What makes a good childrens creative story

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Improving setting descriptions

Use similes and metaphors for richer descriptions

Imagine you are taking a video of everything you can see happening in the scene. Write detailed descriptive sentences Expand sentences to explain who, what, how, where, when, and why something happened, like this:

The tiny bird hopped quickly across the garden, picked up the bread, and immediately flew off to a safe place to eat it.

Write colourful sentences by grouping adjectives together to create: Alliteration (words starting with the same letter) - e.g. dark, dank, dreary forest; crowded, cobbled streets Rhyme - e.g. hustle and bustle; a rumbling and a tumbling Patterning - e.g. in the highest branches of the furthest tree; travelling faster and faster Onomatopoeia (words that sound like the thing they describe)- e.g. jingling, jangling, tinkling coins.

Similes compare one thing to another and are introduced by the words 'like' or 'as', e.g. The wet mud was sticky like fudge cake. Metaphors compare one thing with another, but are not introduced by 'like' or 'as', e.g. The wet mud was sticky fudge cake. Similes for the following topics could be:

The moon hung in the sky like it was on an invisible thread.
The storm was as violent as a ranting bull.
The wind was like a roaring lion shaking its mane.

To change the similes to metaphors, take out the words as and like:

The moon hung in the sky on an invisible thread.
The storm was a ranting bull.
The wind was a roaring lion shaking its mane.

For teachers: top five strategies for improving children's writing

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