Project 21: Writing a short story

Project 21 was all about writing a short story, for BBC Radio 2's annual 500 words competition.

We started the week by exploring the elements of the story, creating our own stories using Rory's Story Cubes (the actions set and the Moomins set), and watched the BBC Live Lesson 500 Words whilst doing the accompanying worksheets.

Rory's Story Cubes

Solomon then wrote, and worked on, his own story for the rest of the week: Solomon, the Desert, and the Librarian.

Version 1 was short and to the point:

Solomon was exploring a desert and found loads of books. He tries to eat them all. But it takes a long time. And there’s a rock librarian chasing after him. So he runs away. 

Although by Version 4 it had filled out a lot more:

Solomon was exploring a desert and found loads of books. He was hungry so he tried to eat them all. He ate the first one, and it tasted good because it was a recipe book with recipes for sweets. He ate a second book, but it tasted of poo, because it was a book about different types of poo, so he didn’t like it. He ate a third book, and that was another recipe book for cakes. He ate it, but it made him poorly because two recipe books in one day are too much.

But it takes a long time to eat books, and just then Solomon heard a noise. A rolling noise. It turns out it is a rock librarian chasing after him. He knows it’s a librarian because the rock has got headphones on made out of books.

So Solomon runs away and the librarian throws books at him whilst rolling towards him. One of the books is a blank book, but that’s no use so Solomon throws it at the rock librarian and it makes him bash into the sand. One of the books was about feathers, but that was no use because it just tickled Solomon’s nose. So he threw that back at the librarian. One of the books was about how to use glue and Solomon caught it. Solomon runs off around the corner and the librarian keeps rolling forwards the wrong way.

Around the corner there is a little wooden hut. Solomon munches the glue book to get the information and so makes some glue in the little wooden hut. Solomon runs back out and pours the glue onto the sand, the rock librarian rolls into it and gets stuck! The rock librarian can’t roll anymore and so Solomon grabs more books to eat and runs away.

Books can be very useful, and very tasty, but some taste of poo.

THE END.

It was an enjoyable project, and Solomon was enthusiastic about returning to the story again and again. We did have to work hard to dissuade him from setting everything in the world of Mario Odyssey and populating it with a host of other computer game characters, but I guess most five year olds have a limited understanding of the intellectual property rights associated with fan fiction!

Next week's project: More programming in Scratch!