How to plan an 11 Plus story in five minutes

Ask most children how long they spend planning an 11 Plus story and the honest answer is none. They read the question, pick up the pen and start.

Sometimes that works. More often, the story runs out of road halfway down the second page, the ending is rushed, and the best idea arrives with two minutes left.

In nearly two decades as a journalist, working on titles including Glamour and BBC Good Homes, I learnt that most writing is decided before the first word goes down. The same is true of an 11 Plus story. Five minutes of planning is not time lost. It is the part that makes the other twenty five minutes work.

Here is the routine I teach.

Minute one: read the task twice

Underline what it asks for. Is it a story, a description, a letter? Is there a title, an opening line, a picture? Children lose more marks by answering the wrong task than by any spelling mistake.

Minute two: decide the ending first

This feels backwards, but it is the single most useful habit. If your child knows where the story ends, every paragraph has somewhere to go.

The ending does not need to be clever. It needs to be a change. Something should be different at the end from how it was at the beginning.

Minute three: three moments, not ten events

A strong 11 Plus story has three moments: an opening that sets the scene, a problem, and a turn. That is plenty for twenty five minutes. Children who plan ten events tend to write ten thin paragraphs.

Minute four: a small word bank

Five words or phrases your child wants to use: two for the setting, two for feelings and one strong verb. This stops the writing slipping into “nice”, “big” and “went”.

Minute five: write the first sentence

Not in the plan. On the page. The first sentence is the hardest one to write, and once it is there, the rest follows far more easily.

Practise the plan, not just the story

At home, try planning without writing the story at all. Give your child a title, five minutes and a timer, then talk through the plan together. Three or four quick plans a week build the habit much faster than one full story.

If you would like to see what strong finished pieces look like, our post on 11 Plus creative writing examples that got top marks walks through several.

Want an expert eye on your child’s writing?

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