Year 10 English students at Taunton School have begun the new term developing their creative writing skills by completing a series of 20-minute writing challenges in class. Please see below some excellent examples of how to begin a story in a bold and engaging way.
They turned and hurried back down the steps, wishing they could erase what they had just witnessed. The image was at the front of their mind, as if it was being projected onto their brains. She was dead. She was actually dead.
It had all started the week before, on a cold, harsh night in the middle of March. Ella read her book peacefully in her living room, cuddled up to a soft, warm blanket. She could not tear her eyes off the page, each word piercing through her skin. The sudden ring of the phone startled her. Grudgingly, she got up, wrapped the blanket around her, and picked up the phone.
It was her mother. Ella had never really been very close to her mum, and as she grew up they had drifted further and further apart. Although they were pleasant and comfortable around each other, they both knew that they were very different people. They didn’t mind that though. Ella was used to being independent.
“I’m just letting you know that I will be a bit later coming home tonight. I’m afraid work has caught up on me, and I must finish it before tomorrow”. This was a sentence that frequently left her mouth.
“That’s fine, mum. Take as long as you need”. Ella replied. Her favourite nights were those home alone, reading her book in the silence.
Ella had always preferred the quiet, when she could be alone with her thoughts.
Rosie
The water looked deep and inviting. However, Michael’s thoughts restrained him. The thoughts of never seeing his mother again played with his mind. All he had ever achieved in his sad excuse for a life gone for good. A pointless existence. He paced up the jetty and fell to his knees in despair. He wanted to jump but he couldn’t. He had nothing. Fired from his job, a rejected marriage proposal and now his mother dead too. The two people he loved with all his heart abandoned him. Left him with a void of emptiness. He rose to his feet and walked to the end of the jetty. A single tear rolled down his face as he stared into the cold black water that lapped at the shore, and with his last burst of energy he leaped. Ice cold water engulfed his body. He didn’t fight it. He couldn’t be bothered. He felt his skin go numb as he let his life drift away. He took a breath and water filled his lungs as he thought his final thought.
Oscar
The water looked deep and inviting, but soon I would learn that this would be my biggest mistake. Glossy water rippled as fish swam rapidly down into the unknown. I stood there, levelling out my choices as the moonlight shone upon me. You only live once right? But what if this is what makes it the once in a lifetime experience? Something felt so oddly welcoming but intimidating. I spun around, analysing every bit of the forest around me. Surely there wouldn’t be anyone here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there. I recollected my thoughts and stepped towards the end of the platform, my shadow covering the glistening water. I could finally breathe! The oxygen rushing into my lungs felt was magical, as if there was some sort of drug infused into it. All the stress carried with me since birth had been released gently as tree sap dripped into the mirroring water. Finally, somewhere I can relax. Breathing in slowly, I turned around. CRUNCH.
Janice
They turned and hurried back down the steps towards the ill-lit cellar pantry. The charcoal shelves looming, looking down upon them as though they were worthless. In some respects, they were just that, here they were unknown by everyone except each other.
Outside the monotonous walls of the palatial stoned building that forced worthless information to be engrained into their minds, convincing them that they were society’s outcasts – the most opulent men of Greater London searched for them in fear. Fear that if they were never found, something of substantial danger would break out like a flame letting loose from the depths of hell.
Poppy
The water looked deep and inviting as I swept the leaves away, unmasking its reflective surface. The man that gazed back at me was old; his hair thinning out until the top of his head that revealed a shiny bald patch. His wrinkles folded into his cheeks, nose and eyes and his face sagged and hollowed. This is me and I am ugly, I remind myself. My life was simple, working for the Claytons. My desire to explore the country satisfied. I was cutting the twelve acres of grass one day, dusting beautiful portraits of gardens and sunny alleyways in Italy another. The next day I would be escorting my employer to another rich man’s house.
Georgina
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