Writing Tips

How to write a Story Prologue

A Basic Plan for a Story can be formed here!

1)                  Decide on a journey that a group of people from all walks of life might go on. This can be at any time but be warned. If you decide to set your story in Victorian times, you will have to stick with this time throughout your whole story so maybe it’s best to choose a time that you know well so that you can relate some things in your tale. If you are planning to write a story set in the Stone Age, it will help you write your book if you research the era.

2)                  Decide on where that group are going and how they are going to get there. Time Machine to the dinosaurs? Steam train to an evacuee’s temporary house?

3)                  How many people are in the group and what they are. This is a good time to note down your characters and a brief description of what they are like.

4)                  Now describe them in detail. Tell your readers what they look like and how they behave. Try to provide interesting clues that leave the reader on a cliffhanger. This will make them try to work out what they’re really like.

5)                  If you like, include yourself as a narrator or storyteller (with a description of course!).

6)                  Although this number is optional, it is worth considering depending on where you are trying to lead your story. You could write a story or a tale in which one traveller tells when they all stop during their journey (like a pub, club, etc). Remember to make the tale entertaining a give it a moral or message for the others to learn.

Writing a Story with a Moral

Based on The Nun’s priest’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

The storyteller wanted to poke fun at a vain, proud character that nearly came to a sticky end because of his weaknesses. The storyteller made fun of him by showing him as a foolish cockerel, who thought himself absolutely wonderful, but who was really an ordinary animal giving himself airs and graces in a poor widow’s yard. He doesn’t even take any notice when he is given a warning of what is going to happen in a dream.

Try writing your own story like this – a story which you poke fun at somebody by writing about them as an animal.

Before you go for it, you need to decide all these things:

1)                  A character or person you know that you’d like to make fun of. Somebody like a:

§         Boaster

§         Bully

§         Meanie

§         Selfish brat

§         Tell tale tit or snitch

§         A trickster or cheater

2)                  Decide a very ordinary animal that suits this character. What animal suits a boaster? A pig? A poodle? A tomcat?

3)                  What sticky end might your animal come to?

4)                  Now describe them in detail. Tell your readers what they look like and how they behave. Try to provide interesting clues that leave the reader on a cliffhanger. This will make them try to work out what they’re really like.

5)                  If you like, include yourself as a narrator or storyteller (with a description of course!).

6)                  Although this number is optional, it is worth considering depending on where you are trying to lead your story. You could write a story or a tale in which one traveller tells when they all stop during their journey (like a pub, club, etc). Remember to make the tale entertaining a give it a moral or message for the others to learn.