Writing amazing – and not just passable – compositions can be a struggle. How does one produce a piece of writing that truly impacts the reader?

While a challenging endeavour, it is no doubt important to learn how to write amazing compositions. Indeed, starting from Primary School and the PSLE, compositions are a key feature of English exams, which follow through into the narrative essay in Secondary School. Ultimately, the skill of knowing how to tell a story effectively and convincingly is also highly valuable in the ‘real world’ even beyond exams.

How then can students learn to write amazing compositions? Overall, this can be accomplished through being willing to go into details and being descriptive, to building multiple perspectives through reading widely, and finally, which may be the most challenging mentally, believing in the merit of what one is writing.

Firstly, the ability to write amazing compositions stems from being willing to go into details and writing descriptively. Most sequences of events that one is writing about can be summarised quite quickly and without much description.

For instance: The boy saw an elderly person fall on the road and no one helped him. The boy felt angry and went to help the elderly person.

Such a description, though summing up the main events, does not make for a memorable essay. This is because such simple narration of events does not actually ‘stick’ in the reader’s mind, to the extent that the reader becomes immersed and pictures himself/herself in the scene.

A more detailed description including how the elderly person fell on the road can he render the composition more interesting and engaging, and hence one step closer towards amazing.

For example: Planting one tired foot in front the other, Uncle Tan struggled to cross the road in time as the green light was flashing. His heart pounded heavily as his right arm quivered while clutching on to his umbrella. Splash! He slipped on a puddle and fell, back first, on the tarmac road with a loud smack. Onlookers dashed towards Uncle Tan as vehicles instinctively flicked on their hazard lights.

In summary, there are several factors which make a composition amazing. Being willing to go into specific details is a good start. In the next post, we will discuss how to develop a personal voice, something important for secondary school essays, and showing confidence when writing.