The following type of stories should be avoided as they are either boring or have been written to ‘death’:

• The bed-to-bed story

Starts with character getting out of bed and ends with the character going to sleep. Mundane and even irrelevant details such as a long drawn introduction like brushing teeth, changing clothes and having breakfast which has no direct bearing on the story.

• The dream story

Ends abruptly and conveniently with “And I realised, to my relief, it was all a dream/ nightmare!”. There is no mention or clue earlier that the writer has been plagued with nightmares or that the writer had been about to fall asleep!

• The blood-and-gore story

Involves too much mindless action in the story such as quarrelling, fighting, killing among the characters with no substantial plot or characterisation. Worse, everybody dies by the end of the story.

• The unimaginative ghost story

Usually based on a ghost set out to frighten others or someone dressing up as a ghost going around playing pranks on others!

• The “Lights, camera, action, cut!”, it’s a filming-in-progress story

Involves the character witnessing a robbery take place and giving chase all the way only to realise at the end that it was only a show in filming!

• War Game story

Usually written by pupils who are computer game fanatics, involves computer war games. Pupils sometimes go overboard by re-telling an entire computer war game story. Example, he got sucked into the computer and became one of the characters in the game and ends up shooting everybody inside. Lots of computer gaming jargon.

Story Ideas to Try:

-Stories should have a positive or negative theme.

Examples of positive themes :

•         Love

•         Kindness

•         Courage

•         Compassion

•         Self sacrifice

Examples of negative themes :

•     Cruelty

•         Greed

•         Envy

•         Pride

•         Fear

•         Regret/ Remorse

•         Guilt