Gwaith Cwrs: Creative Writing (NEA)

You want to write Task 1 as a monologue and Task 2 on a controversial question. Work out whether your two ideas satisfy the specification's requirement that the same subject not be used for both.

1. 01State each subject as a noun phrase, not as a plan

   Write down what each piece is ABOUT in five words, stripped of format. If Task 1 is “a monologue by a farmer losing his land” and Task 2 is “should Wales rewild its uplands”, the noun phrases are 'a farmer losing his land' and 'rewilding the uplands'. Written that way, the overlap is visible immediately: both are about the same conflict over the same land, and the second would be the argumentative version of the first.

2. 02Apply the test that actually decides it

   Ask whether the research you do for one would substantially serve the other. If reading for Task 2 would supply most of the material for Task 1, they are the same subject in two formats, which is precisely what the rule forbids. If the two pieces would send you to entirely different reading, they are different subjects even if they touch at one point.

3. 03The cheapest fix is to move Task 1, not Task 2

   Task 2's subject must be controversial and researchable, which constrains it heavily; Task 1's may be anything at all in any of ten formats. So when the two collide, change Task 1. That is also the piece with the shorter lead time, because it needs no sources — the writing is the work.

4. 04Settle it with your teacher in writing, early

   The teacher marks the work and the centre's marks go to an external moderator, so the person who has to be satisfied that the subjects differ is the person you will hand the folio to. Get the two noun phrases agreed at the start of the year. It costs one conversation and it removes the only risk in this unit that cannot be repaired by working harder.

5. 05A useful side-effect of choosing well

   Two genuinely different subjects give the folio range, and range is what the top band of both grids describes — a variation of styles, careful consideration of register, format and audience. A folio in which both pieces sound alike has demonstrated one register twice. Choosing subjects that pull in different directions is therefore not merely compliance; it is the first thing you do to satisfy the mark scheme.

Result: Reduce each task to a five-word noun phrase and ask whether the research for one would serve the other. If it would, they are one subject in two formats. Fix it by moving Task 1, whose subject is unconstrained, and settle the two phrases with your teacher at the start of the year — the folio's range is itself what the top band describes.

You have chosen the short story and you have 1,500 to 2,000 words. Scope it before you write, so that the piece is complete rather than truncated.

1. 01Count what the length will hold

   Fifteen hundred words is roughly four to six scenes of moderate length, or two long ones. It will hold one action with one turn in it. It will not hold a life, a family history, or three timeframes. The commonest failure in a folio short story is not bad writing but bad scoping: a story that needed six thousand words compressed into fifteen hundred, so that everything is summarised and nothing is shown.

2. 02Fix the turn first

   Decide what changes, and for whom. Not what happens — what CHANGES. A story in which events occur but nothing is different at the end is an anecdote. Write the turn as one sentence before you write anything else: “Erbyn y diwedd, mae hi'n gwybod rhywbeth nad oedd hi eisiau ei wybod.” Everything in the story then either prepares that or follows from it, and anything that does neither can be cut.

3. 03Choose the point of entry as late as you can bear

   Begin as close to the turn as the reader can follow. Most drafts begin about two scenes too early, with material the writer needed in order to start and the reader does not need in order to understand. When you have a draft, try deleting the first page: if the story still works, it was a run-up, and the space it releases can go into the scene that matters.

4. 04Decide where the register varies, and why

   The top band asks for a variation of styles used with careful consideration of register, format and audience. In a story that usually means the narrative voice and the dialogue are in different registers — narration in Cymraeg safonol and speech in the characters' own tafodiaith. That is not a licence for inconsistency: the variation must be motivated, and it should be possible to say in one sentence why each voice sounds as it does.

5. 05Build in the sentence variety before the final pass

   The grid asks for a range of linguistic resources with an effective variety of sentence patterns which contribute to the success of the piece — and note the last clause, which means variety for its own sake does not count. Read your draft aloud and mark every sentence's length. If ten consecutive sentences are within five words of each other, the prose is flat regardless of its vocabulary, and the repair is structural rather than lexical.

Result: Scope first: 1,500 words holds one action with one turn. Write the turn as a single sentence before anything else, enter as late as the reader can follow, motivate every register shift in one sentence, and check sentence-length variety by reading aloud — the grid rewards variety that contributes to the piece, not variety as such.

You have a finished draft of a portrayal at about 1,700 words. Take it through the top band's seven bullets and decide what the next draft has to do.

1. 01Mature and perceptive writing

   The hardest to self-assess and the easiest to fake. The test is whether the piece notices anything a reader would not have noticed for themselves. A portrayal that reports a person's habits is competent; one that finds the habit that contradicts the rest and holds it up is perceptive. Ask of your draft: what is the ONE observation here that only this writer could have made? If there is not one, that is the next draft's job.

2. 02Select relevant aspects

   Go through with a pencil and mark every paragraph with the reason it is there. Any paragraph whose reason is 'because it is true' or 'because it happened' is a candidate for deletion. In a 1,700-word portrayal there are usually two such paragraphs, and cutting them makes room for the perceptive observation you have just decided you need.

3. 03Register, format and audience, with a variation of styles

   Write in the margin who this is addressed to and what register you are in. Then find the places where the register shifts — a remembered speech, a quoted phrase, a moment of direct address — and check that each shift is doing something. An unmotivated shift reads as a lapse; a motivated one is exactly what 'a variation of styles' means. If there are no shifts at all, the piece has demonstrated one register, which is a 7–9 description.

4. 04Purposeful structure with unity

   Write a one-line summary of each paragraph on a separate sheet, then read only that sheet. Does it have a shape — an order that could not be rearranged without loss? A portrayal that could be reordered freely has organisation but not structure, which is the distinction between the middle and the top of the grid. If the order is arbitrary, find the principle that should govern it: chronology, an approach from outside to inside, a single day.

5. 05Linguistic resources, sentence variety, and grammar

   Read the draft aloud and mark sentence lengths in the margin; then do a separate pass for accuracy alone, checking the mutations against the five-step procedure from iaith-ar-waith. Do the two passes SEPARATELY. Reading for rhythm and reading for correctness use different attention, and a single combined pass reliably misses both.

Result: Seven separate judgements, not one impression. Typically: find the one perceptive observation the piece is missing; cut the two paragraphs that are there because they are true; check that every register shift is motivated; test structure by reading a paragraph-summary sheet alone; and make the rhythm pass and the accuracy pass two separate readings.

Write the same short passage — a person arriving somewhere they have not been for years — in the three registers, and decide what each one commits the piece to.

1. 01Cymraeg llenyddol

   “Nid oedd dim wedi newid, ac eto nid oedd dim yr un fath. Safodd yn y drws am ennyd, a chlywodd lais nad oedd wedi ei glywed ers pymtheng mlynedd.” The inflected verbs and the nid oedd negatives create distance and formality. This register can carry irony and elegy well; it cannot carry immediacy, and a whole story in it will read as a translation of something older.

2. 02Cymraeg safonol

   “Doedd dim wedi newid, ac eto doedd dim yr un fath. Safodd yn y drws am eiliad, a chlywodd lais nad oedd wedi ei glywed ers pymtheng mlynedd.” The same sentence structure with the modern negative. This is the default for narration and it is nearly invisible, which is its virtue: the reader attends to what is described rather than to how.

3. 03Tafodiaith

   “Doedd 'na ddim byd wedi newid, a doedd 'na ddim byd 'run fath chwaith. Mi safodd hi'n y drws am eiliad, ac wedyn mi glywodd hi'r llais 'na doedd hi ddim wedi'i glywed ers pymtheng mlynedd.” Northern forms, spoken syntax, the mi particle. This carries immediacy and a person's presence, and it commits the narration to a voice — which is a decision, not a default.

4. 04What each commits you to

   The literary register commits the whole piece to a formal frame, and a modern conversation inside it will jar. The standard register commits you to nothing and lets dialogue do the register work. The spoken register commits you to a narrator who is a person, which is powerful in a monologue or a first-person story and awkward in a portrayal of somebody else. Choose the one whose commitment you want.

5. 05Where the variation belongs

   The strongest folio pieces usually narrate in the second and speak in the third, reserving the first for a moment where formality is itself the point — an official letter quoted, a remembered sermon, a public announcement. That is a variation of styles with a reason attached, and a reason attached is what separates the top band's description from the one below it.

Result: Literary Welsh commits the whole piece to a formal frame; standard Welsh commits to nothing and lets dialogue carry the register work; dialect commits the narration to a person. The usual best answer is standard narration, dialect dialogue, and the literary register reserved for a moment where formality is itself the subject.

You have a finished but unsatisfactory draft of a monologue at 1,900 words. Run the four passes and show what each one changes.

1. 01Pass one — is it finished?

   Not is it good; is it complete. Does it have an ending rather than a stopping point? Does the speaker end somewhere other than where they began? At 1,900 words you are near the upper limit, so if the piece is not complete, something has to go rather than something being added. Mark the two weakest sections now — you will need the words later.

2. 02Pass two — structure, on a separate sheet

   Summarise each paragraph in one line on a fresh page and read only that page. In a monologue the question is whether the revelations arrive in the right order — whether the reader learns things in the sequence that makes each one land. If two paragraphs could swap places with no loss, one of them is not doing structural work. This pass typically moves two paragraphs and deletes one.

3. 03Pass three — register and rhythm, aloud

   Read the whole piece out loud, marking sentence lengths in the margin and circling every register shift. A monologue read aloud exposes two faults immediately: sentences that no speaker would produce, and a voice that is more consistent than a real person's. Both are repairs at the sentence level and both need the ear rather than the eye, which is why this pass cannot be done silently.

4. 04Pass four — accuracy, and nothing else

   Now read for the Welsh alone, ignoring meaning as far as you can. Mutations first, using the five-step procedure: trigger, mutation, radical, exception, form. Then the relative particles, then circumflexes, then the register consistency of any literary forms you used. Reading for accuracy while also attending to meaning is why writers miss their own errors, so the discipline is to make this pass boring on purpose.

5. 05Then stop

   After the fourth pass, hand it in. A fifth pass at this stage produces small unmotivated changes and usually introduces at least one new error. The piece has had four kinds of attention over four days, the resources are logged, and the mark that will be awarded is the mark this version deserves — which is the only version the specification will ever see.

Result: Four passes on four days: completeness (and mark the two weakest sections for cutting later); structure, read on a paragraph-summary sheet alone; register and rhythm, read aloud; accuracy, read deliberately boringly. Then stop — a fifth pass produces unmotivated changes and usually a new error.