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31 January 2026

Posted by Frankie

Junior & Young Writers Week 3: Short Stories

For Week 3, Claire introduced us to short stories, alongside two exciting writing competitions - one for each age group:

Ages 7–11: What is Gold? - The Royal Mint Museum Short Story Competition
www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/learning/short-story-competition

Ages 14–18: BBC Young Writers Award 2026
bbc.co.uk/ywa

**(I will post the competition links at the end of each blog until the closing dates)

For creative inspiration, the groups used dice to generate the framework of a story, with each number rolled assigning a different element: setting, main character, plot/adventure, plot twist, and story type.

For example, Juno rolled: a mansion, a bored ghost, revenge, a murder, and a dark fairytale.

Using dice to generate story ideas is a great technique for when you feel stuck. You can create your own by writing down a range of random prompts to challenge yourself.

Another helpful creative structure we explored was the Hero’s Journey, a story arc that many famous tales follow. It begins with a call to adventure, builds towards a death and rebirth (literal or metaphorical) in the middle, and ends with a return home, changed. We also looked at key narrative techniques, including foreshadowing, imagery, figurative language, flashbacks, flash-forwards, and symbolism.

Each group began planning gold-themed short stories using their dice-generated ideas or by crafting their own story arcs.

Early drafts produced vivid imagery, with lines such as 'a gold crown on a festering scalp' and 'a path, a river of gold.'

We’ll be continuing with short stories next week, and I’m excited to see how the groups develop their ideas further while refining techniques for shaping creativity within a word count.

- Frankie :)

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