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07 February 2026

Posted by Frankie

Junior & Young Writers Week 4: Short Stories

Continuing from last week, the groups revisited short stories.

To begin, we responded to a series of prompts about the stories we love:

*Write down your top five recommendations.

*What makes them good stories?

*What can we learn from them and use in our own writing?

Reflecting on the books, films, and games we enjoy most, the groups then created a “recipe for story writing” *in the style of a poem, short story, podcast episode, blog post, or cookbook page.

*To help build their recipes, they considered:

*What’s the title?

*What ingredients do you need?

*What utensils are required?

*What’s the method?

*Do you bake it, and for how long?

*Are there important instructions?

*How is it best served?

*Are there ‘side’ dishes?

*Is it a single course or part of a bigger meal?

Once finished, the groups wrote and illustrated their recipes on paper plates.

Some memorable ingredients included “chopped-up letters and full stop lentils,” “100g of reality, 25g dark magic and 25g good magic,” and “a pinch of death — add more if you prefer a darker taste.”

To round off the session, Claire introduced story plotting cheat sheets, including another example of a traditional story arc and a more in-depth breakdown of key story elements.

- Frankie :)


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

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