How to Write a Short Story About School Life An Example

When you write a story about school or school life, you should imagine it from the confine. A short story is different from a novel which sometimes finds its own way when writing it; you need a plan and a structure that is halfway complete, if you want to make it a good story.

Holding the example of one of note occupation ( for a short story, this is useful! ): a boy of 12 years has been thrown out of his school. The debate is, how to make an exciting and understandable story that ends with this negative event.

This is the moment to construct a flow of action leading to his exclusion. Of course, it means that you think the story from its ending, but you write it from the beginning. Use your experience and your fantasy to find reasons or motives why such a young boy might be excluded from his school.

You know some central elements and patterns that can lead to it: very bad behaviour, being often absent without any excuse, bad performance and grades, destroying something, and other grave problems. You need to look for really serious aspects, otherwise the story cannot be logical or understandable to the readers.

Imagine a class conference with all the teachers and the director where they talked only about this one boy. What did they say there? How did the teachers judge him? Were they looking for hints towards an improvement? Was it a question of sympathy? What was the form teacher ' s opinion? Was there a teacher who stated that it was not right to send him home forever?

Try to search for other facts in his situation, his life. Normally, the teachers will be right when they find that the behaviour of a pupil or a student is intolerable. But the task of an author is, I believe, to look at the things behind the visible action. What are his conditions at home like? Has he got friends who play with him, help him? How do his siblings act towards him?

Maybe you can find some serious problems in the family or in his daily life beyond school. Maybe his father is an alcoholic, his mother is drug addicted - or his best friend was killed in a car crash? Maybe he is very unhappy with a problem he cannot solve on his own?

Managing this background question, an author of a short story about school can help to explain problematic behaviour and bad performance of a student, without simply putting the blame on someone. So the focus can be set on the solving of a problem - even if the story only makes the problem visible.

If these relevant aspects are part of your plan, you can write the story, no matter where you begin: with the exclusion of the boy, with the class conference or with the decisive reason of his misery. You can write a successful story now!

What Can a Good School Story Learn From the Great Short Story Authors

A good school story should have all the chief elements of a good short story. That means you need a motivating dwell on, an attracting and provocative first issue, a developing conflict between at least two contrasting agents, a summit of the life and somewhere a solution of the worriment ( which is not always a happy ending! ).

It seems further a matter of course to depict the characters and the place and time with a few words, so that the story has its own unrepeated direction without reservation. But you should not be satisfied by equal a formal brochure of criteria. The real value, the literary quality of a school story, depends on the mixture. The characters, the plot, the setting, the conflict and the ending ought to be logical parts of a story in which all these elements match. If they don ' t, the story will not find many readers, and it is not very credible or convincing.

Where can you get help? The first step for someone who wants to write a special kind of text is to read the great authors. Famous short story writers have ever considered these aspects, and set up masterful combinations of these elements. So let me try to use one of the best short stories I know, Hemingway ' s ' Cat in the Rain '.

This story has only four pages, but it has all the named parts. There is a very precise setting, two characters have a conflict, and the end offers a solution which might be positive; at least there is the feeling of a way out to hope and change - the wishes of the young woman can come true, finally.

All that sounds simple and even banal. But this very short story is a masterpiece, because it brings all its parts and qualities together in a flow of action and dialogue that makes it unique. The question is, how do you get the ability to write such a flow of words that make it a suitable work of art, or at least a logical construction to some degree?

My answer is, not only by talent. You can learn to write a short story, and of course also a school story, when you consider some of these basic rules and ideas. Try to make up a raw structure of your story, starting perhaps with only one event of your own school life. Take it down and think about reasons, conditions, consequences, and problems related to this very event. Look for the two or three people who had to do with it, and make the second step to write the full story. Use your fantasy as well as your memory.

You should never forget dialogue. A short story is a living piece of literature with much direct communication. By using dialogue you make it not only readable but also exciting. Make people speak, and your story will speak to your readers!