Lesson video

Hi, my name's Miss Richards, and I am so excited to be starting this new unit with you.

This is our creative writing unit, and it's all about storytelling.

Now, I love stories.

It's partly why I became an English teacher, because I've always loved reading stories, writing stories, and telling stories.

This unit's really, really fun, because you're going to have an opportunity to write a story.

And while you're writing your story, I'm going to write mine alongside.

So every lesson we're going to write a paragraph of our story.

And so by the end of this unit, you will have a complete short story.

I can't wait, and I'm so excited to be writing with you.

Don't worry if right now you're sat there going, "I don't like writing stories," or "I find it really difficult," that's okay.

I promise that I'm going to help you the whole way.

There's going to be loads of support.

And by the end, I think you'll be really proud of what you've been able to do.

Okay, I'm really excited.

But before we can start, we don't want to rush in, just go and make sure that you've got yourself completely set up.

All the information for what you need is on the next slide.

Before we can start this really exciting unit, like always we just need to make sure that we're set up and ready to go.

Can you make sure that you've got a pen and paper with you? So exercise book or a notebook, if you want a different colour pen for marking, that's fine, but you can use your normal pen as well.

Try and go somewhere now nice and quiet.

Make sure you turned your phone off.

You've got no notifications to distract you.

Press pause, if you need to get yourself sorted and press play when you're ready for us to start this really exciting unit.

Let's have a look of what our lesson is on today then.

We're going to start by thinking about this idea of creative writing, what that actually means.

Then we're going to meet a term called genre.

You might be familiar with that already, maybe not.

Then we want to think about the idea of fictional reality.

So today is really setting us up for creative writing and what we're going to be doing in this unit.

You're going to have a turn planning a story today, and you have your quiz as always.

So what is creative writing then? I want to come back to this picture now.

Creative writing is a chance for you to have a go at bringing to life some of the stories that you might want to tell, and it's a chance for you to use your imagination and really create something that excites you.

But we're also going to be looking at how to do that, because you might have all these ideas in your head and not really know how to get them onto a page so that they tell the story that you wanted to tell.

We're also going to look at some of the things that authors do and some of the choices that they make that you might not know about.

There are some unwritten rules to creative writing.

So just like with grammar, there were rules.

There are some in creative writing that authors just know, and maybe you know these already, or you've picked them up from all the reading that you do.

But let's just have a think about a few of those now.

Here's an unwritten rule.

An author is unlikely to create a dark and gloomy story full of monsters and ghosts and putting the reader on the edge of their seat with all this fear, if they wanted to write a happy and upbeat story.

Here's another unwritten rule.

An author is unlikely to write a story about a character winning the Olympics, perhaps in the 800 metres, by creating a character that just wakes up on the morning of the event and says that they'll enter.

It's not realistic.

It's not how the Olympics works.

And they definitely wouldn't be able to do that in real life.

What the author would do is create a character that struggles, that has lots of races that they fail at and don't win.

Our character would have to overcome adversity in battle.

Then we might have some tension where as a reader, we're not even sure if they'll be selected for the team for the Olympics, let alone win.

And that would be quite realistic.

It would also be really interesting, because as a reader, we'd spend the whole time wanting our character to do well and fighting alongside them.

The story would end with some kind of moral probably.

It might be that our character wins, and we get a really happy ending that shows all their hard work paid off because they won gold.

Or it might be that our character didn't win the Olympics, but they learn so much by battling to take place, and they were so proud of themselves for getting there and overcoming everything that they still felt really happy, because it wasn't the winning that really mattered, but it was being part of the team and proving to themselves that they could do it.

So our unwritten rule here is that the story needs to feel realistic.

It needs to feel possible to happen to a character.

So let's go then.

This is a really fun opportunity for you to enjoy writing and fall in love with the idea of storytelling.

But we want to centre this unit around the idea of how we craft a story.

Let's think about what that word craft means.

Here it is.

You might think of things like this when you think of the word craft, painting and artwork or knitting and making something, and you might be here saying, "Miss Richards, we're writing stories.

"We're using pen and paper.

"We're not knitting or using paint or art supplies.

"So what on earth do you mean?" What I mean is writer's craft, and you'll notice that there's a little possessive apostrophe there, because it's the craft belonging to the writer.

Writer's craft means the deliberate choices the writer has made.

It's all the ways they've created that story and all the ways that they create meaning in the story.

It might be the choices they make for the characters, or it could be the way they describe the characters, the way they build a setting or leave us on cliffhangers.

It's all the deliberate choices they've made in their story that makes it different to another story.

One of the things our authors know when they're crafting a story is what genre they're writing in.

So a genre is a style or category.

Mostly we use genre to describe art, music, literature, films, or video games.

We might say, I really like that song Kane's listening to.

Rock's my favourite genre of music.

We could say, what genre of film do you want to watch? We could talk about a specific author, and we might say, Philip Pullman's use of the fantasy genre creates an exciting adventure story that leaves its readers desperate to find out what happens next.

So we're talking about the style or the category of that piece of writing, and for the case of Philip Pullman, it's the fantasy genre.

Okay, we know that genre is a style or category.

We know it's mostly used to describe art, music, literature, films, or video games, but what does that mean for us with writing? Well, there are lots of types of genre, so many of them, in fact, and the thing with genres with these styles or these categories is authors don't just stick to one style.

They don't stick to one genre.

They like to break the rules, and they like to mix them all up too.

But we've only got seven lessons together.

So I have stuck to some very simple categories.

We're going to look at four very different genres.

Now you might love all these genres, or you might only like one or two of them, and that's okay.

The first one I've picked is romance.

So we'll do some examples that think about the romance genre.

I've picked the action genre, the gothic genre and fantasy genre.

So these are four really different genres in writing.

And they've all got different unwritten rules about them, and they can be mixed and they can cross over.

And there are plenty of other genres.

These aren't the four most important, anything like that.

They're just four that I really like, or are a bit different and I'm hoping by picking them there's at least one there that you really enjoy too.

What I'd like you to do is to pause the slide now and write this down.

You're going to need to fill in the gaps.

So it says genre is a blank or blank.

We mostly define art, blank, blank, films, or video games.

We're going to look at four different genres, and I've given you the first letter of each one.

So see if you can remember it.

Pause the video now, please, to write this down.

You got it, right? You know that definition already.

Let's just have a look.

If you've got a different colour pen, grab it for marking.

If you're just using your normal pen, that's fine.

Do check your spellings too, 'cause there's some quite difficult words here.

Genre is a style or category.

We mostly define art, music, literature, films, or video games.

And we're going to look at four different genres, romance, action, gothic, fantasy.

You've got it, right? If you didn't, just pause the video now and add in any words that you didn't get or correct your spellings, press play when you're ready.

Great, you know what genre is.

You know it's a style or a category that we define things by.

One of the words when we're talking about genre that you'll hear quite a lot is conventions.

And conventions means the way in which something is usually done.

Conventions acts like a set of unwritten rules.

Let's look at how that word works in a sentence.

Philip Pullman uses the conventions of the fantasy genre to create a world that feels familiar yet magical.

So you can see that we've got the word conventions alongside the word genre there.

Philip Pullman uses the conventions.

So he uses the set of unwritten rules of the fantasy genre to create a world that feels familiar yet magical.

We might say some superhero films break the conventions of an action film, because they finish with the rise of the villain rather than them being defeated.

So in this example, we're saying that the unwritten rules, the conventions, have been broken, because the film hasn't followed what we'd expect.

So conventions, just the way in which something is usually done, it's the unwritten set of rules.

And we often hear that word alongside genre.

So let's think of the conventions behind the four genres that I've picked for us to focus on this unit.

Maybe you know these rules already, or maybe you're sat here going, "I didn't realise there were rules at all." I'm going to talk you through the rules.

Let's see how many of them you recognise or didn't realise were rules at all.

The romance genre then.

The conventions of the romance genre are you normally have two people and you have an idea of love.

Now in the romance genre, we normally have a problem of some kind.

It might be that the parents ban them from being together.

It might be that society stops them being together, because they live in different places or they have different jobs that keep them apart.

It might be that the characters are in love, but one is moving away and they can't be together.

Or maybe the romance is unrequited, which means that one of them loves the other, but those feelings aren't returned.

One of the conventions of the romance genre is that it usually ends happily.

It ends with our two characters falling in love.

We might see them married, or we might just see them have a happily ever after, where as an audience, we believe that they will be together for a really long time.

And they'll have a really good relationship.

They've managed to overcome whatever that problem is.

Okay, you might be able to think of some stories or some films that you've read or watched where you seen those conventions in action.

The next genre then is action.

So our conventions of the action genre, you normally have some kind of fight between good versus bad.

We have a hero and we're on the hero side, and we want to see them succeed.

And we have a villain.

Our hero is normally very skilled, as is our villain.

And we end up with this big climatic battle between the two, where we think the hero will win, but it's normally really tense.

And there's normally a moment where it looks like the villain's going to win.

And our hero has to be incredibly clever to solve this conflict.

Now the action genre includes all sorts of exciting types of stories.

It includes spy novels.

It includes mysteries, pirates, cowboys, westerns.

Often in the action genre we can get car chases and fight scenes.

It's really brave characters, but not characters with magic.

And that's quite important in the action genre.

One of the conventions of the action genre is it's normally set in real locations, that might be a city and it might be that the city needs saving, because the villain's trying to take it over, or it might be really unusual real locations, like the desert or Pyramids and caves and mountains, normally somewhere where there's some kind of danger.

Now we do get the superhero genre as well.

And you might really love stories with superheroes.

It might be comic books.

It might be stories.

It might be films that you love.

Superheroes are a sub-genre.

So they come under the genre of action.

And this is where you get all the conventions of an action film but with the added superpower.

We don't have to have a super power for it to be action.

These are normally real life without magic.

If we do have a super power, then that's when it becomes a secondary genre, a sub-genre.

Our next genre to look at then is the gothic genre.

You might not have heard of that word gothic, but I bet you can guess what it's about from the little picture on our screen here.

Gothic genre are normally really exciting stories that keep us on the edge of our seats with a bit of fear.

There's a supernatural element to a gothic.

So it's not quite magic in the sense of being able to create spells, but it is supernatural.

So we have ghosts or vampires, zombies and werewolves.

There's normally an element of fear in the gothic.

And that fear is created because the gothic genre tends to be in these gloomy and decaying settings where buildings are abandoned or it's really late at night and it's dark.

And it becomes very intense.

The character that we're following is normally full of fear.

And we as a reader often get quite scared too.

The gothic genre can involve curses or prophecies or places being haunted.

It's really exciting but can be quite scary to read.

The last genre that we're going to focus on, and remember, these aren't the only genres that exist, but they are just four very different genres that I've decided to focus on for this unit, is my favourite genre.

And that's the fantasy genre.

Now, the conventions of a fantasy genre are really, really wide.

There were so many possibilities in fantasy, but there are a really similar set of rules and patterns.

And rule number one in fantasy genre is that there's always some kind of magic.

It might be really supernatural or mythological creature like unicorns, elves, dwarves, and magic is used, normally by our hero, but often by our villain as well.

But our hero uses magic to overcome a problem.

So there's normally some kind of rescue or large mission to discover something, and good tends to win in the fantasy.

There'll be a battle, just like in action.

And we know our hero should win.

The fantasy genre often involves somebody in quite high power as well, a king, a duke, queen, a lady, and they tend to issue the challenge or issue the instruction to somebody to go out on this big battle.

And it might be a soldier or a knight, a prince or princess, or we could go for the total opposite, and it might just be someone completely ordinary who finds themselves on this big fantasy battle journey that they didn't expect.

Fantasy genre is normally really exciting.

And it's set often in made-up locations.

They're normally quite countryside, quite pastoral with forests and mountains and lakes, really, really beautiful settings as well.

They're definitely my favourite genre.

So I'm really excited that I get to bring them into this unit.

Here's a task for you then.

I want to see how much of the conventions of these four genres you subconsciously know already, or maybe you've learned them from that little overview that I've given you.

On the left of the screen, I've got a plot overview.

It's just a summary.

It's not a full story.

It's a summary of a story.

What you're going to do is we're going to read the plot summary together, and then you're going to decide what genre this plot summary comes from.

And I've given you two options on the right-hand side.

So for this one, you're going to decide if it's the romance genre or the action genre.

I'll read the plot summary to you first.

Then I'd like you to pause the video and complete the sentence starter on the right-hand side of the screen.

So you're going to write down the plot.

This plot is for the blank genre, because it uses conventions such as.

Let's read this plot together.

The archaeologist Abi needed to rescue an ancient vase from an Egyptian tomb before the evil villain Nia could steal it.

Abi was armed with only rope and a map.

When she reached the vase and picked it up, it triggered a trap.

A giant crater opened in the only route to the exit.

Abi used her rope to attach to a column and swing across the danger.

She got home safely and donated the vase to a museum.

So that's our plot summary.

It's not a fully written story.

It's just an overview.

What I'd like you to do now is pause the video and decide is this romance or action and use the sentence starter to explain why.

If you're really confident, pause the video now.

If you're not quite sure, because this idea of genre is really new to you, that's okay.

Let's have a look at some clues together.

Clue number one in this plot summary then is that this is a rescue.

So you've got the two choices of romance or action.

If that's enough of a hint now, as to which genre this is, pause the video and write down to your sentence.

If you're still not sure, keep going through with me, and we'll look for all the clues.

When you are completely sure, just pause the video and write your answer.

You don't have to wait for me to finish.

Our next clue then is that we have a villain, an evil villain, called Nia, and Nia is trying to steal this vase that Abi is trying to rescue.

So we've got an evil villain.

We've got a hero.

We've got a rescue.

Our next clue in our plot summary is there's a trap.

If you've worked out the genre now, great, make sure that your sentence is fully developed.

So the plot is for the blank genre, because it uses conventions such as.

Make sure your answer is nice and detailed.

You might want to use some of the things that I'm pulling out as evidence.

Our next clue then as to what genre this is, is that Abi has a rope, and Abi uses that rope to attach to a column and swing across it.

So Abi is using great skill here to get herself out of danger.

Has that helped you? If you haven't written your answer, now's the time.

Pause the video and write down your answer.

If you have, think about the evidence that I've highlighted here.

Have you given full detail in your response? Okay, here's a possible answer.

Now yours might look different, 'cause you've used different evidence.

That's okay.

This plot is for the action genre.

Give yourself a tick for getting that right, because it uses conventions such as an evil villain and a brave hero.

And you can give yourself a tick if you used that evidence.

A really great answer, a really confident answer might have gone into much more detail and looked like this.

This plot is for the action genre, because it uses conventions such as an evil villain.

The hero in the story has to overcome a dangerous obstacle.

She does this using her skill and quick thinking, causing her to succeed and overcome the problem.

If yours is as detailed as that, give yourself lots of extra ticks.

And if you came up with the same justification, if you came up with the same conventions to justify your answer, give yourself a tick for using those.

If you want to pause the video now to just add to your answer, that's absolutely fine too.

Here's another one for you then.

We're going to read through the plot summary together.

If you're really confident, I've given you two genre options on the right-hand side.

You can pause the video and you can write down using the sentence starter what genre you think this is and what conventions this plot summary uses.

Just like before, if you're not sure, then just keep watching and we'll talk through it, but let's read the plot summary together first.

Kai walked with some friends down a narrow road.

The group heard a strange wailing noise coming from an abandoned house on the corner.

Everyone had heard the rumours that it was haunted.

Kai laughed and said they'd go in to prove the rumours wrong.

Kai snuck in through a broken window.

Inside the dark and derelict house, a rocking chair rocked slowly, even though no one was sitting in it.

Kai ran out quickly back to their friends.

If you know straight away, pause the video now and use that sentence starter to write down what genre it is and what conventions.

If you're not sure, don't worry.

Let's have a look at some of the clues in that plot summary.

Our first clue then is that this is down a narrow road.

So that suggests somewhere dark, not very open.

Has that helped you? Just like before, if you see a clue that suddenly makes you realise what genre this is or what conventions to write in your explanation, pause the video, get on with it.

That's actually fine.

And if you're still not sure, don't worry.

We're going to keep looking at these clues.

Our next clue is that we have a strange wailing noise.

So is that romance or gothic? Particularly because that wailing noise comes from an abandoned house.

Start thinking about the mood that's created.

Now, if you've already written down your answer, well done.

Think about the conventions that you used, think about how detailed your answer is.

Will any of these conventions that we're highlighting help you with your explanation? Let's carry on then.

We've got the idea that this abandoned house is haunted.

And Kai has to sneak in through a broken window.

So it's abandoned, we're on a narrow road, and it's a broken window.

Is this feeling very romantic, or is this feeling very gothic? The house is dark and derelict.

So have you talked about the mood, if you've written your answer already, and you've got your because it uses conventions such as, have you thought about the mood it creates? And then we've got this idea of a rocking chair eerily moving, even though no one is sitting in it.

That might really help you think about what genre this is.

If you haven't written down your answer, now's the time to pause and use that sentence starter to help you.

If you have written your answer, just think about how you've justified it.

Have you talked about lots of different conventions, or have you just written down one? Could you add anything extra? Here's a possible answer then.

This plot is for the gothic genre, because it uses conventions such as the supernatural and a haunted setting.

That's a great answer.

If you got gothic, give yourself a tick.

If you wrote down the supernatural or you said haunted setting, anything along those lines, give yourself ticks, well done.

Here's a really great, confident answer.

This plot is for the gothic genre, because it uses conventions such as the haunted setting.

The plot will build fear and uncertainty with the mystery of the supernatural wailing and rocking chair.

If your answer looks like that, very well done.

Give yourself ticks.

If you want to pause the video now to add any extra detail or take an idea from the great answer, that's absolutely fine.

Press play when you're ready.

Okay, last one then, same task.

We're going to read the plot summary together, and you're going to decide if this is the romance genre or the fantasy genre.

Vasco has been ordered by the king to go to the deep and dark caves in Costana.

There an evil witch lives.

She has cursed the king and stolen his crown.

Many soldiers have tried to retrieve the crown, but all have failed.

However, Vasco is not a soldier but a young warlock.

He uses his magic to battle the witch.

He overthrows her until she is weak and unable to fight back.

Vasco rescues the king's crown and returns a hero.

If you know already, pause the video, use the sentence starter to write out your explanation on what genre this is and what conventions are used.

Not sure? Let's go through it though.

First of all, we've got an order by the king.

So in this plot, there's someone very important giving the order to somebody else.

So you might think about which convention that's from.

We've got deep and dark caves in this place called Costana, which isn't a real place.

It's a made-up name.

We've got an evil witch.

So you might want to think about which genre uses magic.

We've got a curse and something being stolen that needs rescuing.

Again, the romance or the fantasy genre, which convention is this? We've got the idea that lots of people have tried, and they failed.

So this is quite a dangerous mission.

But our hero this time is a warlock, and that's somebody who has magic, and our warlock Vasco uses his magic.

And our hero manages to win.

He overthrows her and rescues the king's crown before returning as a hero.

So if you weren't sure, hopefully that's given you enough of a clue now to pause the video, pick the genre and explain the conventions.

If you do have an answer, think about your detail, think about whether you can add any extra detail.

So here's a possible answer.

This plot is for the fantasy genre, because it uses conventions such as magic solving a problem.

A really great and confident answer, this plot is for the fantasy genre, because it uses conventions such as a challenge being issued by someone in power, the king.

The plot shows a large battle where magic is used to overcome the problem.

There is a supernatural creature, a witch.

In the end, good wins.

If you've got any of those in your explanation, give yourself lots of ticks and give yourself a tick for getting it right for the fantasy genre as well.

Well done.

Okay, we're really confident now about genre.

We're really confident about conventions.

We know all those unwritten rules.

But one of the things that we need to be sure on is something called fictional reality.

And this is where our stories make plausible choices.

Now that all sounds very complicated.

Don't worry, it's really not.

Let's look at what this means.

If something is plausible, we spoke at the start about there being rules that authors follow, these unwritten rules.

So we don't have someone winning Olympic medals, if they've never attended a training session in their life or competed in other races first.

This is because our stories need to feel real or believable or plausible.

Even when we're thinking about fantasy stories that involve magic or superhero stories, we've got one element that's really exciting, full of magic or fantasy or super power or supernatural creatures, but it needs to fit those conventions to feel plausible, and everything else about the story needs to feel quite realistic.

So we might say Vasco killing the witch with magic is plausible, because the character is a warlock.

His magic is stronger than hers, so he can overpower her.

That would be a plausible story, because it makes sense that magic can fight magic, and he's able to overpower her.

It might not make sense if we didn't know that Vasco had magic and if he was just some ordinary boy from the village who gets this witch and suddenly is an expert in magic.

But this one is plausible, because the character is established as a warlock.

We can also use plausible in the more negative way.

The detective could find no plausible explanation for the man's disappearance.

In this case, we're saying the detective could find no reason or believable explanation for the man's disappearance.

So he's not been able to solve it.

Let's think about this in action then.

We're going to think about the fantasy genre.

So which of these would be plausible in the fantasy genre? The gigantic serpent, which had been terrorising the town is destroyed using.

Now you've got to decide is the gigantic serpent destroyed using a teaspoon or a bow and arrow.

One of those answers might seem funnier than the other or might seem more tempting than the other.

But remember that we're thinking about plausible choices here, realistic and believable choices.

So what I'd like you to do is pause the video and use the sentence data to explain your answer.

It is plausible for the gigantic serpent to be destroyed using blank, because.

Pause the video now.

Here we go then.

The bow and arrow.

It might've been tempting to say the teaspoon, which would be a nice, silly story, but that wouldn't be plausible in the fantasy genre.

It is plausible for the gigantic serpent to be destroyed using a bow and arrow, because it would allow the hero some distance from the creature.

It might stop our hero being hurt or injured from the gigantic serpent.

And we know it's gigantic.

So a teaspoon would not be able to do significant damage.

It would be really unlikely that our hero would only have a teaspoon on them, but we would expect a fantasy hero to carry a bow and arrow.

So that makes it plausible.

Next one is the romance genre, which of these is plausible in the romance genre? Josh has worked with Alex for years.

They are best friends.

Josh confesses that he loves Alex.

So is it plausible that Alex returns Josh's love, or is it plausible that Alex rejects Josh and they never speak again? Think about the conventions of the romance genre.

So it might not be the option that you want the most, but think about the rules of the romance genre.

Pause the video now to write your explanation.

Here we go then.

It is plausible that Alex returns Josh's love, because we often get a happy ending in the romance genre.

We know they've been friends for a long time, so it is possible that they could fall in love.

Now you might like your romance genre with lots of tension and angst, and you might have picked the other option.

But the thing with the romance genre is we normally end up happy, and we normally end up with two people in love.

So in this case, Alex rejecting Josh and them never speaking again would be an unhappy romance genre.

It's not implausible, but it's more plausible for this scenario that Alex returns Josh's love.

Okay, which of these would be plausible in the action genre? A pirate is searching for a mysterious island, so is their nemesis.

That means their enemy.

It is a race to get there first.

The hero pirate uses their skill to sail through a dangerous storm or uses magic to curse their nemesis' boat so it sinks? Pause the video now to write your explanation.

Here we go then.

It is plausible for the pirate to use their skill, because the action genre relies on skilled heroes.

The bravery in the storm could help them reach the island first.

Just take a moment, if you said magic there to think about the fact that we're in the action genre, and this is the genre that doesn't have magic.

If we were using magic, we're likely to be in the fantasy genre.

In the action genre, it's that they've got skill.

Okay, so for our pirate, they'd use their skill in sailing the boat through the storm to reach the island first.

Okay, let's make it a little bit harder then.

Which of these would be plausible in the gothic genre? The terrifying cries coming from the church are from a school choir, a group of football fans, a radio, or from nothing.

The church is empty.

Pause the video, write down your explanation.

Go.

It's plausible for the noise in the church to be coming from nothing, because the gothic genre scares the reader.

The empty church would mean that the noise could be from something supernatural instead.

Does your explanation look like mine? Did you say that as well? Did you get the right one? Well done if you did.

I'm sure you're getting brilliant at understanding the genres, understanding the conventions and understanding how to keep a story plausible.

I've got a bigger task for you now.

So as always, you're going to pause the next slide.

We're going to go through the instructions together, and then you're going to complete the story task.

Your task then is to plan a gothic story.

So think about all those conventions of the gothic and think about keeping your story plausible within that genre.

I've given you a picture on the right-hand side.

That's just a prompt, something that is a bit gothic that might help you create your story, but you can use anything you like.

To plan your story, you're going to answer the six questions on the left-hand side of the screen.

What's your spooky setting? Who is your main character? Is anyone else there? What can they hear? What supernatural creature is there, and how does the story end? Remember to keep it plausible and keep it within the genre.

You only have to plan the story, but if you want to write it, feel free.

Pause the video now to plan your gothic story.

Well done.

Let's have a quick look at your plan, 'cause sometimes we can get a bit carried away.

So we need to make sure that we've kept focus.

Is your story plausible? Have you used all those gothic genre conventions or have you ended up writing something about magic or mixing in too much action? Have you made sure that it's going to be quite tense and spooky? What supernatural creature did you include? I hope you've just planned a story that's really interesting that you'd love to read.

Well done.

Hopefully now you're really clear on some of those unwritten rules of stories.

Maybe you knew them already, and it's just really refreshed it for you.

So don't forget to do your quiz.

That's really important.

And then I will see you next time where we're going to start to write our own story.

I'm really excited.

Can't wait to see you, but don't forget to do the quiz first.

Bye!.