More Tips for the BBC 500 Words Competition

Tuesday’s Tip

The #BBC 500-word story competition has some great resources in their library. You can pick from any of these on here :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/J5GH9skxCc1ngyT5GWqYlj/learning-resources

My aim is to give you some little bite-size chunks to take away this week. If you didn’t see my post on Monday, then have a look. It is all about inspiration.

So, you have your inspiration. Hopefully, it has been talked through, because that should be your next step. Brainstorm some ideas with your friends/parents/teachers, whoever you feel is going to give you some extra oomph to add to your ideas.

Make notes, record yourself talking through what you are thinking of writing about. Just get the juices flowing and the inspiration fleshed out into more of a story plot.

Start to think about settings, characters and how you can really expand on these in terms of making them ‘real’. Your characters need to be fully fleshed out. Draw a picture (only needs to be a stick figure) in the middle of a page and start to think about the details that make them fully fleshed out individuals.

Names/age/hobbies/hair colour/eye colour/pets/parents/job they do or school they attend/place they live/what do they like/what do they dislike/what are they scared of/what are they confident at/what is their favourite colour/favourite food/most disliked food.

All of the above things don’t need to go into your story, but it will help you to write a convincing character if you first give them a full history.

The same is true for your setting. Where is it/what is the weather like/is it on this planet/is it a real or imagined world/will the action take place inside or outside? The more you describe the place to yourself, the easier it will be to imagine it. The easier it is to imagine, the easier it is to write about. You need to be able to transport your reader into your world.

Ok, go and flesh out the details.