Choosing Your Prompt and Planning

Between opening the exam paper and writing the first word of your response, a small number of decisions will shape your entire mark. Which prompt do I choose? What shape will my piece take? Whose voice am I writing in? Where does the piece go? This lesson teaches a five-minute planning routine that lifts most students by one band.

This lesson develops AO5: communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively — specifically the organisation half of AO5.

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Why planning feels like a waste of time (and why it isn't)

In a 45-minute task, five minutes of planning can feel indulgent. Most students want to start writing immediately. The problem is that writing-as-you-think produces the same four mistakes, year after year:

1. A strong opening that the middle cannot sustain.
2. A middle that repeats or meanders because the writer is thinking on the page.
3. An ending that arrives because the time is up, not because the piece has finished.
4. A voice that drifts — starting lyrical, becoming functional halfway through.

Planning is the one habit that pre-empts all four.

Exam Tip: If you are the kind of student whose writing improves massively in a second draft, planning is your way of drafting in your head before you commit anything to the page.

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The decision that matters most: descriptive or narrative?

Edexcel Section B prompts usually fall into two broad types.

Descriptive prompts ask you to describe a place, a moment, an image. You don't need a plot; you need sustained sensory detail and controlled atmosphere. The image-based prompt is almost always a descriptive invitation.

Narrative prompts ask you to write the opening of a story, or tell the story of a moment of change. You need a scene with at least one turn — something shifts.

Prompt type	Strengths for you if...	Risk if misused
Descriptive	You find sensory detail easy; you can hold atmosphere; you tend to over-plot in narrative	Drifting — no change happens, the piece feels like wallpaper
Narrative	You like inhabiting a voice; you can show change; you have a clear scene in mind	Over-plotting — trying to squeeze a whole story into 45 minutes

Key rule: You can write a descriptive piece in response to a narrative prompt (focus on the moment, not the events that lead to it), but you cannot really write a narrative in response to a descriptive prompt without ignoring what you were asked.

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When to use the image

Most Edexcel Section B papers include an image attached to one of the two prompts — usually a photograph or a piece of artwork. The image is there to help, not to constrain. A good writer uses it; a good writer does not feel trapped by it.

If the paper gives you an image, you have three options:

1. Describe the image directly — what is in the frame, what the atmosphere is, what the image implies.
2. Describe something the image evokes — a memory of a place like this; a moment that felt like this.
3. Set a narrative moment in the image — a character arrives at this place; something happens here.

Examiners do not require you to describe the image literally. But whatever you write should feel connected to it. If the image shows an empty swimming pool at dusk and you write about a busy morning market, the examiner will mark you down for not responding to the prompt.

Exam Tip: A useful compromise is to begin with something grounded in the image and then move inside a character who is there. That way you earn credit for responding to the image and for imaginative reach.

A worked image response

Suppose the image is a photograph of an empty hotel dining room at dawn — long windows, a row of tables set for breakfast, one chair slightly out of position, a single mug half-full on the nearest table.

A weak response describes the image literally and stops: There were many tables. The windows were long. There was one mug on a table. That is inventory, not writing.

A Level 5 response uses the image as a starting point for a character:

The dining room had been set for more people than would arrive. Mr Okafor, who had been up since four with a thought he could not quite identify, had come down to find the place already half-laid, and had chosen — because he had always chosen — the table nearest the windows. Someone had been here before him. The mug on the table was still warm.

Notice how the response is anchored in the image (the dining room, the windows, the mug) but immediately adds a character, an interior state, and a small implied mystery (the mug is still warm — someone was just here). That is the move examiners reward.

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The 5-minute planning routine

Use the five minutes between reading the prompts and beginning to write like this:

graph TD
    A["Minute 1<br/>Read both prompts"] --> B["Minute 2<br/>Choose one<br/>(gut + check)"]
    B --> C["Minute 3<br/>Who, where, when, mood"]
    C --> D["Minute 4<br/>Arc: opening, turn, end"]
    D --> E["Minute 5<br/>Three images<br/>to aim for"]
    E --> F["Start writing"]

    style A fill:#3498db,color:#fff
    style F fill:#27ae60,color:#fff

Minute 1: Read both prompts

Read both slowly. Do not commit yet. Notice which one triggered an image or voice in your head on first reading.

Minute 2: Choose

Pick the one you can see most quickly — not the one that sounds most sophisticated. Then do a quick sanity check: do you have at least three specific sensory details you can use? If not, revisit the other prompt.

Minute 3: Who, where, when, mood

In the margin or at the top of the page, answer four questions in note form:

• Who is the narrator? First person, or third person close? What age? What state of mind?
• Where are they? One specific location.
• When is this? Time of day, season, era — be specific.
• Mood — one word. Uneasy. Nostalgic. Defiant. Peaceful.

Minute 4: Arc

Plan three moments:

• Opening image — a grounding detail the reader lands on.
• The turn — something changes, even slightly. An awareness lifts, a detail reveals itself, a character arrives.
• Closing image — the last thing the reader will see. Often echoes the opening.

Minute 5: Three images

List three sensory details you plan to use somewhere. One visual, one auditory, one tactile or olfactory. Specific nouns and verbs, not adjectives.

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A worked plan

Prompt: Write a description inspired by an image of an empty seafront at dawn.

Plan (2 minutes of actual writing):

• Who: Marcus, late teens, walking along the front because he couldn't sleep. Third person close.
• Where: the promenade at low tide, railings, one chained kiosk, a dog-walker in the distance.
• When: very early — light beginning to grey at the edges.
• Mood: wakeful, suspended, hopeful-tired.
• Opening image: the sea is further out than he expected; the sand is glassy and marked.
• Turn: the dog-walker waves — a stranger's acknowledgement — and Marcus realises he is not the only person awake.
• Closing image: back at the railings, the light has changed colour; the kiosk has a single light on now; someone is opening up.
• Three sensory details: (visual) glassy sand with footprints that fill with water; (auditory) the slow metallic rhythm of rigging from the small harbour; (tactile) salt drying on the inside of his lip.

That plan took two minutes. The piece is now easier to write because the writer knows where they are going. Every paragraph has a purpose.

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Narrative arcs: three shapes that work in 45 minutes

Most students default to linear — start at the beginning, end at the end. It's fine, but three other shapes are often more effective in a short piece.