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Writing Craft

Find something to say

  • Generate several candidate ideas quickly instead of waiting for one.
  • Choose the smallest, most specific version of a prompt.
  • Test an idea before committing a whole piece to it.
Free sample lesson — reading only

teach

Teach: find something to say

The blank page is not a failure of imagination. It is the absence of a method.

Every writer meets the empty page. The difference between one who stalls and one who starts is not talent — it is having a way in. Idea generation is a set of moves you run deliberately, in about ninety seconds, not a mood you wait to arrive.

The waiting trap costs more marks than any other habit. A student reads the prompt, stares at it, hopes something arrives, and burns the minutes that mattered most — then writes the first idea that turns up out of sheer panic, which is almost never the best one. Inspiration is not a plan. What you need is a repeatable way to produce three or four candidates fast, because the quality of a piece comes from having something to choose between, not from the first thing that surfaced.

Go small and specific rather than big and impressive. Asked to write about courage, most students reach for war, rescue or disaster — subjects they have no material for and cannot supply one honest detail about. The writer who chooses telling a friend an unwelcome truth has something real to work with. The useful question is never 'what is the most dramatic version of this prompt?' but 'what is the smallest version of this that I have actually seen?'

The three-angle move gives you candidates on demand. For any prompt, generate one personal angle — something you have lived; one observed angle — something you watched happen to someone else; and one invented angle — something plausible you can imagine completely. Three genuinely different starting points in under two minutes. Then pick the one where you can already see a specific detail, because that detail is your evidence that you have material rather than merely a topic.

Mine the prompt's own words before inventing anything. Prompts carry more than students notice. Take 'a door you were not supposed to open': every word is a lead. Which door, and where? Whose rule was it, and why did they make it? What happens when it is broken — and what does not opening it cost? Interrogating the prompt generates material without requiring a flash of inspiration, and it guarantees that what you produce is actually on task.

Test an idea before committing a whole piece to it. A workable idea passes two checks: can you name one concrete scene you can see, and can you say what it is about in a single sentence? If you cannot picture a scene, you will pad. If you cannot say what it is about, the piece will wander and stop rather than end. Twenty seconds spent on those two checks is the cheapest insurance available — far cheaper than discovering the idea was hollow in paragraph three with no time left to start again.

Waiting trap

Staring at a prompt hoping an idea arrives, instead of generating one.

Three-angle move

Producing a personal, an observed and an invented candidate.

Prompt mining

Taking leads from the prompt's own words before inventing.

Two-check test

Can you name one scene, and say what it is about in a sentence?
  • Four genuinely different candidate ideas.
  • Each contains at least one concrete, specific detail.
  • The final choice is justified by material, not by which sounds most impressive.

show

Show: the move done well

Study one clean execution before you try it yourself.

Read the model below. The annotations name the technique behind each choice, so you can reuse the move rather than copy the words.

Find something to say

Prompt: 'Something you found that you were not looking for.'

For 'A risk worth taking': the week I told my swimming coach I wanted to quit — knowing she would argue, knowing I might not have the words. Scene: standing by the pool with my bag already packed. About: saying the true thing when silence is easier.

  • Generate three angles: personal, observed, invented.Technique in use: Generate three angles: personal, observed, invented..
  • Choose the smallest, most specific version of the prompt.Technique in use: Choose the smallest, most specific version of the prompt..
  • Mine the prompt's own words for leads.Technique in use: Mine the prompt's own words for leads..
  • Test with one scene and one sentence before committing.Technique in use: Test with one scene and one sentence before committing..

compare

Compare: weak vs strong

Same material, same task. Only the move changes.

Both attempts respond to the same material. Read them side by side and name exactly what lifts the stronger one.

Find something to say

Weaker

For the prompt 'A risk worth taking', I will write about a soldier who saves his whole platoon during a battle. It will be very dramatic and exciting and it will show real bravery.

Stronger

For 'A risk worth taking': the week I told my swimming coach I wanted to quit — knowing she would argue, knowing I might not have the words. Scene: standing by the pool with my bag already packed. About: saying the true thing when silence is easier.

The weak version reaches for the biggest possible event and then describes it in adjectives — dramatic, exciting, brave — because there is no material underneath it; the writer has never seen a battle and cannot supply one honest detail. The strong version takes something small and lived, and already contains both a scene and a point, which is exactly why it will still be working in paragraph four.

Biggest event vs smallest true one

Weaker

For 'A time you were brave' I will write about rescuing someone from a burning building and being called a hero by everybody who was standing outside watching.

Stronger

For 'A time you were brave': the parents' evening where I had to tell my mother what my maths teacher was about to say, before she heard it from him.

The weak idea reaches for the largest event the writer can imagine and the one they have never been anywhere near, so the piece will have to run on borrowed drama rather than on detail. The strong idea is small, entirely plausible, and already contains what bravery actually requires — doing the harder thing when an easier one was available — in a scene the writer can picture completely.

Topic vs scene

Weaker

I am going to write about friendship and what it really means to be a good friend to somebody when things are difficult.

Stronger

The afternoon I waited forty minutes outside the sports hall for someone who had already gone home, and what I said the next day when she asked why I looked annoyed.

A topic names the subject and gives you nowhere to stand: 'friendship' offers no first sentence, which is why pieces that start there drift into generalities. A scene gives you a place, a duration and a conversation you now have to write, and the meaning tends to emerge from the writing itself. If your idea contains nothing you can see, it is still a topic.

guide

Guide: try the move

A quick warm-up before the writing task.

This is a short warm-up. Don't worry about getting it perfect—you'll use the same technique in the practice below.

For the prompt 'A promise that was hard to keep', generate THREE angles — one personal, one observed, one invented — in a single line each. Do not write the story.

Want feedback on your own answer? Get started to practise with instant marking.

  • Three candidates that are genuinely different, not rephrased.
  • Each names something concrete rather than a topic.