Made in Wirral

  In our last post, we looked at how to start a story by thinking of where it should take place. When you introduce a new scene into your story, you should always take a little time to describe it so your reader can visualise, in their mind, where your main character is (and create their very own home film of the story). Bringing in characters can add to this. You only need one, but most stories will have at least two. Without a character, nothing of interest will happen in your story. Characters – usually people but it can also be animals, toys, robots or aliens - are the driving force of any story.   Their story can be told via their thoughts, memories and interactions with others. You are human and your readers are human too. Readers like to know what happens to another person, whether they be heroic and super brilliant or whether they are just a normal everyday person, who they can identify with or look up to. Perhaps this character is placed into an extraordinary po...

  Our new authors are currently writing their stories and, in this and subsequent posts, we will be looking at the course content shown to everyone during the Made in Wirral course. In this post, we are looking at setting scenes. In all stories there are three main ingredients for writers to think about: where the story is set, the characters and what is going to happen. However you start your story, you must think about setting the scene as soon as you can to allow your readers to picture it and settle in before the main action starts (indeed, some stories simply start with a description of where the story begins). We need to remember that readers could be anywhere: a bus, in their home, on holiday or simply in a library. It could be sunny, rainy, warm, or freezing.   They could feel happy or sad, relaxed or worried. Setting the scene can take their imagination away from wherever they are, whatever their feelings and get them prepared for your story. When people read books ...