Assignment 2

• Assignment 2 = a piece of descriptive writing, 500–800 words, marked purely on writing skill (not content knowledge).
• Two mark categories: content & structure (10) and style & accuracy (15) — accuracy is worth more, so grammar/spelling really matters.
• Descriptive writing is observational — you're behind a camera lens, not a character in a story.
• No characters, no dialogue, no plot progression — but you CAN include small, contained movement (a fly buzzing, a car passing).
• Use the 6-step structure: Panoramic → Zoom → Single line → Shift → Shift → Panoramic.
• Bring the scene to life using contrast: sound/silence, movement/stillness, light/dark.
• Match your tone (sentence length/type) to the mood of the scene.
• Use precise vocabulary, sensory language, and deliberate literary techniques (simile, personification) — never vague words like "amazing."

Think of this like a photography assignment, except your camera is your vocabulary. You're not being asked to write a story with a beginning, middle, and end — you're being asked to take one moment (a busy market, a sunrise, a wait before an exam) and describe it so precisely that someone reading it could close their eyes and be there.

Here's the mark breakdown, and notice something important — style and accuracy (15 marks) is worth more than content and structure (10 marks). That means a beautifully imagined scene written with sloppy grammar will score lower than a simpler scene written with precise, accurate, varied language.

This is the single most important concept in the whole chapter, so let's really sit with it. Imagine you're holding a camera at a scene. You can't talk to anyone in the shot. You can't make anyone do anything for your convenience. You just observe, and you choose what to point your lens at, when to zoom in, and when to pull back out.

silent observer

The Six-Step Structure

This is your go-to blueprint for structuring any descriptive piece. Think of it as a camera's shot list for one continuous "take":