Descriptive Writing

Develop powerful descriptive writing skills for the 11+ exam.

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Using the Five Senses in 11+ Descriptive Writing

How to incorporate all five senses into your descriptive writing to create immersive scenes for 11+ exams.

6 min readIntermediate

Writing Vivid Settings That Score Top Marks in the 11+

Teach students how to bring a setting to life using layered sensory detail. Cover the difference between "listing" senses and weaving them into action. Provide three worked examples: a forest scene, a busy market, and a stormy coastline. For each, show a basic version and an improved version with annotations explaining what changed and why. Include tips on using weather, light, and sound to create atmosphere. Close with a five-minute timed exercise where students describe a room from memory.

8 min readIntermediate

Creating Atmosphere and Mood in 11+ Descriptive Writing

Explain how word choice, sentence length, and pacing work together to create a specific mood. Cover four moods commonly tested: tension, joy, sadness, and wonder. For each mood, provide a short example passage and highlight the techniques used. Discuss how colour, temperature, and texture words contribute to atmosphere. Include a practical exercise where the student writes the same scene twice with two different moods. Keep language accessible and examples relatable to children aged 10 to 11.

8 min readIntermediate

Describing Characters That Examiners Remember

Teach students how to introduce a character in a way that makes them feel real and distinctive. Cover: choosing one or two defining physical details (not a head-to-toe inventory), revealing personality through action and dialogue rather than adjective lists, using a character's relationship with their environment to show who they are. Provide three example character introductions at different quality levels and discuss what makes the best one effective. Include an exercise where students write a 100-word character introduction using the techniques taught.

7 min readIntermediate

Describing Weather and Seasons in 11+ Writing

Vocabulary banks and techniques for describing all four seasons, with model paragraphs and a writing exercise using pathetic fallacy.

10 min readIntermediate

Describing Action Scenes Without Losing the Reader

Structural rules for writing chase, fight, and rescue scenes — sentence length, concrete verbs, clarity, and a before-and-after comparison.

9 min readIntermediate

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