The writing commentary (H474/03 Section B, Q4): analysing your own recreative piece with the integrated method (14 marks), explaining how your choices of language, form and structure shape meaning for the new audience and purpose, and how they relate to the original (AO1, AO2, AO3).

What this dot point is asking

The recreative piece (Question 3) is followed by a commentary (Question 4, 14 marks) in which you analyse your own writing. It rewards AO1, AO2 and AO3, turned on your own text: you explain how your choices of language, form and structure shape meaning for the new audience and purpose, and how they relate to the original. The commentary is metalinguistic analysis, not a narrative of the writing process. This dot point covers what the commentary rewards and how to analyse your own craft.

The answer

The commentary is the integrated method applied to your own writing, and the single most important shift is from narration to analysis. A weak commentary tells the story of writing the piece; a strong one analyses how the piece means, selecting the significant choices and reading their effect with precise terminology, framed by audience, purpose and the original. Three things deliver the marks: analyse, do not narrate; be selective and precise; and link to the original.

Analyse your writing, do not narrate the process

The defining error is the process diary: "first I decided to write from her point of view, then I added some imagery, and I changed the ending." This narrates and earns little. The commentary is analysis: treat your recreative piece as a text and analyse how its choices make meaning, exactly as you would a set prose extract. The question is not what you did in what order, but how the writing works, what each choice does to meaning for the reader. Write in the analytical present ("the short declaratives build a watchful restraint"), not the narrative past of the writing process.

Be selective and precise

You have limited words for the commentary, so be selective: choose the few most significant choices in your piece and analyse them deeply, rather than listing every feature shallowly. For each chosen choice, name it precisely (the narrative voice and its grammar, the register, the structural decision, the stylistic effect), with the right terminology (AO1), and read what it does to meaning (AO2). Depth on a few load-bearing choices, the voice, the structure, a key stylistic decision, scores better than a thin tour of everything you wrote.

Link to audience, purpose and the original

AO3 in the commentary covers the new context and the relation to the original. Explain who you wrote for and to what purpose, and read your choices as shaped by that: this register because the audience is this, this structure because the purpose is that. And explain the relation to the original: what you took, transformed, sustained or illuminated, and how your understanding of the original's method informed your choices. The commentary should show that the recreation was an act of reading as well as writing, connecting your craft to the source text.

Examples in context

The set texts and tasks vary by series, so the moves below are illustrative.

Analysis, not narration. "The recreative piece constructs the servant's restraint through its grammar: the short, end-stopped declaratives and the near-absence of modality build a voice that records but withholds judgement, fitting a character who cannot speak freely, and the reader infers the feeling the syntax refuses to state. This choice was informed by the original's own reticence about her, which I transformed into a voiced but still-guarded interiority." Precise choice, effect, link to original, in the analytical present.

Selective depth. "Rather than list every device, the commentary analyses the single most consequential decision: sustaining the original's retrospective first person while letting doubt enter the modality. The shift from confident declaratives to hedged 'perhaps' constructions creates a growing unreliability for the reader, and it grew from my reading of how the original's narrator controls disclosure. One choice, analysed deeply, carries the commentary." Depth over breadth.

Try this

Q1. What is the commentary, and what does it reward? [2 marks]

• Cue. A metalinguistic analysis of your own recreative piece (Q4, 14 marks) rewarding AO1, AO2 and AO3: precise terminology, how your choices shape meaning, and the audience, purpose and relation to the original.

Q2. Why is a process narrative a weak commentary? [2 marks]

• Cue. "First I... then I..." narrates the writing rather than analysing how the piece means; the commentary rewards analysis of choices and their effects, not a diary.

Q3. Write a commentary explaining the choices in your recreative piece and how they were informed by the original. [14 marks]

• What the marker wants. Selective, precise analysis of a few load-bearing choices (AO1), read for their effect on meaning (AO2), framed by the new audience and purpose and the relation to the original (AO3), in the analytical present.

A note on the commentary

This guide is AI-written and not individually human-reviewed. The exact commentary wording varies by series; confirm it against the current OCR H474/03 materials, and note the true 14-mark tariff for Question 4. The skill, analysing your own writing with the integrated method and linking it to the original, transfers across the texts and tasks.