Examiners really like to see that you have planned your essay in the exam. It doesn't have to be a fancy plan - just a few key words and references to some of the quotations you might use will inspire your examiner with confidence from the beginning. And it really will help you if you get a moment of writer's block - just take a second to look again at your plan and re-read it through and the chances are your brain will be jogged back into action.

Planning essays is also a really useful revision activity. It's a good idea to practice writing out one or two in full (and you'll probably be doing this at school anyway), but your time will be better spent just doing the planning work for lots more. Pick a theme or a character and explore its significance in your novel or text or poems. Go hunting for quotations with a copy of the text and you will find that you get to know your texts very well indeed. If you were to do two or three essay plans per week from Easter onward - exam success is yours for sure!

In the exam, don't forget to put a line through your plan when you have finished, or you could cross things out as you go, so that you know you've dealt with that idea. Don't feel that you have to scribble out your plan completely, a single line through it tells the examiner that they shouldn't mark it. This is fine: