Why I Mark 11+ Writing Like a Magazine Editor – And What That Means for Your Child

Most 11+ writing advice sounds the same: “add more detail”, “use better vocabulary”, “practise under timed conditions”. As a former journalist who spent years writing for the Sunday Mirror magazine, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Woman & Home, BBC Good Homes and Retail Week, that kind of vague feedback would never have survived an editor’s desk. And it shouldn’t be good enough for your child’s 11+ preparation either.

When I trained as a journalist, my work was judged on one thing: does this piece do its job clearly, powerfully and on time? Every sentence had to earn its place. If a paragraph waffled, it was cut. If a story lacked structure, it was sent back. If I buried the most interesting part on page two, my editor would find it before I did and I would hear about it.

That is exactly how I now look at your child’s 11+ creative writing. And it is the reason I built the 11+ Creative Writing Mini Course on Geek School Courses.

What the Newsroom Taught Me About Writing Under Pressure

In a newsroom, you learn three habits very fast or you do not last long. Structure first. Clarity over fluff. Ruthless editing. Those three habits are exactly what most 11+ children are missing when they sit down to write a creative piece under exam conditions.

Structure first: journalists never start typing and hope for the best. We decide the beginning, middle and end before we touch the keyboard. In my course, I show children how to build a simple but powerful story plan in under two minutes, so they are never staring at a blank page while the clock ticks away.

Clarity over fluff: in journalism, every lazy adjective gets cut. “Nice”, “very”, “really” – all gone. I train children to spot and replace those dead words with specific, vivid language that exam markers actually notice and reward.

Ruthless editing: a good article is rewritten more than it is written. In the mini course, my personalised video feedback walks your child through that editing process on their own work, line by line, so they start to hear the difference between a first draft and an 11+ standard piece.

Why Your Child’s “Creative” Ideas Are Not Enough

I have marked thousands of 11+ scripts from bright children who can talk brilliantly about their ideas but whose writing reads like a rushed homework. The patterns repeat themselves week after week.

No clear narrative thread – the story wanders off in three directions, then runs out of time. Characters who appear and disappear with no purpose, as if the child forgot they existed halfway through. Endings that simply stop because the clock does, not because the story is finished. Very basic vocabulary – “nice”, “then”, “suddenly” on repeat. No sense of setting, atmosphere or tension.

From a journalist’s point of view, these are structural problems, not talent problems. A good editor would not say “try harder”. A good editor would say “here is exactly where you lost the reader, here is why, and here is how to fix it”. That is precisely what I do inside the 11+ Creative Writing Mini Course, using real 11+ style prompts rather than random worksheets.

How the 11+ Creative Writing Mini Course Actually Works

The course sits on Geek School Courses and is deliberately lean. No padding, no filler lessons, just the pieces that move marks. It is built for children in Years 4 to 6 who are aiming at grammar school stage 2 or independent school entrance exams.

Each lesson focuses on one professional writing skill translated into child-friendly language: planning under pressure, vivid description, sentence variety, pacing, or dialogue. After every lesson, your child completes a task modelled on real 11+ questions. I then record a personalised video over their work, pointing out exactly where they are losing marks and showing them how to fix it in the very next piece.

Parents tell me this is the first time they have actually understood why a piece is a certain level and what “better” looks like in practice. That clarity comes directly from journalism. You cannot hand a vague brief back to a reporter, and you should not hand vague feedback to a child who wants to pass a competitive exam.

Why I Pair the Mini Course with the April Intensive

Every April, I run a holiday 11+ intensive where I see the same problem on repeat: children who have done endless papers but have never been shown how to think like a writer on a deadline. They can fill in a comprehension answer. They can circle a synonym. But hand them a blank page and a prompt, and the wheels come off.

The intensive gives them live practice under my eye. The 11+ Creative Writing Mini Course gives you the follow-through at home. Before or during April, your child works through the online lessons and submits their tasks. I mark and send video feedback, which we then build on in live sessions during the intensive. By the time we hit the summer term, they are not guessing. They have had their writing edited by someone who has lived both sides of the red pen: in national magazines and in the 11+ world.

What Happens Next

If you are tired of generic advice and you want a mainstream-published writer to train your child’s 11+ writing at a professional level, the 11+ Creative Writing Mini Course is where we start. Enrol them today, and let me put an editor’s eye on their next story. And if you want the full April intensive experience alongside it, get in touch now while places are still available.