Creating drama: devising from a stimulus at SQA National 5 Drama

Creating drama is one of the two skill areas in SQA National 5 Drama. You devise original drama from a starting point called a stimulus, shaping ideas into a piece with a clear purpose and audience. This page maps the area and links to the detailed answers.

What this area covers

Creating drama brings together the devising process and the vocabulary of stagecraft. The dot points in this module cover each part:

Creating and devising drama

Responding to a stimulus, generating and developing ideas, and fixing a purpose and target audience that drive every later choice.

Form, genre, structure and style

The four terms that describe the shape and feel of a piece, and how to choose each deliberately.

Dramatic conventions and techniques

The tools of stagecraft (mime, narration, soliloquy, aside, flashback, freeze-frame, tableau, thought-tracking, slow motion) and the effect of each.

How it is assessed

Creating drama feeds the practical work and the written question paper. In the practical, you devise and shape drama. In the question paper, you explain the creative choices in your own work and analyse them in a professional production, so the vocabulary here is examined directly.

How to study it

1. Learn the four terms precisely. Keep structure (order of events) and style (manner of presentation) distinct; they are the most commonly confused.
2. Build a convention toolkit. For each convention, learn a one-line definition and its effect on the audience.
3. Practise convention plus effect. Never name a device without saying what it achieves; that pairing is where the marks are.
4. Devise with purpose. When creating, decide purpose and audience first, then let form, structure, style and conventions follow.

For the official course specification

The SQA publishes the full National 5 Drama course specification, including the drama lexicon, at sqa.org.uk. Always revise from the current specification.