We have something a little different for today’s class: a creative writing exercise. I thought that it would be fun for us to put all that English knowledge to good use and write a nice story. And a gold star to Andrea for the excellent suggestion of the class writing a story together. Julie, don’t pull that face: you will get a gold star when you have earned one.
You all like reading stories, don’t you? And I know that several of you like telling them to get each other into trouble. So writing a story should be easy for such creative little thinkers!
Now, before we begin I should explain about some of the different ways in which a story can be told.
When Harry rushed up to me the other day and said, “Miss! Miss! Julie hit me! I was innocently lifting the back of her skirt with a stick when she suddenly span round and pow!” he was telling a story – a silly little story, but a story nonetheless – in the first person. That means that the ‘voice’ of the story – the narrative voice – says ‘I’, rather than ‘Harry’. The story is told directly from Harry’s point of view.
Were the story to be told in the third person, it would sound something like this:
Harry rushed up to Miss Hasler in an awful tizzy. “Miss! Miss! Julie hit me!” he cried. “I was innocently lifting the back of her skirt with a stick when she suddenly span round and pow!”
So we have first person narration and third person narration… what about second person narration? Does that exist? It does! Using the second person means saying ‘you’, rather than ‘I’ or ‘Harry’. If we again use the story of Harry getting a deserved smack from Julie as an example, in the second person it would read:
You ran up to Miss Hasler in an awful tizzy. “Miss! Miss! Julie hit me!” you cried. “I was innocently lifting the back of her skirt with a stick when she suddenly span round and pow!”
For our story today we shall use third person narration. So, if you want to put yourself into the story, you should refer to yourself by name. “Miss Hasler was walking around the school playground, watching the children play. She heard a squeal and turned to see poor Andrea rubbing her head sorrowfully. ‘Dana pulled my hair, Miss!’ the pretty little girl frowned.”
One more thing to bear in mind. All of the stories I have mentioned today, and many of the stories you yourselves will have read, are told as if they happened in the past. “Miss Hasler was walking;” “Goldilocks ate the porridge all up;” “They all lived happily ever after.” This is because they are written in something called the past tense. Just as there are three kinds of narrative voice that you can use when writing or telling a story, there are three kinds of tense: past, present and future (although the future tense isn’t especially usable in English). Our story will use the past tense.
Now, is everyone ready? Good. Put your hand up if you have an idea for the story and I will write it on the board. (Within reason). And don’t be afraid to let your imaginations go. Our story can jump around as madly as Timmy on a trampoline: the magical thing about fiction is that it is only limited by the author’s imagination.
You all like reading stories, don’t you? And I know that several of you like telling them to get each other into trouble. So writing a story should be easy for such creative little thinkers!
Now, before we begin I should explain about some of the different ways in which a story can be told.
When Harry rushed up to me the other day and said, “Miss! Miss! Julie hit me! I was innocently lifting the back of her skirt with a stick when she suddenly span round and pow!” he was telling a story – a silly little story, but a story nonetheless – in the first person. That means that the ‘voice’ of the story – the narrative voice – says ‘I’, rather than ‘Harry’. The story is told directly from Harry’s point of view.
Were the story to be told in the third person, it would sound something like this:
Harry rushed up to Miss Hasler in an awful tizzy. “Miss! Miss! Julie hit me!” he cried. “I was innocently lifting the back of her skirt with a stick when she suddenly span round and pow!”
So we have first person narration and third person narration… what about second person narration? Does that exist? It does! Using the second person means saying ‘you’, rather than ‘I’ or ‘Harry’. If we again use the story of Harry getting a deserved smack from Julie as an example, in the second person it would read:
You ran up to Miss Hasler in an awful tizzy. “Miss! Miss! Julie hit me!” you cried. “I was innocently lifting the back of her skirt with a stick when she suddenly span round and pow!”
For our story today we shall use third person narration. So, if you want to put yourself into the story, you should refer to yourself by name. “Miss Hasler was walking around the school playground, watching the children play. She heard a squeal and turned to see poor Andrea rubbing her head sorrowfully. ‘Dana pulled my hair, Miss!’ the pretty little girl frowned.”
One more thing to bear in mind. All of the stories I have mentioned today, and many of the stories you yourselves will have read, are told as if they happened in the past. “Miss Hasler was walking;” “Goldilocks ate the porridge all up;” “They all lived happily ever after.” This is because they are written in something called the past tense. Just as there are three kinds of narrative voice that you can use when writing or telling a story, there are three kinds of tense: past, present and future (although the future tense isn’t especially usable in English). Our story will use the past tense.
Now, is everyone ready? Good. Put your hand up if you have an idea for the story and I will write it on the board. (Within reason). And don’t be afraid to let your imaginations go. Our story can jump around as madly as Timmy on a trampoline: the magical thing about fiction is that it is only limited by the author’s imagination.





