At A-Level English Language, the creative writing component requires two things: a piece of original writing, and a commentary on it. The commentary is not an afterthought — it’s worth significant marks, and it tests a specific skill that is quite different from the skill of writing the piece itself.
The skill is this: talking about your own language choices analytically, using linguistic frameworks, in a way that demonstrates genuine awareness of what you were doing and why.
What a Commentary Is — and Isn’t
A commentary is not a summary of your piece (“In the first paragraph, I wrote about…”). It is not a description of what you were trying to do in vague terms (“I wanted to make it dramatic”). And it is not an apology for what you didn’t manage to achieve.
A commentary is an analytical reflection on your own linguistic choices — the specific decisions you made about form, genre, register, lexis, grammar, and structure, grounded in the frameworks you’ve been studying, and connected to the purpose and audience of your piece.
Write the Commentary Alongside the Piece
The most useful piece of advice: don’t write the piece and then try to write a commentary on it afterwards from memory. Write both together. As you make a significant decision in the writing — choosing a particular register, using a specific sentence structure for effect, drawing on a genre convention — note it immediately. “Used short declarative sentences here to create urgency” in the margin of your draft becomes the core of a commentary point when you come to write it up.
Writers who write the piece fully and then try to reverse-engineer a commentary are working much harder than they need to — and often produce commentaries that feel strained, because they’re discovering (or inventing) the rationale retrospectively.
What to Include in Your Commentary
Purpose and Audience
Establish clearly what you were trying to achieve and for whom. This context shapes all your other choices and gives the examiner the framework for evaluating them. Be specific: not “I wanted to entertain” but “I was aiming for a piece that would appeal to adult readers familiar with the conventions of Gothic fiction, deliberately subverting genre expectations by…”
Form and Structure
Why did you choose this form? How did you structure the piece, and why? If you chose a non-linear structure, what effect does that create? If you used a genre convention, were you following it, subverting it, or playing with it — and why?
Specific Language Choices
This is the heart of the commentary. Choose four or five specific language choices — a verb, a sentence structure, a lexical field, a phonological pattern — and analyse them. Why this word rather than another? What connotations does it carry? How does it relate to the piece’s overall tone and purpose?
Use the linguistic frameworks: lexis, grammar, phonology, graphology, pragmatics, discourse. You don’t need to force all of them in, but you should draw on at least two or three, and you should use the terminology precisely.
What You Would Change
Many mark schemes reward a brief honest reflection on what you might do differently — what you were attempting but feel you didn’t quite achieve, or what you’d explore if you had more words. This demonstrates critical distance from your own work, which is a sophisticated intellectual move. Don’t dwell on failure, but don’t be afraid of honest self-evaluation either.
Tone and Length
The commentary should read like analytical writing — precise, evidence-based, and confident, but not academic in the heavy sense. You’re reflecting on your creative decisions, not writing a dissertation. Aim for a tone that’s engaged and thoughtful: you’re a writer thinking clearly about craft.
Most commentaries at this level should be around 300–500 words — enough to make substantive points but focused enough to remain analytical rather than drifting into description.
A-Level English Language at Thorogood English includes dedicated work on the creative writing component and commentary, with individual feedback at every stage. Join the waiting list for January 2027 classes.
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