How to Improve Content
+ 25 Awesome Ideas to Steal and Use for Stories Can’t think what to write? Go here first and grab some inspiration. Story writing is supposed to be fun!
+ The Basics of Story Construction fiction, non-fiction, creating characters, dialogue, point of view and some literary techniques
+ Examples of How to Set the Scene
Model Answers
+ Celebrity Culture
Celebrities are everywhere, gurning at us from screens, newspapers and magazines, invading the planet like a deadly weed. A-List to D-List, their eyes follow us wherever we go – giant, glossy, empty stares. Don’t be scared! It’s only paper. We all want to be loved – stared at, adored. Or is that just me? [read more]
+ The Best and Worst Meals I Have Ever Eaten
My mum’s a magician in the kitchen. She can take a soft pink steak, put it in a pan and out comes the stuff of dreams. Slapped on the plate, on a bed of yellow lettuce is half-charcoal brick, half meat-ice cream. Did I say dreams? I meant nightmares. It’s black on the outside and frozen inside. The three milimetre layer that is cooked has the taste, and texture of a tyre… [read more]
+ Trip to New York
I walked into the lemon smell of elevator-freshener, armpit and cheap perfume: thick, sweet, dirty. I didn’t like the way she looked at me. Hair like a bonfire, and I don’t just mean the colour. It was like angry birds were fighting in it. [read more]
+ Before the Storm
Dusk softened the air to charcoal, smudging the light into velvet. I was breathless, beautiful, glowing. My body was electric. Nothing would ever be more perfect than this.
+ Help! Write about a time when you needed help.
It was the dreaded Nativity Play and I needed help. I was six, lost in a room filled with glitter, feathers and old brocade curtains tied about with rope. Escape routes were clearly marked from every classroom, but when I looked towards the door, it was too late; they were already here. The sharp toothed, long-clawed audience was foaming at the edges of the stage. Trapped in the littlest classroom, we crushed together, changing to get ready. My heart beat in my ears. Excitement threaded through with fear…[read more]
+ How to Show Don’t Tell for Dramatic Mononlogue: Story Based on My Last Duchess
She trembled under my fingers as I clasped the jewelled collar around her neck – too tight, she said and winced in the mirror. I nipped her with the clasp, my eyes touching hers in the mirror. This time, she understood. She did not wince, or not when I was looking.
This collar is a fist of rubies to ransom a prince, plucked by dark fingers from the banks of some Indian river. Tropical heat burns pinkish-red, silk needles under the surface. In candle light, the stones are the colour of blood, beading round her throat. Yet on her chalky skin, the lace-fine gold work might be brass, the gems, pebbles of glass…. [read more]
How to Improve Accuracy
+ The Big List of Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPAG) Monsters including complex punctuation for effect, ‘s, spellings and more
+ How to avoid starting every sentence with ‘I’
+ How to vary sentence starts
How can I Improve My Description?
SOUNDS shrill, screeching, sharp, fierce, shrieking, high-pitched, piercing, whistling OR low, soft, melodious (musical), mellow, murmuring, whispering, muted (quiet) OR booming, echoing, thrilling, tingling OR crashed, banged, crackled, crunched, creaked, battered, hammered, pounded, beat, thudded, thumped, boomed SMELLS musty, pungent (strong smelling), sour, stale OR sweet, spicy, warm, fresh, delicate, perfumed, suffocating… [read more]
+ How to Use Sensory Language
SOUNDS: some effective techniques are:
onomatopoeia: crashed, banged, crackled.
similes: a voice like a rusty gate, girls shrieked like monkeys fighting over the last banana
personification: wind sang a dismal tune… [read more]
+ How to Create Your Own Metaphors and Similes
So what’s the easiest way to create a metaphor?
Pathetic Fallacy, of course. To see how it’s done, play ‘spot the difference’ with the examples below… [read more]
+ What is Personification and How Can I Use it? Get Examples
sunlight danced on the water; wind whistled through the trees; night crept over the earth; creatures screamed in the night; the house gaped, slack-mouthed; the blank gaze of a hundred windows; her dress caught the light and threw it back… [read more]
+ How to Create Mood through Pathetic FallacyPathetic Fallacy is a technique for creating atmosphere in a story.
Emotions are given to setting, objects and / or weather. This often reflects the main character(s)’ mood, or the mood of the book e.g. stormy emotions are externalised in a physical storm… [read more]
+ Examples of Hyperbole: Exaggeration for EffectHyperbole is deliberate, sometimes outrageous exaggeration for effect. Everyday examples include: ‘I’m starving!’ (when you’re merely hungry), ‘I hate you, I wish I was never born’ (teens to parents), ‘she’s so evil’, ‘the satan child’, ‘the middle of nowhere’… [read more]
How Can I Make My Story More Exciting?
+ How to create character reactions for a story
+ How do Writers Build Tension?
1. Long sentences – (1) writers create a list of fearful or worrying details, which creates an overwhelming, claustrophobic or intense feeling. (2) Writers build suspense by leaving the most shocking thing to the end of a long sentence.
2. Short sentences – punchy dramatic or abrupt facts are delivered in a shocking way that visually stands out. This can be particularly shocking after a long sentence… [read more]
+ Example of tense description from Frankenstein
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils [difficult hard work]. With an anxiety [worry] that almost amounted [added up] to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse [put] a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally [miserably] against the [window]panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished [put out] light, I saw… [read more]
+ Horror Story ‘The Monkey’s Paw’
He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little shiver he… [read more]