# 6.3 Planning your short story

Figure 11

You will now plan a story based on a central character and use techniques and methods learned so far. You will be able to put these into practice as you write.

## Activity 6.4 Planning your short story assignment

Your final short story for this course should be between 750 and 1000 words in length, and based on a central character. You may want to introduce other characters, but as this is a very short story it will probably work best if you only have one or two other characters alongside the main one.

Whatever you choose, the reader should see the story from the main character’s perspective. You can use first or third person.

Plan what your story will be about. You may already have a clear idea but if not, you can:

- look back through your notebook to see whether any of your ideas or observations could form the basis of this story
- look at the exercises you have written so far – even if you didn’t get very far with them, they might still form a good basis for a story
- use one of the ideas we have discussed for characters or ideas for stories, for example, turn on the radio, or look at newspaper headlines
- use the Prompt cloud PDF, if you need to (often the marriage of disparate ideas can be very profitable).

Make a note of your plan in your notebook.

OpenLearn - Start writing fiction: characters and stories
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