WJEC GCSE English

Story Writing CA
Task: Write a story ending, that's why I am never going to another zoo.
Use a traditional short-story structure: Beginning > Middle > End
Beginning
Stories are about interesting things happening to someone the reader can relate to. Thus stories
involve characters and action.
The first part of a story is called its exposition. It has no important action and simply answers the
questions who, where and when. Thus, the exposition introduces the setting and the character the
story revolves around the protagonist.
Most writers ever aware of the need to involve and grip the reader into the story take the
chance to do two things in the exposition:
- They describe the setting in ways that help suggest a useful mood or atmosphere (one that
will somehow suit the beginning of the story).
-

They introduce a slight sense of tension by using a subtle plot hook. Something is said that
hints at (I.e foreshadows) the trouble ahead the conflict and climax around which the
whole story is built. This needs to be just sufficient to tempt the reader to read on.

Middle
This is where the conflict of the story is properly introduced and developed towards a climax of
action. The conflict is something or some person that disturbs the life of the protagonist and which
they feel they need to face and overcome.
End:
The ending follows the climax and is called the resolution. Here all loose ends are tied up and the
reader is left feeling warmly satisfied with the story.

Writers Toolkit
-

A lively tone created by using a mix of sentence types and lengths

Involving narration and relevant description
Realistic and interesting dialogue (i.e. characters speaking).

Things to Watch for:

- Every piece of narration, all words of description and all dialogue must be both interesting
and relevant to the main idea of the story and plot.
Every sentence and paragraph must follow on logically and usefully as a consequence of
what went before.
Things to Avoid:
- Switching narration around from first to third person.
- Switching tense around from past to present.
- Writing in incomplete sentences.
- Over-long clunky sentences, especially avoiding ending any sentence with a comma.

Some ideas for the start and the story?

It was a brilliant summers day smack in the middle of the school holidays. It was my birthday, too. I
was ten. You can imagine I was feeling that life couldnt get much better than this: warm weather,
holidays, a bar of Galaxy all to myself, a bunch of texts from my mates to answer, and being driven
with mum and dad to Twycross Zoo. They knew just how much I loved animals and the chimps there
were always my favourites. What could go wrong? That day such thoughts were not even a distant
cloud on the horizon of my sunny mind.
The journey to the zoo was pretty uneventful apart from when dad swerved
We arrived at the zoo early and I was looking forward to my day ahead
It seemed odd when we arrived to see just how many zoo keepers there were around. Id been here
before and, well, never even noticed them. There was the odd policeman, too maybe someone
had lost their child or something
The first port of call was the
Then we went to see the lions It was here that I became yet more aware of the number of keepers
around One of the lions
Then we went to the reptile house. We saw Again, the sight of all the many keepers around
seemed odd but I thought little of it...
Next to the chimps. It was tea party time. Some people say this is cruel but it always seems that the
chimps are enjoying themselves. It was then that I noticed something else in the chimps enclosure,
something long, fat and yellow. About twenty feet long at a guess! It was a snake it was one of the
golden pythons wed seen earlier