- Format: day, date and time at the top. ‘Dear Diary’ is optional — the note on page 135 tells you why. If you use it, keep the tone confiding; if you leave it out, keep the tone reflective.
- First person only, and past tense for the events, present tense for the reflection at the end.
- All the senses, not just sight. This is the whole point of the task after a poem built on hearing, smell and sight. Aim for at least four: what you saw, heard, smelt, touched, and if possible tasted.
- Two or three moments told in detail rather than a timetable of the whole day. A diary is not an itinerary.
- Emotion named honestly — including any that was not simple pleasure.
- A reflective close — what you took away, in one or two sentences.
- About 120–150 words for Class 9.
Sample answer:
Dear Diary,
We were made to get up at four, and I complained the whole way to the bus. I take it back.
Our class went to Ranganathittu, and we were on the water by half past six. The first thing was the cold — the river air was so sharp that my ears ached, and the metal seat of the coracle was wet under my hands. Then the smell, which I had not expected at all: wet stone, silt, and something faintly sour from the nesting trees. Sir told us it was the guano and half the bus groaned, but I did not mind it.
What I will remember is the noise. I had imagined a bird sanctuary would be quiet. It was the opposite — thousands of painted storks clattering their bills all at once, like a hundred people shuffling cards. And then, in the middle of all that, our boatman held up one hand and everybody stopped talking, and for about ten seconds there was only the water knocking against the coracle. A crocodile lay on the rock two feet from my elbow and did not move at all.
I was frightened and completely still, and afterwards I could not stop laughing.
I have seen photographs of that place a hundred times and they told me nothing. It took the cold, the smell and that ten seconds of silence to make it real. I think that is what our English teacher meant when she said a poem cannot afford to describe only what things look like.