Thirty minutes goes quickly. Many students either skip planning and get lost halfway through, or plan for so long that they run out of time to finish. A short, sharp plan solves both problems.
Split your 30 minutes
A good starting point:
- 5 minutes: read the prompt carefully and plan
- 20–22 minutes: write
- 3–5 minutes: check and fix
Practice this split at home until it feels natural.
Plan on the page
You don't need a separate planning sheet. Type a few short lines at the top of the writing box, then write your piece underneath. Use notes, not full sentences. Nobody marks the plan.
Before you finish, delete the plan so the marker only reads your piece. Leave yourself a few seconds at the end for this.
The five-line plan
Almost any piece can be planned in five lines:
- Hook: how will you grab the reader in the first sentence?
- Beat 1: first main idea or event
- Beat 2: second main idea or event
- Beat 3: third main idea or event
- Ending: how will you finish?
Add one more note at the top: who is the audience and what is the form? (For example: "local newspaper readers, newspaper report".) This keeps you on purpose and on topic.
Example plans
A story
Prompt: write a story that begins on the night the lighthouse light goes out.
- Form/audience: story, general reader
- Hook: "The light had never gone out. Not once in a hundred years."
- Beat 1: Mia sees the dark tower from her window and wakes her brother
- Beat 2: they climb to the lighthouse and find the keeper missing
- Beat 3: a boat is heading for the rocks and Mia must relight the lamp
- Ending: the beam sweeps out again, and Mia realises why the keeper chose her
A persuasive letter
Prompt: persuade your principal to agree or disagree with banning devices at lunchtime.
- Form/audience: formal letter, principal
- Hook: a question, "When did you last see a game of handball with no one watching a screen?"
- Reason 1: more movement and fresh air
- Reason 2: better friendships and fewer online arguments
- Reason 3: better focus in afternoon lessons
- Ending: answer the other side ("phones are needed for emergencies") and call to action
A newspaper report
Prompt: write a report about a hailstorm for the local paper.
- Form/audience: newspaper report, local readers
- Hook: headline plus a lead sentence covering who, what, when and where
- Beat 1: what happened, step by step
- Beat 2: the damage and how people responded
- Beat 3: quotes from two different people
- Ending: what happens next (clean-up, weather warnings)
Practice planning on its own
Planning gets faster with practice. Try this drill: take three prompts and give yourself 5 minutes to plan each one, without writing the piece. Then compare the plans. Which one would be easiest to write? Which has the strongest hook?
You can get a new prompt every time on our practice page.
The most important check
Before you start writing, read the prompt one more time and ask: does my plan answer what the prompt asks? Writing that drifts off-topic is marked lower, however good it is.