informal, colloquial, or everyday language, or slang; using Black English Vernacular, Standard English or Americanisms;what about txt msging or dialect forms?
Writing in different genres / Short stories, magazine features, campaign materials, fundraising materials, real interview features, a day in the life of, an investigative report, a travel feature, a journal, a column, a journalistic essay, a dramatic monologue, a radio feature, an instruction manual, a set of teaching materials, a classroom wallchart, a CD insert, a webpage, a revision guide, a review, a beginners guide to … , a museum audio guide, a dramatised documentary for radio, background information for a theatre programme….

Choosing your coursework tasks

Once you have read loads of different types of writing you will be in a far better position to choose your tasks. You need to play a bit of a smart game here to get the best results. You may well think Sugar or Loadedis a reallygreat read, but that really doesn’t necessarily make it a good choice for your coursework. The reason for this is that the writing can be very formulaic, the style full of clichés, and the content a bit hackneyed. Emulating this style is not actually that difficult, because it’s really in your face and obvious, and consequently it is extremely difficult to get high grades. You also have to keep coming back to the title of the unit – the idea is to produce ‘original’ writing.

Coursework tasks to be avoided like the plague unless you have a really original idea
Leaflets / Tend to provide extremely limited opportunities for originality as they are a rather functional and often dull, formulaic kind of writing. But “leaflets” is a very broad term so if you think you’ve found an original idea, try us …
Film reviews / It is very difficult not to just reproduce things that have already been written in a formulaic style, and they tend to be far too short to meet the word count criteria. It is better to think about producing a film feature.
Celebrity interviews / Not to be attempted unless you happen to know a celebrity personally and can actually go and interview them … . Think instead of interviewing a local ‘character’ and producing a piece for a regional magazine, or local newspaper, etc.
Fiction for most teenage magazines / Well, if you really must, you can, but the standard of this kind of writing can be very low, formulaic, and churned out by the shedload. It very rarely has any kind of originality and is the stylistic equivalent of a pineapple Chewit. Sort of sweet with a vaguely recognisable flavour, and only a lingering chemical aftertaste as its effect. Aim higher if you want to write short stories!
Opening chapters of novels/opening scenes of plays / These can be okayish, but it is very difficult to mark part of a novel without seeing it all! Far better to stick to short fiction, or ‘Talking Heads’ type radio drama. These are arguably more disciplined forms and demand stronger writing skills – which is what will get you the higher marks.
Advertisements / These can occasionally work, but it is very difficult indeed to produce a text that is long enough to meet the criteria, given that most printed ads are essentially visual. Consider instead the kinds of charity fundraising or campaigning ads that often appear in the newspapers, as these are often text-driven. Consider also radio appeals for charities.

Realistically, this means that you need to read more sophisticated materials from which to develop ideas. That doesn’t necessarily mean those requiring a stash ofA Levels to understand them – a high quality, well produced tabloid article can be extremely effective. But this is far more likely to be an informative piece explaining the background to a natural disaster or a major world conflict than a double page spread of celebrity tittle-tattle.

The coursework requirements

Your task is to produce a folder showing that you can write for different contexts – that means different audiences, purposes, styles and genres. You also have to show that you understand how and why you’ve written your texts in the ways that you choose.

Your finished folder will consist of two “original” texts that you have written. These MUST be different in their audiences, purposes, genres and styles. As a general rule of thumb, these texts need to be between 750 and 1500 words EACH. The folder minimum is 2000 words; the folder maximum is 3000 words.

With each text you have to submit at least one draft version. Writing is a craft, and all practising writers who earn a living at it draft and redraft their work several times in order to get it right. So must you …

With each text you also have to submit a commentary explaining how exactly you have chosen to use language and how you have used the drafting process to create your intended effects. These commentaries need to be between 500 and 750 words EACH. Alternatively, you can you submit one joint commentary for both pieces: if you do this it needs to be between 1000 and 1500 words.

Here’s an example of a student’s folder, but please note that there are countless ways of meeting the requirements:

Text 1
A magazine feature for female readers of Cosmopolitan magazine on the influence of Bollywood on contemporary British culture and fashion. Purpose: to inform.
1050 words. / Text 2
A short story for a collection in the Goosebumps‘horror’ series aimed at 12-13 yearold readers. Purpose: to entertain.
1000 words.
Draft 1
A broad basic outline based on student’s own experiences and impressions. / Draft 1
A lively story written from the student’s imagination and ideas about what makes good horror.
Draft 2
Redraft following close analysis of a style model, incorporating much more specific details, more glamorous celebrity references, and a stronger sense of voice to engage the reader. / Draft 2
Redraft following close analysis of a number of short stories, changing the language to make it suit the age of the readers better, to improve the pace and tension at key points, and to give the ending a twist.
Draft 3
Redraft taking on board ideas and suggestions gained from asking some 12-13 year olds to read the story and comment
on it.
Commentary / Commentary

Making sure it’s your own …

Once you’ve decided what to do, and agreed it with your teacher, get cracking on the first draft! Read around your topic, gathering ideas and information as required. Look at examples of similar types of articles. But always remember, this is an Original Writing unit – the idea is to produce something new and fresh, not a rehash of someone else’s work. This is not only an important part of academic honesty, but it is also about having pride in your own work, and pushing yourself to develop new ideas and approaches.

If you’re finding it difficult to find a fresh angle, try experimenting – what would happen if I changed the genre, or the audience? Here’s a true story.

There was once a student who produced an informative webpage about the experience of evacuation in the second world war. Her teacher instantly knew, from the degree of sophistication in the written expression, that the student had largely copied this material from a published source. Three and a half seconds and a Google search later, the source document was found. The student was confronted and admitted to cutting and pasting someone else’s writing into her own, and just changing a few words and sentences here and there. That’s not allowed at all – it’s called ‘plagiarism’ and can get your coursework disqualified and you banned from taking any exams with any UK exam board. Seriously …

Fortunately, the student was at a very early stage of drafting so it was possible to sort the problem out. She decided, after discussion with her teacher, to turn the very interesting source material into a set of teaching materials for a Key Stage 2 history lesson. This involved a change of audience, purpose, genre and style, so that although the student still utilised content from the source material she was forced to adapt it, reshape it, and rewrite it in a fresh and original way. She subsequently went on to get an A grade in her coursework.

Plagiarism – don’t even think about it. Your teachers will not mark or submit your coursework if they suspect it. But the good news is that keeping on the straight and narrow is really easy:

1)Don’t do it.

2)Keep copies of all your source materials, show them to your teacher, and take full advantage of all 1:1 opportunities to discuss your work in progress.

3)Don’t have your source materials in front of you when you are actually writing – it is far too tempting just to lift a few phrases, sentences, paragraphs … .

4)Mix it up, be ORIGINAL!

Making it the best a man can get …

Or a woman, child, alien, etc, of course … . The point is that you need to use the drafting process actively – partly to produce the best piece of writing that you can, and partly because an active drafting process makes writing the commentary approximately 87 times easier.

If you look back at the example folder, you will see that the student used a couple of different techniques in the drafting process: making changes based on close analysis of a style model, and utilising feedback from real live audience members. These are really powerful drafting techniques, and a zillion times more effective than simply checking for spelling mistakes (though that is obviously important too). You also need to keep asking yourself whether or not it does what it says on the tin. Have you got the style right for your audience and purpose? Have you got the genre conventions right for the type of text? Does the structure serve your purpose?

Using a style model can help you see HOW to answer these questions about your own piece. It is simply an example of something similar that you read and analyse carefully to see how a professional writer does it. For example, if you were writing a feature article for the Guardian’s Saturday travel supplement on how to spend the perfect weekend in ‘hidden’Sussex, youmight look at one of the pieces they have already published in a similar series about weekend breaks in a number of popular European capital cities. You should be looking for ideas about key language issues such as:

1)How has the writer used words and phrases to suit the chosen context (audience, purpose, genre, etc)?

2)What kinds of sentence types and functions has the writer used to suit the chosen context?

3)How does the way the text looks on the page suit the chosen context?

4)How has the writer structured the text to suit the context?

5)How has the writer drawn on shared assumptions between reader and writer to draw the reader in and keep them there?

This is exactly the same way that you will be learning to analyse texts in your work on ENB1 – An Introduction to Language Study. The skills are exactly the same, you just need to apply them to this work!! Exactly the same!!

Writing about what you’ve written

The first thing you need to know about the commentaries is that they are worth the same amount of marks as your texts. It is oh so tempting and oh so terribly easy to let the time run by, with just one more draft of the text to make it perfect, and then one more, and then maybe one for luck. And then, oh dear whoops, you’re left stressing for Team GB in the last 25 minutes before the final deadline because suddenly you’ve got to write two lots of 750 words and you can’t remember the first thing about what you’ve done or why you’ve done it. Trust us when we say that the vast majority of students need to produce a draft commentary, get feedback from their teacher, and then polish it up. Make sure you leave time to do this!!!!!!!!!!! Shall we just say that again? Make sure you leave time to do this!!!!!!!!

And what to write about? There are many possible ways to go about this, but you should make sure you address the following points:

1)A succinct explanation of the context of your text. It can also be nice to give a brief explanation of the genesis of your text – what inspired you to write it, providing this is something interesting.

2)The main body of your commentary needs to discuss the questions given above to guide you in your analysis of a style model – only this time, you apply them to your own text. You MUST quote examples from your work to illustrate your points and organise your ideas logically – use the language frameworks, don’t ramble about.

3)As you discuss key points, bring in short pertinent examples, where relevant, of how you changed things in drafting to sharpen your focus.

4)Provide a very brief evaluative comment about your opinion of the effectiveness of your text. Be honest and critical, focusing on ways you might improve it further.