creative writing starter year 6

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Journal Buddies Jill | January 24, 2023 May 17, 2022 | Creative Writing

Wow! 98 Story Prompts & Creative Story Starters for Kids

Need Story Prompts & Starters? There are lots of great story prompt ideas here for you and your writers. You see, with these fun and fabulous lists of creative writing story starters — 3 lists in all — your kids will enjoy 85 boosts of creativity. PLUS, you’ll find 13 fabulous finish the story ideas .

Story Prompts and Creative Story Starters

That means there’s a total of 98 story prompts for students right here at your fingertips.

So get to it and help ignite your students’ imaginations and creative writing interests. Above all, enjoy!

Here’s what you’ll find in this post:

Yeppers. There are 3 wonderful lists of story starters and story-writing prompts and ideas for your writers. All FREE and all fun.

Lots of Wonderful Story Writing Prompts to Ignite the Imagination

Each idea gives students a starting point from which they can take any number of directions. They’ll think about what they would do if they found $1000 on the ground or what would happen if one of their best friends was elected President.

For extra fun, encourage your kids to share their stories with one another after writing. They’ll be amazed to see how many different ideas they came up with from the same short story starter.

Promote imagination and adventure with these new journal prompts and creative writing story starters. Regardless of whether they write silly, scary, or serious stories, students will love the chance to write something unique.

Ok… Here are those wonderful creative writing story prompts for your young writers!

List #1 — 55 Story Prompts, Creative Writing Prompts, and Story Starters for Kids

I hope you enjoyed these superb story starters for students.

Just in case our list of writing prompts above was enough… here are some more ideas for kids.

BONUS List #2 — 13 Finish The Story Writing Prompts

These finish the story writing prompts and ideas should help writers easily create a good story of their very own. Enjoy!

Whew. What a great list of finish-the-story writing prompts. Now, let’s get to those story starters for kids.

Oh yeah. Here are Those Creative Story Starters for Kids, As Promised!

Creative writing offers so many benefits for kids. It helps them tap into their imagination and expand their creativity, which teaches them to think outside the box. It’s also fun, boosts their confidence, and gives them a wonderful outlet for self-expression.

Whether your students have written one story or 50 stories, the practice of regular writing can have a positive impact on their creativity. Relax and enjoy this fun listing of imaginative story starter ideas for kids!

NEW! List #3 – 30 Story Starters for Student Writers

Sometimes kids have a tough time knowing how to start their stories. If this is the case for your students, then, by all means, please use the fun story starters above to help spark their imaginations.

I hope you enjoyed these Story Starters for Kids .

Ok, see this…

342 More Story Writing Ideas

Yippee… we offer you loads more fun writing prompts on a variety of topics for all grades. Here are some of our favorites. Take a look!

With the chance to write their own stories about their favorite pet, an enchanted forest, or what they would do if they found a frog with magical powers, our fun writing prompts, story starters, and lesson plans will inspire all students from pre-K to high school.

A Few Final Thoughts…

Daily writing offers many benefits to students, but the ability to explore new worlds is undoubtedly one of the most important.

So put these creative writing story starters on double duty and use them as journal prompts for kids as well! Whether they’re writing creatively or considering a topic of personal reflection, journaling improves critical thinking skills and encourages imagination.

When students write on a regular basis, they gain more confidence in their schoolwork and in their own ideas.

Indeed… Journaling is a powerful way to empower your students both inside and outside of the classroom.

Until next time, write on…

If you enjoyed these Creative Writing Story Starters, please share them on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest. I appreciate it!

Sincerely, Jill journalbuddies.com creator and curator

PS – Here is an awesome story starter generator resource .

Tap to See Prompts 27 Amazing Picture Writing Prompts for Kids 162 Creative Writing Topics and Ideas (Updated!) 10 Great Journal List Prompts (110 Ideas in All!) ------------Start of Om Added --------- @media (min-width: 320px) and (max-width: 767px) { .inside-right-sidebar { display: none !important; } } Featured Posts

Tap to See Prompts 27 Amazing Picture Writing Prompts for Kids 162 Creative Writing Topics and Ideas (Updated!) 10 Great Journal List Prompts (110 Ideas in All!) Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6 Grade 7-8 Grade 9-12 All Ages ------------End of Om Added --------- Tags classroom , creative-writing-resources , creativity , daily writing , empower , journal , journal prompts , Journaling resources , school , schoolwork , stories , story starter , story starters , students , topic , writing , writing creatively empower , writing prompts div#postbottom { margin-top: 12px; } Featured Posts

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Year 6 Writing Aids

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Other

I currently work at the top end of Primary school in Year 5/6. I create resources for a range of subjects and am always open to suggestions for resources people require.

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22 February 2018

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Creative writing prompts – Best activities and resources for KS1 and KS2 English

Schoolboy and teacher in creative writing lesson

Fed up of reading 'and then…', 'and then…' in your children's writing? Try these story starters, structures, worksheets and other fun writing prompt resources for primary pupils…

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Writing with choice and freedom

Creative writing resources for the classroom

Creative writing prompts.

What is creative writing?

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, ‘creative’ is ‘producing or using original and unusual ideas’, yet I would argue that in writing there’s no such thing as an original idea – all stories are reincarnations of ones that have gone before.

As writers we learn to be expert magpies – selecting the shiny words, phrases and ideas from other stories and taking them for our own.

Interestingly, the primary national curriculum does not mention creative writing or writing for pleasure at all and is focused on the skill of writing.

Therefore, if writing creatively and for pleasure is important in your school, it must be woven into your vision for English.

“Interestingly, the Primary National Curriculum does not mention creative writing or writing for pleasure at all”

Creative writing in primary schools can be broken into two parts:

Writing with choice and freedom allows children to write about what interests and inspires them.

Developing story writing provides children with the skills they need to write creatively. In primary schools this is often taught in a very structured way and, particularly in the formative years, can lack opportunities for children to be creative.

Children are often told to retell a story in their own words or tweak a detail such as the setting or the main character.

Below you’ll find plenty of creative writing prompts, suggestions and resources to help develop both writing for choice and freedom and developing story writing in your classroom.

How to develop opportunities for writing with choice and freedom

Here’s an interesting question to consider: if the curriculum disappeared but children still had the skills to write, would they?

I believe so – they’d still have ideas they wanted to convey and stories they wanted to share.

One of my children enjoys writing and the other is more reluctant to mark make when asked to, but both choose to write. They write notes for friends, song lyrics, stories and even business plans.

So how can we develop opportunities to write with choice and freedom in our classrooms?

Early Years classrooms are full of opportunities for children to write about what interests them, but it’s a rarer sight in KS1 and 2.

Ask children what they want to write about

Reading for pleasure has quite rightly been prioritised in schools and the impact is clear. Many of the wonderful ideas from The Open University’s Reading For Pleasure site can be used and adapted for writing too.

For example, ask children to create a ‘writing river’ where they record the writing they choose to do across a week.

If pupils like writing about a specific thing, consider creating a short burst writing activity linked to this. The below Harry Potter creative writing activity , where children create a new character and write a paragraph about them, is an example of this approach.

If you have a spare 20 minutes, listen to the below conversation with Lucy and Jonathan from HeadteacherChat and Alex from LinkyThinks . They discuss the importance of knowing about children’s interests but also about being a writer yourself.

'The confidence Crisis in Creative Writing.' Lucy and Jonathan chat with Alex from @LinkyThinks https://t.co/VClYxiQhcf — HeadteacherChat 🙋🏻‍♂️ 👂 (@Headteacherchat) August 9, 2022

Plan in time to pursue personal writing projects

There are lots of fantastic ideas for developing writing for pleasure in your classrooms on The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s website .

One suggestion is assigning time to pursue personal writing projects. The Meadows Primary School in Madeley Heath, Staffordshire, does this termly and provides scaffolds for children who may find the choice daunting.

Give children a choice about writing implements and paper

Sometimes the fun is in the novelty. Are there opportunities within your week to give pupils some choices about the materials they use? Ideas could include:

Write for real audiences

This is a great way to develop children’s motivation to write and is easy to do.

It could be a blog, a class newsletter or pen pals. Look around in your community for opportunities to write – the local supermarket, a nearby nursing home or the library are often all good starting points.

Have a go yourself

The most successful teachers of story writing write fiction themselves.

Many adults do not write creatively and trying to teach something you have not done yourself in a long time can be difficult. By having a go you can identify the areas of difficulty alongside the thought processes required.

Treat every child as an author

Time is always a premium in the classroom but equally, we’re all fully aware of the impact of verbal feedback.

One-to-one writing conferences have gained in popularity in primary classrooms and it’s well-worth giving these a go if you haven’t already.

Set aside time to speak to each child about the writing they’re currently constructing. Discuss what’s going well and what they could develop.

If possible, timetable these one-to-one discussions with the whole class throughout the year (ideally more often, if possible).

Free KS2 virtual visit and resources

Children's authors on Author in your Classroom podcast

Bring best-selling children’s authors directly into your classroom with Author In Your Classroom. It’s a brilliant free podcast series made especially for schools, and there’s loads of free resources to download too.

More than 20 authors have recorded episodes so far, including:

Creative writing exercises

Rachel Clarke writing templates for primary English

Use these inspiring writing templates from Rachel Clarke to inspire pupils who find it difficult to get their thoughts down on the page. The structured creative writing prompts and activities, which range from writing a ‘through the portal story’ to a character creation activity that involves making your own Top Trumps style cards, will help inexperienced writers to get started.

Storyboard templates and story structures

Whether it’s short stories, comic strips or filmmaking, every tale needs the right structure to be told well. This storyboard template resource will help your children develop the skills required to add that foundation to their creative writing.

Ten-minute activities

The idea of fitting another thing into the school day can feel overwhelming, so start with small creative writing activities once a fortnight. Below are a few ideas that have endless possibilities.

Character capers

You need a 1-6 dice for this activity. Roll it three to find out who your character is, what their personality is and what job they do, then think about the following:

Download our character capers worksheet .

Setting soup

In this activity pupils Look at the four photos and fill in a mind map for one of the settings, focusing on what they’d see, hear, feel, smell and feel in that location. They then write an ingredients list for their setting, such as:

Download our setting soup worksheet .

Use consequences to generate story ideas

Start with a game of drawing consequences – this is a great way of building a new character.

Roll and write a story

For this quick activity, children roll a dice three times to choose a setting and two characters – for example, a theme park, an explorer and a mythical creature. They then use the results to create an outline for a story.

Got more than ten minutes? Use the outline to write a complete story. Alternatively, use the results to create a book cover and blurb or, with a younger group of children, do the activity as a class then draw or write about the outcome.

Download our roll and write a story worksheet .

Scavenger hunt

Give children something to hide and tell them they have to write five clues in pairs, taking another pair from one clue to the next until the 5th clue leads them to the hidden item.

For a challenge, the clues could be riddles.

Set up pen pals. This might be with children in another country or school, or it could simply be with another class.

What do pupils want to say or share? It might be a letter, but it could be a comic strip, poem or pop-up book.

You need a log-in to access Authorfy’s content but it’s free. The website is crammed with every children’s author imaginable, talking about their books and inspirations and setting writing challenges. It’s a great tool to inspire and enthuse.

There are lots of great resources and videos on Oxford Owl which are free to access and will provide children with quick bursts of creativity.

Creative writing ideas for KS2

This free Pie Corbett Ultimate KS2 fiction collection is packed with original short stories from the man himself, and a selection of teaching resources he’s created to accompany each one.

Each creative writing activity will help every young writer get their creative juices flowing and overcome writer’s block.

WAGOLL text types

Support pupils when writing across a whole range of text types and genres with these engaging writing packs from Plazoom , differentiated for KS1, LKS2 and UKS2.

They feature:

Each one focuses on a particular kind of text, encouraging children to make appropriate vocabulary, register and layout choices, and produce the very best writing of which they are capable, which can be used for evidence of progress.

If you teach KS2, start off by exploring fairy tales with a twist , or choose from 50+ other options .

Scaffolds and plot types

A great way to support children with planning stories with structures, this creative writing scaffolds and plot types resource pack contains five story summaries, each covering a different plot type, which they can use as a story idea.

It has often been suggested that there are only seven basic plots a story can use, and here you’ll find text summaries for five of these:

After familiarising themselves with these texts, children can adapt and change these stories to create tales of their own.

Use story starters

If some children still need a bit of a push in the right direction, check out our 6 superb story starters to develop creative writing skills . This list features a range of free story starter resources, including animations (like the one above) and even the odd iguana…

Use word mats to inspire

Help pupils to write independently by providing them with helpful vocabulary sheets that they can pick and choose from when doing their own creative writing.

Download our free creative writing word mats here , including:

Creative writing pictures

Using images as writing prompts is nothing new, but it’s fun and effective.

Pobble 365 has an inspiring photo for every day of the year. These are great inspiration for ten-minute free writing activities. You need to log in to Pobble but access to Pobble 365 (the pictures) is free.

Choose two pictures as prompts (you can access every picture for the year in the calendar) or provide children with a range of starter prompts.

For example, with the photo above you might ask children to complete one of the following activities:

The Literacy Shed

Creative writing prompt of children walking down leafy tunnel

Website The Literacy Shed has a page dedicated to interesting pictures for creative writing . There are winter scenes, abandoned places, landscapes, woodlands, pathways, statues and even flying houses.

The Literacy Shed also hosts video clips for inspiring writing and is choc-full of ways to use them. The Night Zookeeper Shed is well worth a visit. There are short videos, activities and resources to inspire creative writing.

Once Upon a Picture

Creative writing picture prompt featuring flying whale

Once Upon a Picture is another site packed with creative writing picture prompts , but its focus is more on illustrations than photography, so its offering is great for letting little imaginations soar.

Each one comes with questions for kids to consider, or activities to carry out.

How to improve creative writing

Developing story writing .

If you decided to climb a mountain, in order to be successful you’d need to be well-equipped and you’d need to have practised with smaller climbs first.

The same is true of creative writing: to be successful you need to be well-equipped with the skills of writing and have had plenty of opportunities to practise.

As a teachers you need to plan with this in mind – develop a writing journey which allows children to learn the art of story writing by studying stories of a similar style, focusing on how effects are created and scaffolding children’s writing activities so they achieve success.

Below is a rough outline of a planning format that leads to successful writing opportunities.

This sequence of learning takes around three weeks but may be longer or shorter, depending on the writing type.

Before planning out the learning, decide on up to three key focuses for the sequence. Think about the potential learning opportunities that the stimuli supports (eg don’t focus on direct speech if you’re writing non-chronological reports).

Ways to overcome fear of creative writing

Many children are inhibited in their writing for a variety of reasons. These include the all-too-familiar ‘fear of the blank page’ (“I can’t think of anything to write about!” is a common lament), trying to get all the technical aspects right as they compose their work (a sense of being ‘overwhelmed’), and the fact that much of children’s success in school is underpinned by an ethos of competitiveness and comparison, which can lead to a fear of failure and a lack of desire to try.

Any steps we can take to diminish these anxieties means that children will feel increasingly motivated to write, and so enjoy their writing more. This in turn will lead to the development of skills in all areas of writing, with the broader benefits this brings more generally in children’s education.

Here are some easily applied and simple ideas from author and school workshop provider Steve Bowkett for boosting self-confidence in writing.

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Writing Prompts

150+ Story Starters: Creative Sentences To Start A Story

The most important thing about writing is finding a good idea . You have to have a great idea to write a story. You have to be able to see the whole picture before you can start to write it. Sometimes, you might need help with that. Story starters are a great way to get the story rolling. You can use them to kick off a story, start a character in a story or even start a scene in a story.

When you start writing a story, you need to have a hook. A hook can be a character or a plot device. It can also be a setting, something like “A young man came into a bar with a horse.” or a setting like “It was the summer of 1969, and there were no cell phones.” The first sentence of a story is often the hook. It can also be a premise or a situation, such as, “A strange old man in a black cloak was sitting on the train platform.”

Story starters are a way to quickly get the story going. They give the reader a place to start reading your story. Some story starters are obvious, and some are not. The best story starters are the ones that give the reader a glimpse into the story. They can be a part of a story or a part of a scene. They can be a way to show the reader the mood of a story. If you want to start a story, you can use a simple sentence. You can also use a question or an inspirational quote. In this post, we have listed over 150 story starters to get your story started with a bang! A great way to use these story starters is at the start of the Finish The Story game .

If you want more story starters, check out this video on some creative story starter sentences to use in your stories:

150+ Creative Story Starters

Here is a list of good sentences to start a story with:

For more ideas on how to start your story, check out these first-line writing prompts . Did you find this list of creative story starters useful? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Part 4: How to Write a Year 6 Creative in 8 Steps | Free Short Story Planner

Does creative writing freak you out? Don't worry, with this process you'll have the confidence to write creatives like a High Schooler!

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Creative writing can be hard, but it needn’t be. Many Year 6 students get overwhelmed by creative tasks. In this post, we’ll show you how to write a Year 6 creative in 8 steps as if you were in Year 7.

Get ready to rock your marker!

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How do you write Year 6 creatives?

This is the process we teach students for writing high scoring creatives:

Why do Year 6 students struggle with writing creatives?

Many High School students struggle with creative writing. So, it is no wonder that Year 6 students find creative writing difficult.

Year 6 students tend to get frustrated because they can come up with imaginative ideas, but then have difficulty developing them.

Do any of these sound like you?

These are common problems. And the good news is that they can be solved by following a process!

We’ve developed a method for writing compelling and exciting creatives that will work for Year 6 students all the way to Year 12!

What we’re going to do now is step you through the step-by-step process for writing fantastic creatives.

How to write a Year 6 creative in 8 steps!

The secret to doing anything well is following a process. Just because narratives are creative doesn’t mean they just pour out of you.

No. There’s a reason it’s called the creative PROCESS!

So, let’s go through the Matrix step-by-step process for writing creatives.

fresco of faces in a wall how-to-write-a-year-6-creative-in-8-steps

Step 1: Design your characters

Narratives require a character to be engaging. This is because we relate to people (or anthropomorphised creatures – like Simba from the Lion King or Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.

One of the things that makes characters compelling is having qualities and flaws that are prominent and change over the course of the story.

So, the first thing you want to do is decide on who your character is.

You should use a table to plan out your character details.

Once you’ve created a character, you’re in a position to start figuring out what happens to them.

Step 2: Decide how your narrative ends

Sometimes it is hard to figure exactly how your story ends.

That’s okay. Writing endings, especially good endings, is the hardest part of writing a story.

Remember, you don’t need to produce a complete resolution. Farah doesn’t need to learn how to be a perfect bassist or acquire a taste for his Teta’s baking. You just need to show what the next logical step is in his development.

Here are some questions to ask when deciding on an appropriate ending:

It doesn’t matter if you can’t totally pin down the exact ending, you can always develop it further as you work through the second or 3rd draft

Once you’ve figured out a rough ending, you can plan out the structure in more detail.

Step 3: Decide what happens to get to the ending

Narratives work because they have characters we care about (like the one you just created!) that have interesting and relatable things happen to them.

When you are trying to figure out the broad elements of the narrative, it may help you to break it down into three parts:

Step 4: Choose your Structure

When you plan structure you need to consider:

scaffold disappearing into the mist how-to-write-a-year-6-creative-in-8-steps

You reveal what happens through your narrative structure and plot scaffold

Step 4a: Choose your plot scaffold

A plot scaffold develops your plot in more detail and gives you the structure to tell it. Do you want to use a flashback as a narrative device or would you rather tell your story from start to finish?

Your choice here would shape your plot scaffold. Below is a pair of flowcharts illustrating the two most common scaffolds:

Year-7-and-8-how-to-write-a-creative-in-8-steps-flow-chart-how-to-scaffold-a-creative

One scaffold is not better than the other. Flashbacks can be confusing, cliche or unnecessarily convoluted, similarly linear narratives can be predictable or a little plain.

You will need to play around to see which one works best for YOUR story.

You’ll notice that this is more detailed than the initial plot structure:

Let’s see what this might look like:

Step 4b: Choose your tense

Once, you’ve picked a scaffold, you need to decide if it is told in the present or the past tense.

Writing in the simple past is the most common. It is easy to read and relatively straight forward to write.

Narratives written in the present continuous (-ing) are not uncommon but are a little harder to write. They can become hard to follow when characters in the present are remembering events in the past or they can seem overly simple and childish.

Blake Crouch’s Dark matter (2017) is a good example of an engaging and well-written present continuous narrative. You can read a sample on this page .

You should think about whether the events in the narrative are being narrated as they happen to the protagonist or if they are being remembered later on:

Step 4c: Choose your perspective

You have three choices when choosing the perspective your story is narrated from:

if you’re just getting confidence writing narratives, you’ll find it easiest to start off with a third-person perspective. As you develop confidence and skill, you should start practising first-person narration.

As a rule, second-person narration should be avoided intially as it is to get wrong and can seem quite gimmicky.

To help you choose, here are some pros and cons for each tense:

Okay, now you’ve done your planning, you’re ready to… write your 1st draft!

Step 5: Write your draft

First things first,

It’s okay for your first draft to suck!

Like, really really suck. That’s okay. That’s the point of a first draft. it is a starting point for something much much better.

Be prepared to produce something terrible and then rebuild it into something great!

Now grab your plan and we’ll develop a first draft.

Let’s see how you should do that:

Step 5a: Compose the orientation

Your narrative needs a compelling hook. It also needs to introduce the characters and setting.

Don’t worry too much about getting the hook right in the first draft.

Introduce the setting and prominent characters by providing brief descriptions rather than detailed ones. Stories are more effective when the reader gets to paint the picture of characters.

For example, compare these two openings:

See the difference between the two? The first is more concise and only gives the reader as much information as they need. The second is much too detailed and in the process of being detailed loses any tension.

When writing your orientation, aim to only introduce the setting and key characters. You can start developing things further when you introduce the trigger.

Step 5b: Write your trigger

The trigger is an incident that sets the course of events in the narrative in motion. It could be something small like something said in a conversation. Or it could be something huge like an alien invasion.

You should make it clear that your trigger is important. You do this by describing the protagonist’s (and other characters’) response to it.

Step 5c: Write the 1st complication

The first complication is an obstacle that a character or characters encounter

Remember, complications are meant to provoke the character to find a solution to something and to have an emotional response.

For example, in Farah’s story, the first complication is being told by his Mum that he needs to go with the family to see his Teta and Gido at the hospital. He doesn’t want to go he has band practise with his friends, but has no choice but to go to the hospital.

When you write your complication, be sure to explain what the character’s response to it is. Describe their physical response and consider how they speak to people about it.

Ask yourself:

Then you can describe what the characters do in response to the first complication.

Step 5d: Write the 2nd complication

The second complication occurs while the character(s) is overcoming the first one.

As in the first one, you need to describe:

For example, in Farah’s case, the second complication occurs when his Grandma gives him a hard time about not playing the cello and challenging him to play them some music. It doesn’t go well, Farah isn’t as good a bass player as a cellist.

Once you’ve written the complication and its consequences, you can finish the story by writing the resolution.

Step 5e: Write the resolution

A resolution is where you conclude the narrative.

When you resolve a narrative, you don’t need to write the complete ending!

What does this mean? When you write a creative, you are only relating a short series of events that happen to a character or group fo people. You don’t need to tell their whole life stories!

Instead, you need to think about what part of their lives you want to relate and focus on that.

For example, in Farah’s story, we don’t need to see him go to his band practice after the hospital trip. Instead, we can focus on a smaller resolution. Farah’s Gido reveals he was in a punk band, plays some really good music, and explains why he left Lebanon in the 80s. He agrees to teach Farah how to play bass. The end.

Step 6: Edit your creative

When you edit a piece of work you want to break it down into two types of editing:

To edit your creative, you want to tick off the items on the following checklist.

✔ Macro: Check for plot holes

Read through your story, make sure all of the events make sense.

Ensure there are no logical flaws.

✔ Macro: Look for consistency

Make sure you’ve used the correct tenses throughout.

Ensure sure you haven’t confused tenses.

Make sure the perspective is consistent throughout.

✔ Macro: Choose a symbol/ leitmotif and develop it

You need to develop a symbol, symbols, or leitmotif (a recurrent symbol) throughout.

For example, instruments in Farah’s narrative show his passion and come to be a leitmotif showing his renewed connection to his Gido

✔ Micro: Develop your dialogue

Dialogue is important. It shows the reader how characters relate to one another.

Dialogue is hard to write right.

It takes practice. When learning how to write dialogue, focus on keeping it tight by only including dialogue that:

If it doesn’t do any of the above, then it is unnecessary.

✔ Micro: Incorporate techniques

You need to include techniques in your writing to help represent things.

This is how you SHOW and don’t tell.

Look for parts of your narrative where you only describe things in plain language and change them to using techniques like rhetorical questions, metaphors, similes, or symbols to convey your meaning.

For example, consider the following statements:

The second statement might be longer but, clearly, it is more evocative because it compares Farah’s mood to a black hole.

✔ Micro: Edit for grammar

Read your narrative aloud. This will help you find grammatical mistakes and other errors.

You should:

if you want help learning about grammar. You must read our English grammar Toolkit .

✔ Micro: Edit for concision

Finally, you want to get rid of all of the rambling and fluff from your story.

Short stories are meant to be concise. You don’t want to waste a reader’s time. Instead, you want to make sure that the action is moving along throughout.

Read through your narrative and consistently ask yourself:

Does my reader need to know this?

If the answer is no, then you should consider removing or rewriting it.

Once this is done, you’ve finished your first draft!

That’s the hardest bit done.

Now you need feedback.

a sandwich board with "more awesome" and 'less awesome" written on it how-to-write-a-year-6-creative-in-8-steps

Step 7: Get Feedback and incorporate

Once you’ve got the first draft and tidied it up, you’re ready to get some feedback.

Feedback is important, as it will tell you what works in your narrative and what doesn’t.

When we write, it is often very easy to write for ourselves:

Feedback is a way of identifying these issues.

It can be hard receiving criticism on our work. Sometimes we don’t like hearing that our work isn’t fantastic.

It’s really important that you separate criticism of your work from criticism of you. The two are not the same (take note, parents!)

To get effective feedback, it will help if you give your reader a feedback form so they can tell you what they like and don’t like.

Step 7a: Give your reader a feedback form:

Once you get the feedback, you want to review it and take on board what the reader says.

You don’t need to follow all of their suggestions, but you should pay attention to those things that the reader says affect the readability of the piece.

Step 7b: Plan your changes

Before you redraft, make a plan outlining the changes you need to make to the story to make it better:

Now you can redraft.

Step 8: Redraft

This is where you redraft your story.

Some of the pieces may need only one redraft, other times they may need to go through several drafts.

The main rule of redrafting is that you

Rewrite the story in full and don’t just cut and paster or drag and drop.

At Matrix, we prefer students to write their first and second drafts by hand. When you rewrite a second or third draft by hand, you are more willing to make drastic changes (which are really great improvements). When you use a word processor, you tend to make things that are bad work, rather than letting them go.

Make sure that after you’ve redrafted the story you give it a final proofread before you…

image of a graduate dabbing how-to-write-a-year-6-creative-in-8-steps

Submit and celebrate!

Now you’ve done all the hard work, you’re ready to submit it.

Remember, writing good narratives won’t happen overnight. Good writers become good through practice AND WIDE READING they weren’t born as good writers.

Don’t be afraid to write fan-fiction or try and imitate your favourite writers.

The best High School English Students try and write in a range of styles for fun and not just for school assessment tasks.

© Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au, 2023. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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How to plan your story

Narrator: Hey, Frank, let’s write a story, let’s make it a spooky one!

When writing, it helps to have a plan – like this one.

But behind every good plan, there’s research.

Because we’re writing a spooky story, better get reading some spooky books.

Or even better, get some experience in the real world.

Back to that plan we had…this is where we start making notes.

Look around and think about distinctive features for your story.

Think about a setting and some characters.

The best stories have a challenge…

Ghost: OoooOOOoooOO!

Frank: ARGH!

Narrator: …and a solution.

Not to forget an exciting ending too.

We now have the makings of the world’s best spooky story!

Ghost: OooOOOoo!

When writing, it helps to have a plan. You should research your story by reading books of the same genre or getting some real-life experience. The best stories have a challenge, a solution and an exciting ending.

Test your maths and times table skills!

Use your KS2 maths knowledge to defeat evil beasts and reclaim the Kingdom of Mathematica in this cool free primary game from BBC Bitesize.

There's more to learn ...

Making predictions using context

Frank finds out all the things you need to do to plan your story.

How is a story structured?

What is a setting?

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Wow! 98 Story Prompts & Creative Story Starters for Kids
Creative writing offers so many benefits for kids. It helps them tap into their imagination and expand their creativity, which teaches them to think outside the box. It's also fun, boosts their confidence, and gives them a wonderful outlet for self-expression.
Story Starters: Creative Writing Prompts for Kids
Scholastic's Story Starters kids' writing activity generates creative writing prompts, from general fiction to adventure, fantasy, and science fiction.
Story Writing Ideas
Luckily, these story writing ideas resources will help to increase your KS2 pupils' vocabularies and show them different ways to begin stories and improve their writing skills. Engaging visual images and fun activities can help to maintain a child's interest in learning while in class, and they will boost their creative writing confidence, too.
Independent Writing Activities for Year 6 PDF
Creative Writing Year 6 (Ages 10 - 11) Harry Potter: If I Were a Hogwarts' Professor Profile Worksheet: 7-11 4.9 (42 reviews) Harry Potter: Invent a Magical Potion Worksheet: 7-11 4.9 (30 reviews) Year 6 Creative Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents 5.0 (2 reviews) Historical Figures Character Limit Challenge (Ages 7 - 11)
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Use these independent writing activities for year 6 pdf resources. Creative writing is an extremely important activity for children to do. It's an exercise that helps pupils to practise almost any aspect of English that's taught in school. ... Ranging from fun story starter packs to useful spelling and grammar worksheets, there's plenty ...
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Creative writing is a brilliant activity for the whole class to take part in, so we've gathered six of the best story starter resources, including animations and even the odd iguana, into one convenient package… by Oliver Minter-King Share Share DOWNLOAD A FREE RESOURCE!
Creative Writing: Y6
Creative Writing: Y6 - Working At Greater Depth Subject: English Age range: 11-14 Resource type: Worksheet/Activity 22 reviews File previews pptx, 15.48 MB A resource designed to help Y6 pupils who are at 'expected standard' who want to move beyond to 'greater depth'.
Year 6 Writing Aids
Year 6 Moderation grids for working towards, at and greater depth Prepositional phrases Punctuating speech A wordmat/ display poster for each of the openers for ISPACE with lots of different openers within each section and then examples of how they can be used in sentences.
105 Creative Writing Exercises: 10 Min Writing Exercises
Creative writing exercises are short writing activities (normally around 10 minutes) designed to get you writing. The goal of these exercises is to give you the motivation to put words onto a blank paper. These words don't need to be logical or meaningful, neither do they need to be grammatically correct or spelt correctly.
Creative writing prompts for KS1 and KS2 English
Creative writing in primary schools can be broken into two parts: writing with choice and freedom developing story writing Writing with choice and freedom allows children to write about what interests and inspires them. Developing story writing provides children with the skills they need to write creatively.
Years 3-6
Laminate and cut out these narrative sentence starter cards to guide your Years 3-6 students with their writing. This downloadable resource comes with 20 individual narrative sentence story starter cards, where each card contains a sentence story starter that students can use as prompts for amazing creative writing projects. These narrative ...
Year 6 Creative Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents
Year 6 Creative Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents Fairtrade Fortnight Year 2 SATs Survival Handwriting and Letter Formation Morning Starters Stories, Nursery Rhymes and Poems Spoken Language and Listening Cross-Curricular Links Areas of Study Resources Ready to Progress Resources Same-Day Intervention Schemes of Work > Adventure Stories
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Story Starters KS2, Year 3 - 6. Down the Rabbit Hole Worksheet. 4.5 (2 reviews) Story Openers PowerPoint. 4.8 (38 reviews) KS2 Sensational Starters: Exciting Start Paragraph Cards. ... Creative Writing Story Starters: Science-Fiction PowerPoint. 4.6 (10 reviews) LKS2 Creative Writing Challenges Activity PowerPoint.
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They can be a way to show the reader the mood of a story. If you want to start a story, you can use a simple sentence. You can also use a question or an inspirational quote. In this post, we have listed over 150 story starters to get your story started with a bang! A great way to use these story starters is at the start of the Finish The Story ...
Part 4: How to Write a Year 6 Creative in 8 Steps
How do you write Year 6 creatives? This is the process we teach students for writing high scoring creatives: Design your character Work out how your narrative ends Decide what happens to them Choose your structure Write your draft Edit! Get feedback Redraft for submission Why do Year 6 students struggle with writing creatives?
How to plan your story
Before you start writing, it's a good idea to plan your story. ... Creative writing. Year 3. Year 4. Year 5. Year 6. Add to My Bitesize Add to My Bitesize. How to plan your story.
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Browse syntax year 6 resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace trusted by millions of teachers for original educational resources. ... This fun and engaging activity is the perfect icebreaker for middle or high school classrooms or anytime of the year as part of a creative writing unit or prepping for a full memoir or personal essay ...
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Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Grades 1-3 Creative Thinking Write-Abouts & Story starter Cubes (6) at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products! ... Year: 2003. Recommended Age Range: 6-10. Age Level: ... Creative Teaching Press Reading & Writing Toys, Toy Story Kids Reading & Writing Toys,