Click to enlarge6-Minute Drills
Every setting and character written against the clock, marked out of 10, then redrafted to scholarship standard.
- Ten timed drills: five settings and five characters
- Reminder chips, a six-minute box and a final-draft box on every page
- A marking checklist and a mark out of 10
- A progress record with retest dates
Want the whole series? The full Creative Writing series is £129, under £17 a book.
How this book is used in our course
One drill a session, notes closed, six minutes on the clock. Mark it against the checklist, give one target, and have the child redraft it in the final-draft box. Repeat any drill that scores below 7 until every setting and character reaches a consistent 9 or 10, then move on to adapting them to exam-style titles.
Where it sits in the series
- Previous book in the series: Book 4, Settings & Characters: Model Descriptions
- Next book in the series: Book 6, SHAMPOOP Plus Literary Devices Handbook
What's inside Creative Writing Mastery 5
Four real pages from the book, so you can see exactly what your child will work from. All 5 sample pages are in the viewer.
Six minutes, one paragraph, then a redraft to scholarship standard.
In the exam a strong setting or character paragraph has to be written quickly and confidently, so every drill is timed at six minutes, notes closed. Stop at six minutes, mid-sentence if necessary. A parent or tutor marks it against the checklist and gives one target. The child rewrites it in the Final Draft box and records the version. Speed first, quality second, then both.
Reminder chips at the top, the timed box, the final draft, the mark out of 10.
See, hear, smell, touch or taste, simile or metaphor, personification, varied openers, three sentence types, a short hook to finish. The chips sit at the top of the page as reminders, and the same items become the marking checklist at the bottom. Up to eight marks for the checklist, two for the quality of vocabulary and control.
Inside first, then outside, then end on an action.
Feeling, experience, inner metaphor; then face and eyes, hands and movement, voice; one tense throughout. The character drills train the order that makes a description feel like a real person, at the speed the exam demands.
Repeat any drill below 7 until every setting and character scores 9 or 10.
Five settings and five characters, each with a drill mark, a final mark and a retest. When every one is at 9 or more, the next step begins: the tutor gives an exam-style title, and the child writes the matching setting or character to fit it in six minutes.
All 10 drills in the book follow the pattern shown here.
Other Year 4 & 5 books in Creative Writing Mastery
The Technique Booklet
The complete Writing Formula in more than 380 pages: plan in five minutes, write four paragraphs, check your own work, then every other kind of task.
Your Writing Toolkit
Every checklist, every mistake to avoid, the glossary and seven templates, open beside every piece of writing.
Settings & Characters
The scholarship groundwork: five annotated model settings, two bonus settings and five model characters, each with the blueprint behind it.
Settings & Characters: Model Descriptions
Ten short model paragraphs to read, learn and adapt: five settings and five characters.