What Makes A Good Story?

Step 1: You are to begin by completing these sections.
 
Show Don’t Tell Technique:
Story Preparation:
Atmosphere:
Characterisation:
Conversation:

You may complete these sections in which ever order you choose however after you complete one section you MUST show the teacher your work before moving on to the next section. Do not rush through each section, make sure you research as much information as you can, the more your research the more information you will uncover and the better your writing will become.

Step 2: Complete the Comparing it to a Professional Story section.

Step 3: Complete the final story.

Here are some useful websites for you to look up information on:
http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Short-Story
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative/shortstory/
http://www.howtobooks.co.uk/leisure/writing/story.asp
http://hubpages.com/hub/Ten-tips-for-writing-a-good-short-story
http://www.word-mart.com/html/short_story_and_poetry_writing.html#TooManyCharacters
http://www.ehow.com/how_4550093_create-atmosphere-fiction.html
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

Story Preparation:

(Answer this before researching) Before you begin writing what things do you think you need to consider?

Update your list showing what new things you need to consider before you begin any form of writing.

Write a brief story plan for your final story including all of the features that you mentioned above.

Compare it to another story plan. Did they include information that you missed? If they did update it including the information they included.

Show Don’t Tell Technique:

Describe in your own words the Show Don’t Tell technique.

Write five examples of telling the audience information.

With the person next to you, take their 5 examples and transform them into showing the audience.

Where you able to do this successfully without losing any information?

Atmosphere:

What elements are needed to create atmosphere in a story.

Give 1 example of appealing to each of the 5 senses.

In one paragraph create the atmosphere for a dungeon inside of a large stone castle.

Characterisation:

Before researching Characterisation Write a character Portfolio (a brief summary of a character)

After some research what is important in developing a unique character?

Re-Write the character outline (this character can be included in you final story) including all the information that you had not originally considered?

Conversation:

How do you make direct speech exciting when including it in a story?

Using that character outline create a short conversation between your character and a police officer. Your character will be reporting a robbery he just witnessed inside of a bank.

Step 2:

Comparing it to a professional story:

Pick a story from one of the three provided, or any other story that interests you from that website.
Read through it once just like a normal reader would, enjoying the story.
Now read through it again, highlighting (a different colour for each technique) as many examples as you can find in the story.

Did these examples enhance the story, or did they deter the reader and how/why?

Can you find any places where the authors did not follow these techniques?

Compare you results with someone who worked on the same story (if no one else has then show the teacher your results).

Did they find other examples that you missed?

Did they highlight sections that you disagreed with? Did you come to a conclusion on who was right and why?

Step 3 Section.
Final Story: Summative assessment.

You must write a story that includes at least TWO different characters. You will be assessed on the techniques that you have been researching and practicing in the task previous to this one. Your story must be at least 600 words.

You story must also include this sentence anywhere in it:

The joy was overwhelming