I love this track, it makes me think of an adventure in far off lands. Can you write the rest of this story, ending on a cliffhanger? Use the music as a stimulus – close your eyes and be transported.
Bibio looked out over the desert plains. She knew she had a tough journey ahead of her to retrieve the healing jewel that her father desperately needed. Far into the distance, the floating castle hovered precariously above the Lake of Nothingness, its guard dragons flitting their ancient, purple tails across the sky.
In the distance, she could see the glint of the sun on Nasmin’s armour, her weary horse slowly padding towards the entry chain.
Taking a deep breath, she adjusted her headscarf, threw her rope over the edge and began her descent.
Be inspired: read more fantasy stories for free over at myOn. You could try the Dragon Born series.
PART ONE: CHARACTERS
Design and draw your characters. Who are your heroes? Who are your villains?
Are you sticking to these names or creating your own? How old are your characters? What are their backgrounds? Draw them and write all this around them.
PART TWO: SETTING
Where does your enemy live? Have they hidden the jewel somewhere? Where does your character come from? Are you sticking to one setting or two, or more? Draw your setting. Fill your drawing with adjectives and adjectival phrases to describe your settings.
PART THREE: PLAN YOUR STORY
You could mind map, draw a story mountain, draw a story plan with arrows – whatever, have your ending in sight and have a beginning, middle and end. Will you end on a cliffhanger, or resolve your story? What role does your setting play? How many paragraphs works for you – four, five?
PART FOUR: WRITE YOUR FIRST DRAFT
Go for it. Now you have the idea in your head, just write. Don’t try and be perfect, just let the ideas come. ALL authors redraft their work before publishing.
PART FIVE: EDIT YOUR FIRST DRAFT
Read over your writing with a member of your family. Edit in a different colour – choose stronger adjectives or verbs, rearrange words so that sentences make more sense, vary sentence types. Can you use short sentences for impact? Redraft sentences if you need to so they can be improved. Check your spellings – beware of American online dictionaries, spell check on your computer may be Americanised (check: colour is UK, color is UK).
PART SIX: WRITE YOUR FINAL DRAFT (PUBLISH)
Write your final draft, improved and in your best handwriting. This is you publishing your work! Maybe you want to word process it?
Success criteria:
fronted adverbials
e.g. time (before they knew what was happening, as the sun rose)
place (over the mountains, under the drawbridge)
manner (with a decisive swing, as fast as her legs could carry her)
expanded noun phrases
e.g. the ancient, glowing sword on her belt
correctly-punctuated dialogue to move the action forward
(people talk to each other, but it must move the story on)
Send your writing to [email protected] and we’ll publish it on socials!
Leave a Reply