Studying a Scottish set text prose work: analysing narrative voice, characterisation, setting, structure and theme in a novel or short story, for the extract questions and the commonality question.

What this dot point is asking

One option for the National 5 Scottish set text is prose: a novel such as Robin Jenkins' The Cone-Gatherers, or a set of short stories by a Scottish writer such as Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown or Anne Donovan. If your class studies prose, the Section 1 extract will be a passage from the novel or a story, and you analyse narrative technique: narrative voice, characterisation, setting, structure, word choice, imagery and theme. This dot point covers studying a prose text for the Scottish text section.

For a novel, the 8 mark question asks about the idea elsewhere in the whole novel; for short stories, it asks about the idea elsewhere in the same story (and you should know the writer's set stories well). The extract questions use the familiar reference-plus-comment pattern applied to prose features.

The answer

Studying a Scottish prose text means learning to analyse narrative technique and knowing the text (or the set stories) well enough to range beyond the extract. In the exam, analyse the printed extract through narrative voice, characterisation, setting, word choice and imagery, tying each reference to character, atmosphere or theme. For the 8 mark question, discuss the named idea at other moments in the text, because most of those marks reward material from beyond the extract.

Analyse narrative voice and characterisation

Prose is shaped by who tells the story and how. A first-person narrator gives direct access to one character's thoughts; a third-person narrator can move between characters or judge them. Notice the narrative voice and comment on what it lets the reader see. Characterisation, how the writer builds a character through description, action, speech and the narrator's commentary, is the most commonly examined prose feature, so track each main character closely.

Use setting and structure as evidence

Setting in Scottish prose often carries meaning: a bleak landscape can mirror a character's mood, a remote island can suggest isolation, a wartime estate can frame a conflict. Comment on how the writer uses setting to create atmosphere or reflect theme. Structure, the order of events, a turning point, a contrast between opening and ending, is also evidence, especially for the way a short story builds to its climax.

Know the whole text for the 8 mark question

The 8 mark question rewards references from across the text. For a novel, build a quotation bank around its main themes and characters from across the chapters; for short stories, know the writer's set stories well, since the question may ask you to show a theme across moments of a single story. Either way, prepare references beyond the extract in advance.

Examples in context

Suppose your text is a Scottish short story and the extract describes a character returning to an empty house. A 2 mark question asks how the writer conveys the character's grief.

A weak answer retells the return. A full answer references and comments: the narrative voice dwells on the silence of the house and the word choice describing the rooms as "hollow" connotes emptiness and loss, conveying how the character's grief has drained the home of life. The reference is word choice within the narrative voice, the comment is its effect, and it is tied to the grief named in the question.

Try this

Q1. What does analysing narrative voice involve? [2 marks]

• What the marker wants. Identifying whether the story is told in first or third person and commenting on what that perspective reveals or conceals about character and events.

Q2. Why does retelling the plot score nothing? [1 mark]

• What the marker wants. Because the marks are for analysing narrative technique and its effect, and a plot summary shows no analysis of how the writing works.

Q3. For a short story, what does "elsewhere in the text" mean in the 8 mark question? [1 mark]

• What the marker wants. Other moments within the same story (and you should know the writer's set stories), since a short story is the whole text.

A note on sources

This guide is AI-written and not individually human-reviewed. Set texts named are examples from the SQA National 5 Scottish set text list; question wording and mark allocations follow the published SQA National 5 English Critical Reading format. Verify the current set text list and paper structure against the SQA National 5 English course specification at sqa.org.uk.