1.
Success in Creative Writing
Exams
Made specifically for the NSC Matric
English Home Language Paper 3
Exam

2.
What does the Exam require?
• It is a creative writing exam consisting of 3 pieces – a long
essay, a longer transactional piece, and a shorter
transactional piece.
• Check the mark allocation and plan your time carefully
beforehand.

3.
Preparing for Transactional Writing
• You can always review the formats needed for specific
transactional writing, e.g. formal letters, editorials, dialogues
etc.
• HOWEVER, I cannot for the life of me understand why some
people CHOOSE to do transactional writing with complex
formats. It’s very easy to make a careless mistake and forfeit
marks.
• You get to choose the topics for the transactional pieces.
There’s always an easy option with very few formatting rules
(diary entries, editorials, speeches). I advise you to choose this
option: more room for creativity and less room for mistakes.

4.
• As I’ve said before, choose a good topic – one that doesn’t
entail a complex format, and is versatile.
• Transactional writing can be boring, so I like to shake things
up a bit. Write something you’d love to read.
• It might be too short a space to develop a good storyline, but
it’s not too short to create a bit of a mystery or create
something interesting.
• Sometimes the topics are very specific. This always sucks, as
you have less space to be creative. However, if you come up
with a very creative twist to an otherwise lame topic, you’ll
impress your marker even more.
Transactional Writing

5.
• Make a diary entry reflect a life as thrilling and exciting as you’d
like your own life to be. Remember that diaries are for secrets.
Make those secrets interesting. Nobody wants to read about
your boring day at school and your boring friends. Truth.
• Imagine you’ve just found a diary lying on the side of the road.
You don’t know who it belonged to. There is only one entry.
Write something as exciting as what you’d like to read.
• Leave a bit of mystery without being too vague. Leave a bit to
the imagination so that the reader WANTS to turn over the page
(which is unfortunate for them because, if they do, they’ll just
find your other essay… mwahahaha)
Transactional Writing: Diaries

6.
Topic: You have just moved house. Describe your feelings at leaving
your home and friends behind (BORING)
18-05-2013
My room is just a fold-out bed surrounded by ugly brown cardboard
boxes; my closet, a tiny suitcase full of the crumpled clothes I threw
in the night before.
I was lucky to find a place so soon.
I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take Anna’s saddened
smile from the other side of the street – she was wishing, waiting
for her husband to come home. I knew if I stayed there I would have
been weakened by her gift of fresh-baked cookies on a lonely
Sunday afternoon. I’d have snapped and told her that her husband
was buried beneath the wisteria in my back yard.
Transactional Writing: Diary Entry
Example

7.
• Editorials are cool because you get to pretend you’re the editor
of an awesome magazine or newspaper.
• For a magazine: write an editorial that drops names of articles
that you’d like to read. Perhaps let the ‘issue’ you’re writing for
have a theme – such as ‘love’ for the month of February, ‘horror’
for October, or ‘strong women’ for August. Let your articles link
to this theme, and perhaps tell a short story/analogy to tie it all
together.
• For a newspaper: deliver ‘intelligent opinion’ on the latest news.
This is cool because you get to be opinionated about a recent
topic. Call on discussions you’ve had in history/around the
dinner table/with idiots on News24 for inspiration.
Transactional Writing: Editorials

8.
• Always had an excellent idea for a movie/book and never had
the motivation to make it happen? Here’s your chance to put
those ideas to good use. I’m sure you wont have to write a
blurb on a book that already exists in the NSC exam – they
can’t assume you’ve all read a specific book.
• Write a book blurb that makes YOU want to read the book.
• Keep the tone similar to that of the book. Leave a bit of
mystery in it: this is a blurb, not a spoiler.
Transactional Writing: Blurbs

9.
Evil in the Veins
Professor Amy Harris has it all: a lucrative contract with a world-
class publishing company, a reputation as one of the country’s
leading criminologists, and a loving relationship with her
adoptive parents. As a consultant for the NYPD, she’s helped put
many heartless criminals behind bars, working on instinct alone.
But when her DNA appears on a series of slain and mutilated
corpses around her hometown, she has no explanation.
In order to find the killer and clear her name, she must return to
the orphanage where she was abused as a child for answers. How
are the victims of this serial killer related? Why is she so good at
catching killers? And… How did the killer get her DNA?
Transactional Writing: Blurb Example

10.
• It may seem strange: how can one prepare oneself for creativity
and imagination? How can you inspire yourself to write an
excellent piece – especially under so much pressure?
• To be honest, the best way to prepare yourself to write a good
piece is to write an excellent essay beforehand and use that. It’s
unconventional, but it’s not unethical and it works.
– Write an essay whenever you feel inspired. A detailed outline will do.
– Remember the important points, and any figures of speech or
particularly poetic descriptions you’d like to put in.
– When the exam rolls around, you’ll have a number of very general topics
to choose from. Choose one that relates to your prepared essay, even in a
very small/symbolic way.
– Sometimes, its helpful to mention the exact words of the essay topic in
the essay – it shows the link.
Preparing for the Essay

11.
• Read a few particularly inspirational essays or poems
beforehand. You might want to try reading English
Alive, creative writing pieces from old school
magazines, Poemscapes, creative blogs, essays found
online, quotes on weheartit or essays written by classmates.
• If you come up with a few awesome lines you might want to use
in the essay, write them down and read them beforehand. Don’t
be ashamed to recycle old quotes. If you used a particularly cool
line in a previous essay, you can always use it again.
• If you prefer writing argumentative essays, read some of the
latest news articles. If you really want to get your argumentative
muscle pumping, take a look at the comments on News24
articles.
More Short-Term Prep Techniques

12.
• Read. A LOT. If you don’t read, you have no advantage over
those who can’t read.
• Keep a creative writing journal and use it to record all the
awesome stuff your brain comes up with. Write down
dreams, cool lines, ideas, etc. I’ve based many of my essays
on dreams (not only my own dreams, but my friends’
dreams, too).
• Learn and record cool words: “sporadically”, “malleable” and
“mortuary” are cool words that make you sound well-read.
• Keep in touch with good spelling and grammar. I know it’s
boring, but it’s important. On that note, sorry for all the
spelling and grammar mistakes in this presentation 
More Long-Term Prep Techniques

13.
General Essay Writing Tips
• Planning is important. To be honest, I sometimes wrote the
essay and THEN did the planning. Not always a good idea: it’s
great to write all your cool ideas down before they slip out of
your mind.
• Have a genre chosen in your mind. This will remind you of
the purpose of your essay: is it to scare? Excite? Create
suspense? Convey heartache? Convey happiness?
• Be an honest writer. The best way to write is to be in touch
with your feelings, to be vulnerable, and to show raw
emotion. Deep.
• Be confident. No matter how terrible you are as a writer,
you’ll be better than you were a few years ago.
• Don’t just write to get marks. Write to entertain both
yourself and the marker.

14.
• It has been said that the best writers are those who write on
what they know. Don’t take this literally.
• Do you think J.K. Rowling was once a little boy who went off in
a magic bus to a school of Wizardry in a crazy magic land
accessed by an imaginary platform? Probably not.
• If people only wrote what they knew, we’d have no sci-
fi, fantasy, or horror, and a great deal of fiction would be bland.
• To ‘write what you know’, immerse yourself in your imaginary
world. Empathize with your characters. Draw on your own
experiences to make your descriptions more genuine, but you
don’t have to use your life as a basis for the storyline.
Essay Writing Tips: Write What You Know

15.
• HOWEVER, don’t write about something you know
NOTHING about.
• For example, if you’re going to write something about the
Cherokee people of America, make sure you actually know
something about them. Making things up and going on
stereotypes and clichés is literally the worst thing you
could do. Not only would it be offensive, you’d end up
looking like an uncultured, egotistical idiot.
Essay Writing Tips: Write What You Know

16.
• Really good writing reflects the ‘spirit of the time’ – the
zeitgeist. If set in the past, your essay should evoke some
kind of nostalgia for that time.
• For example, a good friend of mine set a love story in
1970s South Africa. She reflected the spirit of the time
through subtly mentioning music
icons, technology, fashion, and of course the political
situation at the time.
• Roaring 20s (a la Gatsby):
flappers, jazz, speakeasies, glamour and decadence.
• 90s: Dawson’s creek, payphones, “I know you are – but
what am I?”,Gameboy, no internet (aaah!)
Zeitgeist: the Best Writing Tip Ever

17.
• Zeitgeist may be difficult to capture if you’re young, and
especially if you’re writing about the era you’re currently
living in. But, it can be done!
• I wrote an essay that spoke of a love story set in our time
(2012) from the perspective of someone in 2022. I
mentioned Typo shopping bags, hipster
glasses, Instagram, the Lumineers, Ed
Sheeran, anklebiters, brogues, Affinity, Twitter and the
current political situation.
Zeitgeist: the Best Writing Tip Ever