Writing question
Write a short description of a person or animal waking up in a strange place.
- Do not describe yourself.
Your description could be real or imaginary.
You should try to make it clear:
- Where your person or animal is
- What the place is like
- How the person or animal feels
You might like to:
- Use the senses
- Use a simile or a metaphor
Practise this exact question with personalised feedback on your writing.
Understand the task
Waking in a strange place gives a fast route into curiosity or alarm. Make the waking figure distinct, then reveal the setting through what that person or animal notices.
- perspective
- sensory imagery
- feelings
- characterisation
Requirements to keep in mind
Do not describe yourself; describe another person or an animal.
Plan your response
- Choose someone or an animal other than yourself.
- Reveal the strange place gradually through their senses.
- Show confusion through actions and reactions.
- Use one strong simile or metaphor.
- Make clear how the character feels by the ending.
Check your response against the task requirements. Leave time to review sentence clarity, punctuation and spelling.
Original atoply example response
Written by atoply, not an official school answer or mark scheme. Other successful responses are possible.
Reveal example and teaching notes
The fox cub woke with its nose pressed against cold glass. It blinked in confusion. Instead of the familiar darkness of its den, green light surrounded it, and enormous leaves hung above its head like damp umbrellas.
It rose on trembling paws. The air smelled of wet earth and strange, sharp flowers. A narrow path stretched between rows of clay pots, and somewhere overhead water dripped steadily from a pipe. Beyond the glass walls, rain whispered against the roof. The cub remembered squeezing through a gap in a fence during the night, then chasing a moth through an open door. Now that door was shut.
Its ears flattened. Every creak of the greenhouse sounded like the footsteps of a large animal. The cub hurried beneath a wooden bench, brushing against a pot that rocked dangerously on its edge. Then it saw movement: a robin hopping calmly along the path. The fox watched its tiny visitor, and its breathing slowed.
A gust of wind lifted the door a finger's width. The cub's ears pricked. There was the scent of wet grass—familiar, fresh and wonderfully free. It squeezed through the gap and raced towards the hedge.
Learn from the example
- Concrete details build an impression of the subject. Notice how those choices work together rather than reading as a list of general adjectives.
- The viewpoint controls what the reader notices. Choose details and an order that sustain the task's requested perspective and atmosphere.