One question, start to finish: planning and writing the answer

Picture two students who know An Inspector Calls equally well, handed the same question they have never seen. One starts writing at once. The other spends two minutes on a plan first, and only her essay argues something from its first line to its last. Knowing the play is not what separates them. What does those two minutes of planning buy?

This is the video where we write one answer together. The play itself is taught in the others, starting from An Inspector Calls: An overview.

The question, in the real exam shape, reads like this. How does Priestley use Mr and Mrs Birling to explore responsibility in An Inspector Calls? Right, read it for its key words before anything else. Priestley means the question is about a writer's choices. Mr and Mrs Birling means both parents, not one. Responsibility is the idea they are used to explore. It means what we owe to other people, and whether we accept the blame for harm we do them.

So this is where the two minutes go. A plan is one sentence that answers the question, and then the points that prove it, in order. Plan it yourself now: one sentence that answers it, then four points in order. The first thing to steer clear of is a tour: Birling, then Sybil, then the Inspector, each in turn, with no claim holding them together. Another is an opening learned in advance, about what kind of play this is, that could sit on top of any question. The plan builds a step at a time, starting with the answer itself. The answer in one sentence: Priestley uses the Birling parents to put a selfish view of responsibility on stage, and then shows it surviving the evening untouched. Point one sets the view up in Birling's own words, in Act One. A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own. The second point shows the view in action, in Sybil. Dismissing Eva, she starts a sentence she never finishes. Girls of that class - Third comes the answer the Inspector gives the family before he leaves. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And the ending is the last point. The parents learn nothing, and Birling mocks his children as the famous younger generation who know it all, so the view survives in them. Planning can feel like time stolen from writing. Those two minutes are a small slice of the time - and they decide what every paragraph after them is for.

The first paragraph has one job: to answer the question in the question's own words, and to show where the argument is going. Two openings to compare. Opening one: An Inspector Calls is a didactic morality play, in which Priestley teaches his audience a lesson. Didactic means written to teach. Opening two: Priestley uses Mr and Mrs Birling to put on stage a view he wants his audience to reject, that each person need only look after himself and his own. Now, hold both of them up against the key words you picked out a moment ago. Which opening has already started answering the question, and why? Opening two. It names both parents and responsibility, and it makes a claim the essay can prove. Opening one could sit on top of any question at all. One examiner's report on this play states: Offering a pre-learned introduction including comments about An Inspector Calls being a didactic morality play without showing any understanding or elaboration of this in the essay itself, is not an effective way of starting a response to the particulars of the question being asked. In plain words, a label for the play, learned in advance and never used again, starts nothing. So build your first sentence from the question's own words instead, then state the argument you will make. The rest of that opening paragraph comes straight from the plan. Birling states the view, Sybil acts on it, and the Inspector answers it. By the end of the evening, the parents have heard every word and changed nothing. That is Priestley's warning to his audience: a selfish view does not disappear when it is proved wrong. It has to be refused.

The plan was never preparation for this paragraph. The plan is the argument, which is why two minutes of it beats any opening learned in advance.

And each paragraph after this one takes a single point from the plan and proves it, so the essay moves the way the argument moves. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. The chain is what you argue from, never the order you write in, and each paragraph carries one claim.

Rebuild the method from a blank page, then use it on a question this video never planned. On a blank page, what goes down first, before a single point? One sentence that answers the question in its own words. Every point after it has to prove that sentence. Here's the plan's order again: Birling's view, Sybil's view in action, the Inspector's answer, the ending. Why does the ending go last rather than first? Because it is where the argument lands. The parents change nothing - and that is the warning the rest of the plan has been building to. Try a question this video never touched, about how Priestley presents Sheila as someone who changes. What is your one-sentence answer to that Sheila question? One strong version: she is made the one who hears what she did and will not go back, so change looks possible, and chosen. Two students, one question: the one who planned for two minutes is the one whose first sentence was already an answer.

A thumbs-up belongs here when that plan comes easily from a cold question. While it still feels slow, time one plan a week against the clock, and those two minutes stop feeling short.

Next in the chapter: Eva Smith, Daisy Renton, the person who is never in the room.

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