Narrative Composition: Question 10
Syllabus W1, W3
A student planning a story titled "New Beginnings" has this outline: "Amina and her family move to a new country. She struggles at first, but over the next six months she settles into her new school, makes a close friend, and eventually goes on a school trip where she feels fully at home."
(a) Identify the specific problem with this outline's scope, and explain why it would weaken the finished story. [2]
(b) Propose a single, focused episode from within this outline that could be developed into a complete short story with its own setup, complication and resolution. Briefly describe what each of those three stages would cover. [3]
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Worked solution
Assessment focus
This tests understanding that a short story’s biggest challenge is often scope rather than ideas: recognising when an outline covers too much time, and being able to narrow it to a single, well-developed episode with its own shape.
Mark scheme (5 marks)
- (a) Problem identified (2 marks): the outline covers six months and several separate stages (struggling, settling in, making a friend, the school trip), which a short story cannot properly develop; each stage would only be sketched briefly, and the ending in particular is likely to feel sudden or unearned because there is no room to build up to it.
- (b) Narrowed episode (3 marks): 1 mark each for a setup, complication and resolution drawn from a single moment within the outline, causally connected to one another, showing the whole idea compressed into one manageable episode.
Model answer
(a) The outline tries to cover six months and at least three separate stages within the space of a short story. Covering this much time means each stage can only be sketched briefly, leaving no room for the detail, tension or earned resolution that a single, well-developed episode allows. The ending in particular is likely to feel sudden, since there is no space to build up to it properly.
(b) Focus on just Amina’s first day at the new school. Setup: Amina arrives at the school gates, unable to read the signs and recognising no one. Complication: she is sent to the wrong classroom by mistake and must find her way with no shared language to ask for help, the day growing more disorientating with each wrong turn. Resolution: a classmate notices her confusion and, without needing shared language, simply walks with her to the right room. A small, earned moment of connection that resolves the immediate situation without leaping ahead to “feeling fully at home.”
Why this works
Narrowing the outline to a single school day gives each stage (setup, complication, resolution) enough space to be properly developed, and the resolution follows directly from the complication (the same classmate who could have ignored her instead helps) rather than jumping ahead to a much later, unearned sense of belonging.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
- Answering (a) with “it’s not exciting enough,” which criticises the outline without identifying that its scope, the amount of time and number of stages, is the actual structural problem.
- Answering (b) with “the day Amina makes her close friend, and then the school trip where she feels at home,” which still spans two separate stages rather than narrowing to one.