Writing a Story

📝 Mia’s story — plan, two drafts and feedback

Plan: Opening — camping with Dad in the Lake District, first night → Build-up — tent, dinner, Dad’s scary story → Problem — strange noises outside at midnight → Climax — we look out with the torch … a fox with our sausages! → Ending — laughing, no breakfast, best trip ever
Last summer me and my dad go camping. We put up the tent and we eat dinner and dad tells a scary story. Then at night I hear a noise. It was scary. I wake up dad. We look outside and it is a fox and it took our sausages. We laughed. It was a good night and I will never forget it.
A Night I’ll Never Forget
Last August, Dad and I went camping in the Lake District. We had never camped together before, and I was so excited that I packed my bag three days early.
By the time we had put up the tent, the sun was setting over the lake. We cooked sausages on a tiny stove, and then, while we were sitting in the dark, Dad told me a story about a wild creature that lived in the hills. “Nobody has ever seen it,” he whispered. “But you can hear it at night.”
At midnight, I woke up suddenly. Something was rustling outside the tent. I froze. Then I heard a crunch, like teeth on a bone. “Dad,” I whispered, shaking his arm. “The creature.”
Dad grabbed the torch, and we crept to the door of the tent. Slowly, he unzipped it and pointed the light outside. Two bright eyes stared back at us. It was a fox, and it was holding our bag of breakfast sausages in its mouth.
For a second, nobody moved. Then the fox turned and ran into the trees, and Dad and I burst out laughing. We had no breakfast the next morning, but I didn’t care. It was the best night of the whole summer, and Dad still calls that fox “the creature”.
Mrs Hill: Mia, your first draft tells me what happened, but it doesn’t make me feel anything. The tenses keep changing — go, eat, tells, it was — and it’s all one paragraph. Your second draft is a real story. You use the past simple, past continuous and past perfect correctly; each paragraph is one stage of the story; and the details (rustling, a crunch, two bright eyes) build suspense. The direct speech brings Dad to life, and the ending links back to his story. Next time, check your commas inside speech marks.