The descriptive writing question - the picture - can always provide problems when a student feels that they can't find their way into it.
It's not simply descriptive writing that will maximise your potential to achieve the mark scheme here; make sure that you create a story in which descriptions play a supportive role.
You can use the senses, language features and structural features to develop your creative writing further, but you must keep in mind the Level 4 target: convincing and compelling.
With this in mind, there are 3 ways in to the picture in Question 5 of Paper 1:
1) a literal approach - that what you see in the picture is what you get in the story (an explicit reading of the picture).
2) a metaphorical approach - the picture becomes implicit. It is more abstract and can become more symbolic, emotional or internal such as daydreams, nightmares, fears and ambitions, etc.
3) a story based on the source material - as the pictures are linked in some way to the story that you have already analysed in the reading section, there are themes, characters, structural features, language features, etc that you can re-invent yourself in your own work. The writing section is linked to the reading section; never see them as independent from each other. While you can't copy the source material, you can certainly borrow from it quite generously with similar ideas/characters/structure.
Everyone can write a story, because every IS a story. Use one of the 3 ways listed above as your way into the picture and then make it convincing.
This 1 question alone is worth 25% of your overall marks for this qualification. Make sure you answer it clearly and, better yet, convincingly.
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