While not everyone may be a naturally gifted creative writer, everyone has the ability to express themselves in words and do so every day, through social media, emails, cards, letters, texts, notes, verbal discussions, classroom work, etc...Your job in this question is to be convincing and compelling in your story, characters and the words you choose to develop these.
One approach to creating a story for Paper 1 Question 5 is to write your story from the perspective of another character's point of view from the source material itself.
You are not copying the story, but retelling it from someone else's point of view. This will still cover all of the mark scheme: convincing story, developed character, engaging structure and use of SPaG.
You already have a good grasp of the story and characters from the source from the last hour of the exam in the reading of the source and completing the reading section, so you can be in a strong position to have a closer look at someone else's thoughts, views, opinions, observations, emotions, etc in the story itself.
Another approach may be to take a more unique perspective of the source material, such as through the eyes of an invented character or an inanimate object or animal...(as if being a 'fly on the wall' when you want to know what's happening in a place you have no access to). A different perspective doesn't make the story less convincing if you tell it well and believe in what you are doing.
Below is an extract from Gregory Maguire's 'Wicked'. In this novel he questions whether it was ever the Witch of the West who was wicked, or if she was a victim of the Wizard, Dorothy and circumstances. This reversal of point of view gives the whole story of The Wizard of Oz a different angle of perspective...
Dorothy was a dark shape, huddled over, retching on the stones.
“You haven’t answered my question,” said the Witch, poking the torch up high, releasing
spectres and ghosts among the shadows of the castellations. “You’ve come hunting me down, and I want to know. Why will you murder me?”
The Witch slammed the door behind her and locked it. All the better.
The girl could only gasp.
“You think they’re not telling stories about you all over Oz? You think I don’t know the Wizard
sent you here to bring back proof that I was dead?”
“Oh, that,” said Dorothy, “that is true, but that’s not why I came!”
“You can’t possibly be a competent liar, not with that face!” The Witch held the broom up at an angle. “Tell me the truth, and when you’ve finished, then I’ll kill you, for in times like these, my little one, you must kill before you are killed.”
“I couldn’t kill you,” said the girl, weeping. “I was horror-struck to have killed your sister.
How could I kill you too?”
“Very charming,” said the Witch, “very nice, very touching. Then why did you come here?”
“Yes, the Wizard said to murder you,” Dorothy said, “but I never intended to, and that’s not
why I came!”
The Witch held the burning broom even higher, closer, to look in the girl’s face.
“When they said … when they said that it was your sister, and that we had to come here . . . it was like a prison sentence, and I never wanted to - - . but I thought, well, I would come, and my friends would come with me to help. . . and I would come.. . and I would say..
“Say what,” cried the Witch, on the edge.
“I would say,” said the girl, straightening up, gritting her teeth, “I would say to you: Would you ever forgive me for that accident, for the death of your sister; would you ever ever forgive me, for I could never forgive myself!”
The Witch shrieked, in panic, in disbelief.
Sometimes the good characters are bad and the bad characters can be good.
It just depends on your point of view...
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