11+ creative writing examples, and what makes them work

The door had always been locked.

It sat at the end of Gran's corridor, painted the same tired green as the skirting boards, and every summer I tried the handle. Every summer it refused to turn.

This year was different. This year Gran was in hospital, and the house belonged to its small sounds: the clock in the hall, the drip of the kitchen tap, my own footsteps on the boards. Mum was on the phone in the garden, her voice low and careful. I walked down the corridor and put my hand on the handle out of habit.

It turned.

Inside, the air smelt of dust and lavender. There were no treasure chests or secret passages. There was a sewing machine under a white sheet, a chair with a cushion worn into the shape of a person, and on every wall, pinned in neat rows, dozens of tiny dresses. Doll-sized. Each one had a paper label in Gran's sloping handwriting: Ruth, 1986. Ruth, 1987. Ruth, 1988.

Ruth was my mum.

I sat in the worn chair and counted. Forty dresses, one for every birthday, the last one only half finished, a needle still threaded through its hem. I thought of Gran's hands, which shook now when she held a cup, working in here every year while we ate cake downstairs.

When Mum came in, she didn't tell me off. She stood in the doorway for a long time. Then she took the half-finished dress from the wall, sat down beside me, and held out her hand for the needle.

260 words

At four o'clock the market begins to fold itself away.

The fruit seller goes first. He tips the last bruised plums into a crate and shouts his final offer, two bowls for a pound, to nobody in particular. Beside him, the flower stall has already lost its colour: buckets stand empty, their water cloudy with fallen petals, and the owner sweeps stems into a pile that smells of cut grass and rain.

Further down, the noise changes. The morning's shouting has become the clatter of metal poles and the long scrape of tables dragged across stone. A radio somewhere plays half a song before someone switches it off. Pigeons land where the bread stall stood, walking in careful circles as if they are inspecting the damage.

Only the old man who sells buttons hasn't moved. He sits behind his tray of tiny glass jars, sorting them by colour, red into red, blue into blue, as though he has all the time in the world. When the last van pulls away, he is still there, one bright stall in an empty square.

Then the street lights flicker on, and the market is just a car park again.

196 words

Nobody in Year 6 knew that Sam could not swim.

He had hidden it for years: a cold on the day of the trip, a forgotten kit, a sprained wrist that wasn't sprained. So when Mr Hale announced that the class would spend Friday at the lake, Sam felt the old plan forming. A stomach ache, perhaps.

But on Thursday night his little sister Ella asked him to teach her to float, because the teacher at her club shouted and Sam never did. He sat on the edge of her bed and could not find a lie that would fit.

"I can't," he said at last. "I never learned."

Ella looked at him for a long moment. "Then we can learn together," she said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

On Friday Sam stood at the water's edge in a borrowed buoyancy jacket, the only one in his class wearing one. His face burned. Someone laughed. Then Mr Hale waded in beside him, said nothing at all, and held out his hand.

The water was cold. Sam's heart hammered. He lay back, and for three whole seconds, the lake held him up.

196 words