How to use this sample
Read the question guide, AOs, marks and suggested timing. Attempt before revealing the model; use the rationale and checklist to revise your answer.
Attempt first. Keep the model and explanation closed until you have finished. This sample reuses a selected activity from the paid collection; it is not an additional unseen test.
Q1(a) · Shorter writing · 15 marks
AO2 /15 · suggested 35 minutes
Write the opening of a story in which a sudden power cut changes the atmosphere in a busy place. Focus on sound, movement and a shift in one character’s attention. Write no more than 400 words.
Plan the atmosphere and viewpoint, then write no more than 400 words. Compare choices after your attempt.
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Model and rationale
The lights went out halfway through a price.
At the fruit stall, a man continued arguing for three seconds, as though darkness were merely another tactic the seller had introduced. Then the fans stopped. Their absence uncovered the market: water dripping into a bucket, a scooter coughing beyond the shutters, somebody laughing too loudly at the far end of the aisle.
Mina kept one hand on the bag of oranges. With the other she reached for the pocket where her phone should have been. The pocket was empty. She searched the next one, more carefully, and tried to remember the last place she had needed both hands.
A small beam appeared beside the fish counter. Another floated above the spice sacks. The familiar stalls broke into separate islands, each with its own light and uncertain shore. People called names across the gaps. Some were answered immediately. Some were called again.
Mina had entered the market to escape the afternoon heat and buy fruit for her mother. Now she could not recall which entrance she had used. A chair scraped somewhere ahead, followed by the impatient ring of a dropped coin. She stepped towards it, then stopped.
'Mina?'
The voice came from behind the shutter of a stall she had passed every week without looking inside. It was not her mother's voice. It was not a voice she had expected to hear in this city at all.
- The opening focuses on the requested power cut and makes a clear atmospheric shift through sound and fragmented light.
- Close viewpoint and the missing phone direct attention towards one character rather than cataloguing the whole market.
- The final voice creates an opening’s unresolved possibility; the response does not become a complete unrelated story.