The Photograph — Narrative Writing — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 7 narrative writing writing prompt.
Year 7 · English · Narrative Writing
The Photograph — Narrative Writing — Answers
The prompt
While helping to clean out a relative's house, you find an old photograph at the back of a drawer. In it, someone you know is standing somewhere you have never seen, with a person you do not recognise. On the back, in faded pen, is a single date.
Write a narrative inspired by this photograph.
A strong narrative at this level has:
• A deliberate point of view (first or third person) sustained throughout.
• A structure chosen for effect, such as a flashback, two timelines, or a story that begins at the end.
• A central image or symbol (the photograph itself, a place, an object) that carries meaning.
• Subtext: characters who do not say everything they feel.
• Controlled language: precise verbs, varied sentence lengths, and imagery that serves the story rather than decorating it.
• An ending that resonates rather than simply stops.
Plan
Plan for seven minutes. Decide your structure before you begin writing.
Answer: Third person, close on Hana, 13, cleaning out her late grandmother's unit with her mother.
Answer: Her grandmother at about twenty, standing on a jetty in a place that looks like the far north, laughing with a young man who is not Hana's grandfather. Date: 14 March 1971.
Answer: Present day in the unit, with a flashback told by Hana's mother when she finally sees the photo, then return to the present.
Answer: The jetty: a place of choices and departures. Her grandmother chose to leave; the photo is the life she did not live.
Answer: Hana's mother puts the photo in her own pocket rather than the box for the op shop. Neither of them mentions it again. Last line focuses on the jetty's reflection in the water.
Write
Model answer: Fourteenth of March. The drawer stuck, the way everything in the unit stuck, swollen with forty years of humidity and other people's lives. Hana worked it loose and found, beneath a tangle of rubber bands and a church bulletin, a photograph. Her grandmother, impossibly young, stood on a jetty with the sea behind her like a sheet of hammered tin. She was laughing. Beside her, a young man in a white shirt was looking not at the camera but at her.
Success criteria:
- Point of view is deliberate and sustained throughout
- Structure (flashback, dual timeline or other) is used for effect, not confusion
- A central image or symbol develops meaning across the story
- Characters reveal feeling through subtext, action and selective dialogue
- Vocabulary is precise; imagery serves the story
- Sentence length and paragraphing are controlled for pace and emphasis
- The ending resonates and connects to the opening
Marking tips
- Give credit for correct method even when the final answer slips — the working shows where the thinking went right.
- For open-ended tasks, use the success criteria as a checklist rather than looking for one "right" answer.
- Celebrate what went well first, then pick one thing to work on next.
Great work. Here's what to try next: