Stories and the Past

Lessons

Primary 5 · English

Stories and the Past

3 lessons

Lesson 3 of 3

Writing Your Own Story

15 min

Let's begin

Byiringiro is sitting in front of a blank page with his pen ready. Twenty minutes later, the page is still blank.

"I have nothing to write about," he says.

But that is not really his problem. His problem is that he tried to begin with sentence number one. Writers almost never begin with sentence number one. They begin with a plan — and a plan takes three minutes.

Today you will make one, and then you will turn it into a real story.

Three parts, and one problem

Every story you have ever loved is built from the same three parts.

Beginning — we meet the character, in a place, on an ordinary day.
Middle — something goes wrong. The character tries to fix it.
End — the problem is settled, and we find out how the character feels.

Of those three, one part does all the heavy lifting: the problem. Look at what happens without it.

Version A. Umutoni walked to the shop. She bought sugar. She walked home.

Nothing went wrong, so nothing happened. That is a list, not a story. Your reader has already left.

Version B. Umutoni walked to the shop to buy sugar. At the counter she opened her hand — and the 500 Frw coin was gone.

Now your reader leans in. Where is the coin? What will she do? Will her mother be angry?

Same girl, same shop, same sugar. One of them is a story because one thing went wrong.

No problem, no story.

The plan: three minutes, four boxes

Do not write sentences yet. Just fill four boxes with rough notes — nobody else will read them.

Part	My notes
Beginning Who? Where? When?	Umutoni. A normal Tuesday evening. Her mother gives her a 500 Frw coin and sends her to the shop for sugar.
Middle: the problem	At the counter she opens her hand. The coin is gone. It must have fallen on the path.
Middle: she tries	She runs back along the path, searching the grass and the ditch. She finds a bottle top and an old nail. No coin. She is close to crying.
End	Gatete, a boy from her class, found the coin ten minutes ago and has been waiting for its owner. She buys the sugar and goes home feeling light.

That is the whole story, and it is not written yet. This is the part most children skip — and it is the part that makes the writing easy.

Time words are the hinges of a story

Time words tell your reader where they are standing in the story. Without them, events pile up in a heap. With them, the story walks.

To start: One evening… · Last Saturday… · It was an ordinary Tuesday… · One morning during the holidays…
To move on: First… · Then… · After that… · Next… · A few minutes later… · Soon…
To surprise: Suddenly… · All at once… · Just then…
To finish: In the end… · At last… · Finally…

Now the plan, written out

Here is the whole plan turned into a story. Watch the time words in bold, and notice that every single verb is in the past simple — you learned those in the first lesson of this unit.

The Lost Coin
One evening, Umutoni's mother pressed a 500 Frw coin into her hand. "Sugar," she said. "And come straight back."
Umutoni walked down the path, swinging the empty bag and thinking about nothing at all.
At the shop she reached the counter and opened her hand. Suddenly her stomach went cold. The coin was gone.
She ran back along the path with her eyes on the ground. First she searched the long grass. Then she searched the ditch, pushing the wet leaves aside with her fingers. She found a bottle top and a bent nail, but she did not find the coin.
Just then, a boy looked up from the side of the path. It was Gatete, from her class.
"Are you looking for this?" he said, and he opened his hand. The coin was sitting in his palm. "I found it ten minutes ago. I waited, because somebody always comes back."
In the end, Umutoni bought the sugar and walked home. The bag was heavier now — but somehow she felt much lighter.

Two things to check before you put your pen down

1. Stay in the past. Read your story back and underline every verb. pressed, said, walked, reached, opened, went, ran, searched, found, looked, bought, felt — all past simple, all the way through. A story that slides into "she walks" halfway down the page makes the reader dizzy.

2. Let the characters speak. One or two lines of speech bring a story to life, far better than five lines of description. Put the exact words inside "speech marks", and start a new line each time a different person speaks.

Tip

Before you write a single sentence, answer three questions on a scrap of paper:

WHO is my character?
WHAT goes wrong?
HOW does it get fixed?

If you can answer those three, you already have a story — the writing is only filling in the middle. And if you are stuck for an idea, steal a problem from real life: a lost coin, a goat that broke its rope, a burst football, a letter that arrived at the wrong house.

✦

Try it yourself

Which of these could be the middle of a story, and why? (a) Habimana ate his lunch. (b) Habimana's goat broke its rope and disappeared into the maize.
Choose a good time word for the gap: Keza looked under the bed, behind the door and inside her bag. ___, she found her missing shoe on the roof of the house.
This sentence has slipped out of the past. Fix it: Mugisha ran down to the river and jumps in.
Make a four-box plan for this problem: on the morning of the exam, Ishimwe's only pen runs out of ink.
Now write the story from your plan — about 10 to 12 sentences. Use at least three time words, keep every verb in the past simple, and give one character a line of speech.

Answers

1. (b). A goat that has escaped is a problem — somebody must now go and find it, and something might go wrong while they do. Eating lunch is just a thing that happens. No problem, no story.
2. At last (or Finally, or In the end). All three tell the reader that the long search is over. A word like First would be wrong, because this is clearly the last place she looked.
3. Mugisha ran down to the river and jumped in. The first verb, ran, is in the past, so jumps must join it: jump → jumped.
4. A model plan: Beginning — exam morning, Ishimwe walks to school feeling ready, his one blue pen in his pocket. Problem — halfway down the first page the pen dies. He tries — he shakes it, scribbles in the corner, whispers to the boy beside him, but the boy has only one pen too. End — the teacher notices, walks over quietly and lends him her own pen. He finishes with four minutes to spare. Your plan will be different, and that is exactly right — it is your story.
5. Only you can check this one. Read your story out loud to yourself. If it sounds like a person talking, and if every verb stayed in the past, you have done well.

Quick check

Which one is the start of a story, and not just a list?

What you learned today

A story has three parts: a beginning (who, where, when), a middle (the problem, and trying to fix it) and an end (how it turns out and how the character feels).
No problem, no story. Without something going wrong, you have only written a list.
Plan in four boxes before you write. It takes three minutes and it saves twenty.
Use time words — One evening, First, Then, Suddenly, In the end — to carry your reader from one event to the next.
Keep every verb in the past simple, from the first line to the last.

1Three parts, and one problem

2The plan: three minutes, four boxes

3Time words are the hinges of a story

4Now the plan, written out

5Two things to check before you put your pen down