A Focused Look at a Successful School Story

A Focused Look at a Successful School Story

One of the basic elements and motives of a smart school story is a plan. You need a plan to write a story that is understandable and exciting as well.

I can tell you an example. I've published a story about a school director, which is humorous and critical. His name is Mr. Paper, and that is the core of his interest: paper. He needs a form for everything, even the least important trifle, e.g. for the 10-minutes-break supervision a teacher has to fill a form. If someone wants to speak to him on the phone, he has to fill and send a form before that.

He holds conferences and invests most of his time in forms. His desk is full of hundreds of forms, and every day he develops new ones. When a new teacher comes to his school, the first information he gets from the director are some kilos of forms. The biggest mistake that can happen at his school is to forget the matching form, no matter what action to refer to.

When there is a problem with forms, he gets in a rage. He is so keen on forms, collecting forms, writing forms, forcing everyone to use them, that they build the sense of his life. One day the head of the local school department comes to his school, and everyone is sure that his school is the best one at documenting school life and procedures - but something strange happens.

This method can be one of the ways to make readers of short stories think about the real paper flood at school - and make them laugh about this problem. Managing to write a story about school life that points to a true problem by using humour is, I think, a very smart way to improve writing qualities.

Henry Arnold, Author of 'School Stories'