What do they mean, how is it structured? - by Fran Hill
When I'm not writing, I teach English to GCSE students. But teaching English to GCSE students also informs my writing.
Win-win!
Let me tell you about one way in which this has happened.
Today's teenagers, if they're studying with the AQA exam board, answer a difficult question on their English Language Paper 1 in response to a piece of fiction. I wonder what you writers would think of it and how you would tackle it.
Candidates are given a substantial passage - perhaps the beginning of a novel, an extract from a short story, or even an entire short story.
Questions 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward. But Question 3 is a killer. It's only worth 8 marks, but if students know how to answer it, they are 8 very precious ones.
Here's Question 3.
Q3 How has the writer structured the whole text to interest you as a reader?
This exam was only introduced a couple of years ago after Michael Gove's attempts to make the curriculum more 'rigorous'.
It's done that all right.
I've never, in 18 years of English teaching, seen a GCSE exam question dedicated to structural methods. It's forced me to investigate what structural methods are, how they differ from linguistic methods such as similes or alliteration, and - ay, there's the rub - how to teach them to teenagers, many of whom neither read for pleasure nor write stories.
Teaching towards this particular question, then, has made a substantial difference to my own writing. Previous rejections of my work have often come with the comments, 'This needs restructuring' or 'You need to think about structure' or 'You're not hooking the reader enough with your structure'. Okay, stop now! I get the hint!
So, what do I tell my students about structure now?
I introduce the topic with this: When you buy a cupboard from IKEA, it comes in bits. These bits are like the events in a story. But the cupboard also comes with instructions about how to put it together, in what order, and with what tools, in order to make an effective cupboard. You can't ignore these if you want the cupboard to do its job or even look like a cupboard.
It's the same for a writer. You may have great ideas for events in a story, and you may even use wonderfully evocative language to describe them, but it's the way you slot events together, connect them and build them up that makes it effective and hooks a reader.
So, here's the list of structural methods I work from as I'm teaching. Don't worry - I don't torture them with the whole list in one lesson. We work through them gradually, seeing how they work in different contexts.
And in the exam students can only select a few to discuss - hopefully the ones most relevant to the given story.
The list might help you to look at your own writing, as I have had to, and think 'How am I structuring this for best effect?'
Structural methods to watch out for
- what the author begins with and why - what is focused on
- use of techniques such as flashback and flashforward that manipulate the order of events
- use of a particular structural format such as diaries, letters, dual narratives
- changes and shifts in the story: theme, mood, characters, locations, time, events, perspectives.
- progressions in tension such as worsening of a character's mood or the weather
- foreshadowing that hints towards future events (such as a storm or a reference to a graveyard)
- repeated words, phrases or images that develop a recurring theme to build tension
- the use of dialogue and how it progresses the story
- delay tactics or gradual revelations, where the writer withholds information
- the dropping of clues that only make sense with hindsight, eg in detective fiction
- contrasts and comparisons across the text
- juxtaposition, when ideas are put next to each other for deliberate effect
- the beginnings of paragraphs and how they signal what is to come
- the dramatic use of one-sentence paragraphs
- what a writer focuses on in a certain paragraph and why, eg a character description
- how sentences are ordered and arranged, eg 'Crouching behind the tree, he waited.'
- the use of 'markers' to progress the text, eg 'The next day' or 'In the other room, meanwhile ...'
- how the story ends and how that links with what's gone before
Key words are focus, change, shift, progression, delay and revelation. And the exam board's advice is for students to ask the question, 'At what point in the story is the writer telling me this, and why now?'
I've learned to ask myself the same question and it's making a difference. I think.
Structure is just as important for non-fiction such as opinion articles when the aim is to present an argument in a coherent, persuasive manner, hooking the reader in quite a different way. But that's a topic for another blog post, maybe.
Fran is a writer and teacher who lives in Warwickshire. Her new book 'Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?' - a memoir about a year in her teaching life - will be published in 2020 by SPCK. She blogs here and you can find out more about Fran and her work at her website here
Win-win!
Let me tell you about one way in which this has happened.
Today's teenagers, if they're studying with the AQA exam board, answer a difficult question on their English Language Paper 1 in response to a piece of fiction. I wonder what you writers would think of it and how you would tackle it.
Candidates are given a substantial passage - perhaps the beginning of a novel, an extract from a short story, or even an entire short story.
Questions 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward. But Question 3 is a killer. It's only worth 8 marks, but if students know how to answer it, they are 8 very precious ones.
Here's Question 3.
Q3 How has the writer structured the whole text to interest you as a reader?
This exam was only introduced a couple of years ago after Michael Gove's attempts to make the curriculum more 'rigorous'.
It's done that all right.
I've never, in 18 years of English teaching, seen a GCSE exam question dedicated to structural methods. It's forced me to investigate what structural methods are, how they differ from linguistic methods such as similes or alliteration, and - ay, there's the rub - how to teach them to teenagers, many of whom neither read for pleasure nor write stories.
Teaching towards this particular question, then, has made a substantial difference to my own writing. Previous rejections of my work have often come with the comments, 'This needs restructuring' or 'You need to think about structure' or 'You're not hooking the reader enough with your structure'. Okay, stop now! I get the hint!
So, what do I tell my students about structure now?
I introduce the topic with this: When you buy a cupboard from IKEA, it comes in bits. These bits are like the events in a story. But the cupboard also comes with instructions about how to put it together, in what order, and with what tools, in order to make an effective cupboard. You can't ignore these if you want the cupboard to do its job or even look like a cupboard.
It's the same for a writer. You may have great ideas for events in a story, and you may even use wonderfully evocative language to describe them, but it's the way you slot events together, connect them and build them up that makes it effective and hooks a reader.
So, here's the list of structural methods I work from as I'm teaching. Don't worry - I don't torture them with the whole list in one lesson. We work through them gradually, seeing how they work in different contexts.
And in the exam students can only select a few to discuss - hopefully the ones most relevant to the given story.
The list might help you to look at your own writing, as I have had to, and think 'How am I structuring this for best effect?'
Structural methods to watch out for
- what the author begins with and why - what is focused on
- use of techniques such as flashback and flashforward that manipulate the order of events
- use of a particular structural format such as diaries, letters, dual narratives
- changes and shifts in the story: theme, mood, characters, locations, time, events, perspectives.
- progressions in tension such as worsening of a character's mood or the weather
- foreshadowing that hints towards future events (such as a storm or a reference to a graveyard)
- repeated words, phrases or images that develop a recurring theme to build tension
- the use of dialogue and how it progresses the story
- delay tactics or gradual revelations, where the writer withholds information
- the dropping of clues that only make sense with hindsight, eg in detective fiction
- contrasts and comparisons across the text
- juxtaposition, when ideas are put next to each other for deliberate effect
- the beginnings of paragraphs and how they signal what is to come
- the dramatic use of one-sentence paragraphs
- what a writer focuses on in a certain paragraph and why, eg a character description
- how sentences are ordered and arranged, eg 'Crouching behind the tree, he waited.'
- the use of 'markers' to progress the text, eg 'The next day' or 'In the other room, meanwhile ...'
- how the story ends and how that links with what's gone before
Key words are focus, change, shift, progression, delay and revelation. And the exam board's advice is for students to ask the question, 'At what point in the story is the writer telling me this, and why now?'
I've learned to ask myself the same question and it's making a difference. I think.
Structure is just as important for non-fiction such as opinion articles when the aim is to present an argument in a coherent, persuasive manner, hooking the reader in quite a different way. But that's a topic for another blog post, maybe.
Fran is a writer and teacher who lives in Warwickshire. Her new book 'Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?' - a memoir about a year in her teaching life - will be published in 2020 by SPCK. She blogs here and you can find out more about Fran and her work at her website here
What a great list! I love the IKEA example too. Genius!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mrs J! xx
DeleteIn the absence of my reading glasses, I thought you were making reference to 'deadly tactics.' Even without that added tension, this had me gripped. I only hope I can put some of it into practice.
ReplyDelete'Deadly tactics' makes it sound a lot more interesting than it was! Perhaps you should keep the glasses off ;) Thanks for your comment, Janey x
DeleteSo much packed in there! Thank you, Fran. I must have missed that series of lessons when I was studying English at school 😏 Mind you, exam questions weren't so tricky then 😌 But as you say, helpful to bear it all in mind when writing now 👍
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dawn :) You're telling me - exam questions were so straightforward in the past and now we're teaching to the test, question by question, in a way we never used to have to. Urrgghh.
DeleteThis is so helpful! I wondered if you had any further reading you could suggest? Thanks x
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah - thanks for reading. Do you mean further reading on structure for writers or for GCSE teachers?
DeleteThanks Fran. On structure, but nice and clear like your summary above!
DeleteSorry, Sarah - still not clear on whether you're asking for advice about how to structure your own writing, or how to teach structure to GCSE students.
Delete