Suddenly, the creature started moving again.

– A Funny Incident, L

At The Brain Dojo, students receive a letter for every first draft of compositions they write. Each letter is a personal response to their story. Every letter is different and there is no standard template or specific areas which are covered. What a student receives would depend on the contents of the story and student’s thought process revealed therein. Techniques, language and life lessons in relation to the relevant theme are surfaced. The letters train critical thinking and develop language ability.

The following is a letter written to a primary 5 student who likes going off the beaten track in the compositions he writes. His story was on the theme, A Funny Incident.

Synopsis

Two boys with a penchant for adventure, especially for jaunts into places with a dark and foreboding past, know just the right place for their next outing. They agree to move past the threshold of an abandoned mansion not far from their houses. There, the darkness, dankness and their heightened sense of hyper-vigilance give rise to all kinds of premonitions and illusions. The boys are almost certain they have chanced upon an ancient creature which looks awfully close to what a dinosaur might look like. In truth though, they realised nothing can be more frightening than the imaginations of a mind on edge.

Dear L,

Anybody who reads this story will be very upset when it ends. You took your readers on a ride, like they do in reality television shows. You chose to keep the story time very tight. This means almost all of the story is based on just a few minutes of action. This takes a lot of skill to do. You are a very talented writer.

To be able to keep the story time very tight, you will need to be very descriptive. This way, you get to about three pages of the story. A good gauge is three pages but this cannot be three pages of just anything. It must be relevant to the story line.

In your case, from the very beginning, there is a sense of thrill; the dark, “abandoned” mansion, the “stick” you carried for “protection” and the escape door on the right. Though your reader would have easily guessed that what they were witnessing could not possibly have been a dinosaur, they would have been very curious to see what it actually was.

The story has to be believable and yet at the same time people love to be thrilled and to be taken for ride away from the usual routine. Your story has managed to achieve this.

To make it even more funny, you could have exaggerated the reactions of the protagonist and his friend. The friend is somewhat silent except for his shriek.

Readers would have loved to see the comic interaction between the two. For example, what were their facial expressions like? How was their posture like?

You could also have described their thought process. Perhaps they were already planning their last will. Perhaps one told the other, “At least you have been to Disney Land. Due to Covid, I have not been able to and it now looks like I may never be able to.” The reply could be,” Well buddy, don’t fret. We may now have accidentally stumbled into Jurassic World and you got in without buying tickets!” The boys could then begin thinking about how the trainers in Jurassic World dealt with rogue dinosaurs.

For a story like this where you really give the readers an opportunity to lose themselves in the story world, you could have been a lot more descriptive. Your story is highly visual because it deals with illusions and tricks of light such as shadows.

Highly visual stories offer a very immersive experience, the reader feels like she is there in the story alongside the protagonist.

You could have described the interior of the house; sights, sounds, smells, tastes (I bit my tongue so hard I thought I tasted blood or the house was dank and humid and I could taste the sweat when beads of perspiration rolled into my mouth) and sense of touch – I gripped the stick so hard that I could feel the splinters pierce into my palm.

You could have ended with an insight on fear and humour by explaining the connection between the two. It would not be an exaggeration to assume that 9 in 10 students would have ended the way you did. In fact, most of my students did end in exactly the same way. The conclusion is a wonderful opportunity to help your readers reflect on the happenings in the story and to draw meaningful lessons (not general but specific and insightful – not something which everyone already knows).

In your story, you showed how the mind can play tricks on us. We normally think of ourselves as rational, cool and level-headed. We think we would never make silly mistakes that we see others do. However, when it happens to us, in the moment it can be very frightening. Our reactions and over-reactions would seem funny only on hindsight. You could have said, though it was funny on hindsight, the mind is able to play very effective tricks on us and that the imagination is a funny thing.

In sum, you aced the format, structure and essence of the story. To get over 35, you would have needed to describe every scene in much greater detail. It is not easy to pull off this type of writing. You did well and should continue to be bold in your experiments.

Onwards and upwards, L!

The Brain Dojo