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Last updated on Feb 14, 2023

10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You’ll Love)

A lot falls under the term ‘creative writing’: poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is , it may be easier to understand what it does by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of styles and genres under its vast umbrella.

To that end, we’ve collected a non-exhaustive list of works across multiple formats that have inspired the writers here at Reedsy. With 20 different works to explore, we hope they will inspire you, too. 

People have been writing creatively for almost as long as we have been able to hold pens. Just think of long-form epic poems like The Odyssey or, later, the Cantar de Mio Cid — some of the earliest recorded writings of their kind. 

Poetry is also a great place to start if you want to dip your own pen into the inkwell of creative writing. It can be as short or long as you want (you don’t have to write an epic of Homeric proportions), encourages you to build your observation skills, and often speaks from a single point of view . 

Here are a few examples:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This classic poem by Romantic poet Percy Shelley (also known as Mary Shelley’s husband) is all about legacy. What do we leave behind? How will we be remembered? The great king Ozymandias built himself a massive statue, proclaiming his might, but the irony is that his statue doesn’t survive the ravages of time. By framing this poem as told to him by a “traveller from an antique land,” Shelley effectively turns this into a story. Along with the careful use of juxtaposition to create irony, this poem accomplishes a lot in just a few lines. 

“Trying to Raise the Dead” by Dorianne Laux

 A direction. An object. My love, it needs a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening. I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Poetry is cherished for its ability to evoke strong emotions from the reader using very few words which is exactly what Dorianne Laux does in “ Trying to Raise the Dead .” With vivid imagery that underscores the painful yearning of the narrator, she transports us to a private nighttime scene as the narrator sneaks away from a party to pray to someone they’ve lost. We ache for their loss and how badly they want their lost loved one to acknowledge them in some way. It’s truly a masterclass on how writing can be used to portray emotions. 

If you find yourself inspired to try out some poetry — and maybe even get it published — check out these poetry layouts that can elevate your verse!

Song Lyrics

Poetry’s closely related cousin, song lyrics are another great way to flex your creative writing muscles. You not only have to find the perfect rhyme scheme but also match it to the rhythm of the music. This can be a great challenge for an experienced poet or the musically inclined. 

To see how music can add something extra to your poetry, check out these two examples:

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

 You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it to ya? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah 

Metaphors are commonplace in almost every kind of creative writing, but will often take center stage in shorter works like poetry and songs. At the slightest mention, they invite the listener to bring their emotional or cultural experience to the piece, allowing the writer to express more with fewer words while also giving it a deeper meaning. If a whole song is couched in metaphor, you might even be able to find multiple meanings to it, like in Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah .” While Cohen’s Biblical references create a song that, on the surface, seems like it’s about a struggle with religion, the ambiguity of the lyrics has allowed it to be seen as a song about a complicated romantic relationship. 

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie

 ​​If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

You can think of song lyrics as poetry set to music. They manage to do many of the same things their literary counterparts do — including tugging on your heartstrings. Death Cab for Cutie’s incredibly popular indie rock ballad is about the singer’s deep devotion to his lover. While some might find the song a bit too dark and macabre, its melancholy tune and poignant lyrics remind us that love can endure beyond death.

Plays and Screenplays

From the short form of poetry, we move into the world of drama — also known as the play. This form is as old as the poem, stretching back to the works of ancient Greek playwrights like Sophocles, who adapted the myths of their day into dramatic form. The stage play (and the more modern screenplay) gives the words on the page a literal human voice, bringing life to a story and its characters entirely through dialogue. 

Interested to see what that looks like? Take a look at these examples:

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.” 

Arthur Miller acts as a bridge between the classic and the new, creating 20th century tragedies that take place in living rooms and backyard instead of royal courts, so we had to include his breakout hit on this list. Set in the backyard of an all-American family in the summer of 1946, this tragedy manages to communicate family tensions in an unimaginable scale, building up to an intense climax reminiscent of classical drama. 

💡 Read more about Arthur Miller and classical influences in our breakdown of Freytag’s pyramid . 

“Everything is Fine” by Michael Schur ( The Good Place )

“Well, then this system sucks. What...one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on! I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati. Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.” 

A screenplay, especially a TV pilot, is like a mini-play, but with the extra job of convincing an audience that they want to watch a hundred more episodes of the show. Blending moral philosophy with comedy, The Good Place is a fun hang-out show set in the afterlife that asks some big questions about what it means to be good. 

It follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an incredibly imperfect woman from Arizona who wakes up in ‘The Good Place’ and realizes that there’s been a cosmic mixup. Determined not to lose her place in paradise, she recruits her “soulmate,” a former ethics professor, to teach her philosophy with the hope that she can learn to be a good person and keep up her charade of being an upstanding citizen. The pilot does a superb job of setting up the stakes, the story, and the characters, while smuggling in deep philosophical ideas.

Personal essays

Our first foray into nonfiction on this list is the personal essay. As its name suggests, these stories are in some way autobiographical — concerned with the author’s life and experiences. But don’t be fooled by the realistic component. These essays can take any shape or form, from comics to diary entries to recipes and anything else you can imagine. Typically zeroing in on a single issue, they allow you to explore your life and prove that the personal can be universal.

Here are a couple of fantastic examples:

“On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years” by Min Jin Lee (Literary Hub)

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. 

This deeply honest personal essay by Pachinko author Min Jin Lee is an account of her eleven-year struggle to publish her first novel . Like all good writing, it is intensely focused on personal emotional details. While grounded in the specifics of the author's personal journey, it embodies an experience that is absolutely universal: that of difficulty and adversity met by eventual success. 

“A Cyclist on the English Landscape” by Roff Smith (New York Times)

These images, though, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to represent a cyclist on the landscape, anybody — you, perhaps. 

Roff Smith’s gorgeous photo essay for the NYT is a testament to the power of creatively combining visuals with text. Here, photographs of Smith atop a bike are far from simply ornamental. They’re integral to the ruminative mood of the essay, as essential as the writing. Though Smith places his work at the crosscurrents of various aesthetic influences (such as the painter Edward Hopper), what stands out the most in this taciturn, thoughtful piece of writing is his use of the second person to address the reader directly. Suddenly, the writer steps out of the body of the essay and makes eye contact with the reader. The reader is now part of the story as a second character, finally entering the picture.

Short Fiction

The short story is the happy medium of fiction writing. These bite-sized narratives can be devoured in a single sitting and still leave you reeling. Sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to novel writing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Short story writing is an art all its own. The limited length means every word counts and there’s no better way to see that than with these two examples:

“An MFA Story” by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature)

At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. I had not wanted to go but did. In the bar, he read, "I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. On the bank of the Huangpu." It wasn’t an aside or introduction. It was two lines of the poem. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. I wasn’t writing anything. 

This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ). What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the private thoughts or moments of doubt we don’t admit to or openly talk about. 

“Flowering Walrus” by Scott Skinner (Reedsy)

I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. My walrus is not well. 

A winner of Reedsy’s weekly Prompts writing contest, ‘ Flowering Walrus ’ is a story that balances the trivial and the serious well. In the pauses between its excellent, natural dialogue , the story manages to scatter the fear and sadness of bad medical news, as the protagonist hides his worries from his wife and daughter. Rich in subtext, these silences grow and resonate with the readers.

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Perhaps the thing that first comes to mind when talking about creative writing, novels are a form of fiction that many people know and love but writers sometimes find intimidating. The good news is that novels are nothing but one word put after another, like any other piece of writing, but expanded and put into a flowing narrative. Piece of cake, right?

To get an idea of the format’s breadth of scope, take a look at these two (very different) satirical novels: 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality — all simply store workers. 

Keiko, a thirty-six-year-old convenience store employee, finds comfort and happiness in the strict, uneventful routine of the shop’s daily operations. A funny, satirical, but simultaneously unnerving examination of the social structures we take for granted, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is deeply original and lingers with the reader long after they’ve put it down.

Erasure by Percival Everett

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it.  

Erasure is a truly accomplished satire of the publishing industry’s tendency to essentialize African American authors and their writing. Everett’s protagonist is a writer whose work doesn’t fit with what publishers expect from him — work that describes the “African American experience” — so he writes a parody novel about life in the ghetto. The publishers go crazy for it and, to the protagonist’s horror, it becomes the next big thing. This sophisticated novel is both ironic and tender, leaving its readers with much food for thought.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is pretty broad: it applies to anything that does not claim to be fictional (although the rise of autofiction has definitely blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction). It encompasses everything from personal essays and memoirs to humor writing, and they range in length from blog posts to full-length books. The defining characteristic of this massive genre is that it takes the world or the author’s experience and turns it into a narrative that a reader can follow along with.

Here, we want to focus on novel-length works that dig deep into their respective topics. While very different, these two examples truly show the breadth and depth of possibility of creative nonfiction:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural. 

Writer Jesmyn Ward recounts the deaths of five men from her rural Mississippi community in as many years. In her award-winning memoir , she delves into the lives of the friends and family she lost and tries to find some sense among the tragedy. Working backwards across five years, she questions why this had to happen over and over again, and slowly unveils the long history of racism and poverty that rules rural Black communities. Moving and emotionally raw, Men We Reaped is an indictment of a cruel system and the story of a woman's grief and rage as she tries to navigate it.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

He believed that wine could reshape someone’s life. That’s why he preferred buying bottles to splurging on sweaters. Sweaters were things. Bottles of wine, said Morgan, “are ways that my humanity will be changed.” 

In this work of immersive journalism , Bianca Bosker leaves behind her life as a tech journalist to explore the world of wine. Becoming a “cork dork” takes her everywhere from New York’s most refined restaurants to science labs while she learns what it takes to be a sommelier and a true wine obsessive. This funny and entertaining trip through the past and present of wine-making and tasting is sure to leave you better informed and wishing you, too, could leave your life behind for one devoted to wine. 

Illustrated Narratives (Comics, graphic novels)

Once relegated to the “funny pages”, the past forty years of comics history have proven it to be a serious medium. Comics have transformed from the early days of Jack Kirby’s superheroes into a medium where almost every genre is represented. Humorous one-shots in the Sunday papers stand alongside illustrated memoirs, horror, fantasy, and just about anything else you can imagine. This type of visual storytelling lets the writer and artist get creative with perspective, tone, and so much more. For two very different, though equally entertaining, examples, check these out:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

"Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure." 

This beloved comic strip follows Calvin, a rambunctious six-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger/imaginary friend, Hobbes. They get into all kinds of hijinks at school and at home, and muse on the world in the way only a six-year-old and an anthropomorphic tiger can. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is, Calvin & Hobbes ’ popularity persists as much for its whimsy as its use of humor to comment on life, childhood, adulthood, and everything in between. 

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell." 

Comics aren't just the realm of superheroes and one-joke strips, as Alan Moore proves in this serialized graphic novel released between 1989 and 1998. A meticulously researched alternative history of Victorian London’s Ripper killings, this macabre story pulls no punches. Fact and fiction blend into a world where the Royal Family is involved in a dark conspiracy and Freemasons lurk on the sidelines. It’s a surreal mad-cap adventure that’s unsettling in the best way possible. 

Video Games and RPGs

Probably the least expected entry on this list, we thought that video games and RPGs also deserved a mention — and some well-earned recognition for the intricate storytelling that goes into creating them. 

Essentially gamified adventure stories, without attention to plot, characters, and a narrative arc, these games would lose a lot of their charm, so let’s look at two examples where the creative writing really shines through: 

80 Days by inkle studios

"It was a triumph of invention over nature, and will almost certainly disappear into the dust once more in the next fifty years." 

Named Time Magazine ’s game of the year in 2014, this narrative adventure is based on Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. The player is cast as the novel’s narrator, Passpartout, and tasked with circumnavigating the globe in service of their employer, Phileas Fogg. Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era, the game uses its globe-trotting to comment on the colonialist fantasies inherent in the original novel and its time period. On a storytelling level, the choose-your-own-adventure style means no two players’ journeys will be the same. This innovative approach to a classic novel shows the potential of video games as a storytelling medium, truly making the player part of the story. 

What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow

"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes, and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is." 

This video game casts the player as 17-year-old Edith Finch. Returning to her family’s home on an island in the Pacific northwest, Edith explores the vast house and tries to figure out why she’s the only one of her family left alive. The story of each family member is revealed as you make your way through the house, slowly unpacking the tragic fate of the Finches. Eerie and immersive, this first-person exploration game uses the medium to tell a series of truly unique tales. 

Fun and breezy on the surface, humor is often recognized as one of the trickiest forms of creative writing. After all, while you can see the artistic value in a piece of prose that you don’t necessarily enjoy, if a joke isn’t funny, you could say that it’s objectively failed.

With that said, it’s far from an impossible task, and many have succeeded in bringing smiles to their readers’ faces through their writing. Here are two examples:

‘How You Hope Your Extended Family Will React When You Explain Your Job to Them’ by Mike Lacher (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“Is it true you don’t have desks?” your grandmother will ask. You will nod again and crack open a can of Country Time Lemonade. “My stars,” she will say, “it must be so wonderful to not have a traditional office and instead share a bistro-esque coworking space.” 

Satire and parody make up a whole subgenre of creative writing, and websites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Onion consistently hit the mark with their parodies of magazine publishing and news media. This particular example finds humor in the divide between traditional family expectations and contemporary, ‘trendy’ work cultures. Playing on the inherent silliness of today’s tech-forward middle-class jobs, this witty piece imagines a scenario where the writer’s family fully understands what they do — and are enthralled to hear more. “‘Now is it true,’ your uncle will whisper, ‘that you’ve got a potential investment from one of the founders of I Can Haz Cheezburger?’”

‘Not a Foodie’ by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Electric Literature)

I’m not a foodie, I never have been, and I know, in my heart, I never will be. 

Highlighting what she sees as an unbearable social obsession with food , in this comic Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell takes a hilarious stand against the importance of food. From the writer’s courageous thesis (“I think there are more exciting things to talk about, and focus on in life, than what’s for dinner”) to the amusing appearance of family members and the narrator’s partner, ‘Not a Foodie’ demonstrates that even a seemingly mundane pet peeve can be approached creatively — and even reveal something profound about life.

We hope this list inspires you with your own writing. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be that there is no limit to what you can write about or how you can write about it. 

In the next part of this guide, we'll drill down into the fascinating world of creative nonfiction.

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Miss Huttlestone's GCSE English

Because a whole class of wonderful minds are better than just one!

2 Grade 9 Creative Writing Examples

I recently asked my year 11s to pen a piece of description and/or narrative writing for their mini assessment. I gave them the following prompts:

Your school wants you to contribute to a collection of creative writing.

EITHER: Write a short story as suggested by this picture:

OR: Write a description about a person who has made a strong impression on you.

The following were two COMPELLING and CONVINCING examples of the second choice – one pupil taking ‘you’ as a fictional invitation, the other as a biographical one:

EXAMPLE ONE:

Gradually, I awake and open my eyes only to see the cracked white ceiling which greets me every day. Here I sit, slumped in the bed with the scratchy white sheets hugging me and muffled beeping noises jumping into my ears. Rubbing the sleep crust from my bloodshot eyes, I observe the scene before me. The sound of footsteps overlapping as nurses rush from bed to bed; the metallic tang from stainless steel invading my nostrils; the cold metal bed rail imprisoning and mocking me; the pungent scent of antiseptic troubling me and the blood-curdling cries and moans utterly terrifying me. Using all my strength, I try to imagine I am somewhere else, anywhere else but here.

Crowds, signs, roars: it was 1903 and the suffragette movement had begun. It was a crisp night, refreshing almost and I had taken to the streets. It was like I was possessed by something that night, some urge and deep desire within me that had led me there, surrounded by women like myself. I stood clueless and lost in the crowd; the women yelling ‘Deeds not words’ in unison; passionately parading with large wooden signs and viciously shattering windows with bricks and stones. Despite the violence that was displayed before me, I was not afraid of what was happening and I didn’t deem it unnecessary or improper, in fact I wanted the same as these women, I wanted equality. Abruptly, all of the roars and cheers became muted and faint, one woman walked slowly towards me, her hair messily swooped into an updo, her clothes somewhat dirtied and her chocolate brown corset slightly loosened. There was a glimmer in her eyes as tears seemed to swell within their hazel pools, she seemed inspired, hopeful. After reaching me in the crowd, she held out her hand, gently passing me a sign. Immediately, I clasped it and the yelling and chanting rang loudly in my ears once more. My journey had begun.

Here however, is where it ends. I am aware I do not have much time left, as the doctors have told me so, and spending my last moments in this hospital room is not optimal. However, as I look around I can see beauty within a room which at first glance seems void of it. The hollow medical tubes by my side remind me of the awful act of force feeding I have faced in the past; the shrieks and bawls of patients reflecting the pain women had felt in my time and the bed bars mirroring the prisons we were thrown into and the gates we would chain ourselves too. I know these things may seem far from beautiful, but I can see my past within this room, the power I possessed and the changes I have contributed to today. I know now that I can leave this earth having had an impact. Slowly I close my eyes, I can see her, the women who changed my life many years ago, her name, Emmeline Pankhurst.

EXAMPLE TWO:

I will never forget that day. The hazel pools of her eyes glazed over, and hands delicately placed at her sides. Nobody in the room could quite grasp the fact that this was happening. The crowds of black attire row on row seemed to mimic the thing she loves most in life, the piano. However, this time she had taken the ivory natural keys with her and left everyone else with the sharp tones. You needed both to create beautiful symphonies but all that filled the room was the excruciating silence of her absense. Even the metronone like ticks of the clock seemed to come to a standstill.

It had all began that day, she seemed to open up this whole new world for us to explore together as she placed my fingers onto the keys for the first time. I knew that this was what I was meant to do. She was the most passionately beautiful pianist I had ever seen in my life. Often, I would peer round the oak doorway before my lessons just to catch a glimpse at her. It seemed like nothing in the world mattered to her at the time.

As the years progressed, so did the scope of this world we were exploring. Each sheet of lovingly handwritten sheet music was like a new section of the map we were slowly creating together. Each of her students had their own map. Each as beautiful and each as unique as the pianist. The crotchets and quavers that adorned the staves directed the different paths we could take as my fingers graced the keys. This may not have been a beautiful ballet routine, but this was our dance and it had been carefully choreographed just for us.

That piano room was the safest place in the world. Every inch of it her: the potent scent of her floral perfume; shelves full of scruffy and well loved sheet music; rows upon rows of framed photos of her and her students; the vintage piano which she always kept in tune, it was home. I couldn’t bear the

idea that someone else was going move in and rip away the music room without a second thought. It was her music room.

It was up to me now. Up to me to finish this journey we had begun together.

She may not be with me in person anymore, but she will always live within the world we built together and nothing could ever change that. For she could never truly be gone since she left a piece of her within every one of her students; the passion for piano.

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gcseenglishwithmisshuttlestone

Secondary English teacher in Herts. View all posts by gcseenglishwithmisshuttlestone

2 thoughts on “2 Grade 9 Creative Writing Examples”

This has helped me a lot, I myself am preparing for a narrative test like this and these prompts and descriptive short stories are marvellous! Thank you for sharing this! 🙂

My pleasure!

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Creative Writing Exemplar: AQA GCSE (Top Band)

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

31 May 2020

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This top-band descriptive writing exemplar is a perfect model for those studying AQA GCSE English Language.

Based on Question 1B, where students must complete a 40-mark piece of creative writing, this exemplar on a dark forest and a mysterious man is ideal for teaching structure, narrative, language, vocabulary, punctuation, and much more.

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English exemplars, past exams, reports and schedules

Internal and external assessment resources for English

New Level 1 standards 2024

NZQA will publish exemplars to support implementation of the new Level 1 standards where student samples from the pilots reflect the implemented standard. This will occur between 9 October 2023 and no later than the end of May 2024.

Where student samples reflecting the implemented standard are not available, exemplars will be made available on an ongoing basis after 2024 external moderation and marking has occurred.

Internal assessment exemplars 

AS 91924 - Demonstrate understanding of how context shapes verbal language use

AS 91925 - Demonstrate understanding of specific aspects of studied text

External assessments and exemplars

Level 1 English exams and exemplars (external link)

Assessment reports and schedules

Level 1 English assessment reports and schedules (external link)

On this page

Internal assessment exemplars.

AS 91101 - Produce a selection of crafted and controlled writing (2.4A)

AS 91101 - Produce a selection of crafted and controlled writing (2.B)

AS 91102 - Construct and deliver a crafted and controlled oral text (2.5)

AS 91103 - Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text (2.6)

AS 91104 - Analyse significant connections across texts, supported by evidence (2.7)

AS 91105 - Use information literacy skills to form developed conclusion(s) (2.8)

AS 91106 - Form developed personal responses to independently read texts supported by evidence (2.9)

AS 91107 - Analyse aspects of visual and/or oral text(s) through close viewing and/or listening, supported by evidence (2.10)

Level 2 English exams and exemplars (external link)

Level 2 English assessment reports and schedules (external link)

AS 91475 - Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas (3.4A)

AS 91475 - Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas (3.4B)

AS 91476 - Create and deliver a fluent and coherent oral text which develops, sustains, and structures ideas (3.5)

AS 91477 - Create and deliver a fluent and coherent visual text which develops, sustains, and structures ideas using verbal and visual language (3.6A)

AS 91477 - Create and deliver a fluent and coherent visual text which develops, sustains, and structures ideas using verbal and visual language (3.6B)

AS 91478 - Respond critically to significant connections across texts, supported by evidence (3.7)

AS 91479 - Develop an informed understanding of literature and/or language using critical texts (3.8)

AS 91480 - Respond critically to significant aspects of visual and/or oral text(s) through close reading, supported by evidence (3.9)

Level 3 English exams and exemplars (external link)

Level 3 English assessment reports and schedules (external link)

See all subjects

Achievement Criteria

Explanatory note 1.

Develop ideas in writing using stylistic and written conventions involves:

• developing ideas using stylistic conventions appropriate to audience and purpose
• using written conventions without intrusive error patterns that impede meaning.

Develop ideas in writing using stylistic and written conventions convincingly involves:

• developing connected ideas using stylistic conventions for effect, appropriate to audience and purpose
• using written conventions with accuracy, so that the writing only contains minor errors.

Develop ideas in writing using stylistic and written conventions effectively involves:

• integrating insightful ideas and stylistic conventions to command attention, appropriate to audience and purpose  
• using written conventions with control.

Explanatory Note 2

Writing can be either fiction or non-fiction and can take a variety of structures and forms, such as personal accounts, narratives, poems, scripts, reports, essays, or other appropriate text types.

Explanatory Note 3

Stylistic conventions include stylistic features, language features, and structural features.

Stylistic features are the ways in which language choices are arranged to create clarity and variety in a text.

Examples include:

• vocabulary selection

Language features are specific language techniques that create or support meaning in a text.

• figurative language (such as metaphor, simile, personification)
• sound devices (such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance).

Structural features are ways that a text is shaped or organised.

• paragraphing
• sequence/transitions
• clear opening, middle, and end.

Explanatory Note 4

Written conventions are established rules that are used to make writing comprehensible.

• spelling, grammar, and punctuation
• using vocabulary, syntax, and stylistic features
• other text conventions which are appropriate to audience and purpose.

Explanatory Note 5

Audience is the specific group for which the writing is produced.

Purpose refers to the possible intentions of the writer, as prescribed by the context.

Shared Explanatory Note

Refer to the NCEA glossary for Māori, Pacific, and further subject-specific terms and concepts.

This achievement standard is derived from the English Learning Area at Level 6 of The New Zealand Curriculum: Learning Media, Ministry of Education, 2007.

External Assessment Specifications

The External Assessment Specifications are published by NZQA and can be found on their website using this link:

NZQA English

Useful Pages

Unpacking the standard.

Mātauranga Māori constitutes concepts and principles that are richly detailed, complex, and fundamental to Māoridom. It is important to remember that the practice of these are wider and more varied than their use within the proposed NCEA Achievement Standards and supporting documentation.

We also recognise that the cultures, languages, and identities of the Pacific Islands are diverse, varied, and unique. Therefore the Pacific concepts, contexts, and principles that have been incorporated within NCEA Achievement Standards may have wide-ranging understandings and applications across and within the diversity of Pacific communities. It is not our intention to define what these concepts mean but rather offer some ways that they could be understood and applied within different subjects that kaiako and students alike can explore.

The intent of the Standard

This Achievement Standard is closely linked to the five English Big Ideas and the Learning Area whakataukī: Ko te reo tuakiri, Ko te reo tōku ahurei, Ko te reo te ora.

Engaging in the writing process is active, and occurs when texts or experiences are interpreted, and then reproduced in written form. Engaging in writing processes may give ākonga a space to express their identity, or to communicate ideas that they are interested in or care about. When the writing process requires ākonga to engage with texts as a source of joy and nourishment, this can inspire ākonga and provide them with a model for their own writing. Kaiako are able to guide ākonga through the writing process, including modelling how different stylistic or written conventions can be applied.

The understanding that this Achievement Standard assesses is the ability to make deliberate choices in the crafting and editing of writing to communicate ideas. By engaging in the writing process, ākonga learn that, as text creators, they are participants in an ongoing conversation that spans past, present, and future.

This Achievement Standard aligns with the following items of Significant Learning:

• communicate developed ideas by selecting and using a range of language features accurately for a variety of effects
• show a developed understanding of how writers position their intended audience through using the language conventions and techniques, point of view, structure, contexts, and intended purpose that shape a range of texts.

Making reliable judgements

The guiding principles of this Achievement Standard are independence, authenticity, and an ability to write for purpose and audience. In the assessment, ākonga will produce writing that builds on their ideas with a clear purpose in mind. Making a choice to write about something they are passionate about or have experienced, can allow ākonga to express their personal voice, and explore their ideas more effectively. Ākonga will use the prompts provided by NZQA as a starting point for their own writing and will draw on their previous learning.

Ākonga will be able to use stylistic conventions, which includes stylistic, structural, and language features that are appropriate to audience and purpose, in order to develop their ideas.

Ākonga will need to be able to use written conventions without intrusive error patterns that impede meaning. In order to communicate their ideas in writing, ākonga will need to have a thorough understanding of how to plan, review, and rework their ideas. This understanding will help ākonga craft their writing accurately and appropriately for a chosen audience and purpose.

At higher levels of achievement, ākonga will demonstrate control over stylistic and written conventions in order to use a distinctive voice in writing. This means that ākonga are able to show discernment in their selection of vocabulary, use of syntax, inclusion of language features, and use of structural features in order to develop increasingly complex ideas.

Collecting evidence

Writing will be externally assessed. The piece for assessment will be completed under conditions set by NZQA so that ākonga can authentically demonstrate their ability to independently communicate their ideas in writing. Throughout the drafting and editing process, kaiako must be able to verify that the work submitted for assessment has been produced by the student.

In order to provide sufficient evidence, it is recommended that writing should be around 350-500 words. While poetry may not reach this minimum, a poem considered for assessment must be of sufficient length to demonstrate depth of ideas, control of language, and form. Where significantly shorter poetry or prose pieces are included in the selection, ākonga may need to submit two pieces inorder to provide sufficient evidence for the Achievement Standard. Shorter poetry or prose pieces may be connected by theme or subject matter to ensure that sufficient development of ideas is present.

Examples of written pieces include:

• descriptions
• personal accounts
• commentaries
• text reviews
• short fiction
• other appropriate text types.

The assessment prompts will be released by NZQA at the beginning of Term 3. The final submission for the writing is early in Term 4. The period of time between the release of the prompts and the final submission of writing signals a window in which the assessment may be undertaken, and allows for the planning, drafting, and editing of writing in response to a chosen prompt.

As this is a summative assessment, ākonga should not spend the entirety of this period engaged with the assessment. Kaiako may use this time as appropriate for their learners. For example, a teacher may plan for ākonga to spend two lessons at the beginning of Term 3 independently planning and drafting their piece of writing intensively, and then ‘park’ the writing in order to engage in other teaching and learning. Ākonga then return to their drafted writing to do further independent drafting and editing. This could be repeated ahead of the final submission of the writing. Alternatively, ākonga could be engaged in the process of planning, drafting, and editing writing once a week for a portion of the assessment window.

Refer to the External Assessment Specifications for further information.

Possible contexts

The writing process should be woven throughout the year’s programme. As part of a teaching and learning programme, kaiako will give ākonga opportunities to engage with and become familiar with a range of writing types, covering a range of styles within non-fiction (formal) writing and fiction (creative) writing.

Experiences of engaging with different writing types is something that can be integrated throughout the year, as part of the study of literary and other texts. Writing opportunities should include the following stages: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and proof-reading. Kaiako are able to give formative feedback on writing that will not be used for assessment and this is something that should be utilised by ākonga to inform their learning. Kaiako are not able to give feedback on writing used for assessment.

Some opportunities for integrating writing exercises could be:

• within a language study and the learning that will be assessed with Achievement Standard 1.1. For example, using the language study as a model with a writing focus on the use of persuasive or other techniques
• within a text study. For example, writing from a different character’s point of view, or writing a prologue or epilogue for a novel that has been studied that year
• within a classroom focus on personal response. For example, documenting and reflecting on texts that they have encountered, using texts to experiment with structure, language, etc.

Standard Exclusions

This Standard has exclusion(s). Standards that recognise the same or similar learning outcomes as other Achievement or Unit Standards need to be excluded to prevent ‘double dipping’. Where two or more Standards assess the same learning outcome, those Standards are specified in the Exclusions List. You can only use credits gained from one of these Standards towards your NCEA qualification.

Click here for the exclusions list for the new NCEA Level 1 pilot Standards.

Literacy and Numeracy Requirements

This Achievement Standard has been approved for literacy in 2024 and 2025. 

Full information on the co-requisite for 2024 and 2025: Standards approved for NCEA co-requisite for 2024 and 2025 .

Supporting Material

[ file resource ].

• Title: EN1.3 Assessment Specification
• Description: English 1.3 Assessment Specification 2021 - Pilot use only
• File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-03/Assessment%20Specification%202021%20RAS%20Pilot%20Subjects%20%E2%80%93%20English%201.3.pdf?VersionId=YpLhiMG81MhzAhOPRAVd0WieUTQW06ko
• File Extension: pdf
• File Size: 242KB
• EN1.3 Assessment Specification.pdf

EN1.3 Assessment Specification

• Title: English 91926
• Description: Mini-pilot sample exemplar - Excellence
• File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-03/91926-exp-2021-excellence.pdf?VersionId=f6fyfW5j9R1Miv5Hz1NZJ9vIoPhwNtiq
• File Size: 213KB
• English 91926.pdf

English 91926

External assessments, assessment activities.

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Think of Russia and you probably picture this iconic building, whose onion-shaped domes overlook the Moscow skyline.

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A centerpiece of the Russian arts scene, this theater’s magnificent auditorium and top-tier productions will impress even the most jaded theatergoer.

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Mourners and curious visitors stream to the grave to see the embalmed Vladimir Lenin, the famous revolutionary and one-time leader of the Soviet Union.

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Lobnya, Moscow

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