Story openings
Stories can start in three main ways:
Story openings
1) dialogue
2) description
3) action
Read the following extracts.
• Which one of the openings most makes you want to
read on?
• Give two reasons for your answer.
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Story openings
Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
I disappeared on the night before my twelfth birthday. July 28
1988. Only now can I at last tell the whole extraordinary
story, the true story. Kensuke made me promise that I would
say nothing, nothing at all, until at least ten years had passed.
It was almost the last thing he said to me. I promised and
because of that, I have had to live out a lie. I could let
sleeping lies sleep on, but more than ten years have passed
now. I have done school, done college, and had time to think.
I owe it to my family and friends, all of whom I have deceived
for so long, to tell the truth about my long disappearance,
about how I lived to come back from the dead.
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Story openings
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying
on the rug.
“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things and
other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
“We’ve got father and mother and each other,” said Beth contentedly,
from her corner.
The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the
cheerful words, but darkened again as Jo said sadly,
“We haven’t got a father, and shall not have him for a long time.” She
didn’t say “perhaps never” but each silently added it, thinking of father far
away, where the fighting was.
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Story openings
The Coming of the Iron Man
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Story openings
Time to think!
by Ted Hughes
The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff.
How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where
had he come from? Nobody knows. How was he
made? Nobody knows.
Read the beginning of your current reading
book to your partner.
Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top
of the cliff, on the very brink, in the darkness.
• Identify how the writer has created their opening
(dialogue, description, action)
• How effective is it?
• Do you want to read on?
• Make notes and feedback to each other.
The wind sang through his iron fingers. His great iron head,
shaped like a dustbin lid but as big as a bedroom, turned to the
right, then slowly turned to the left. His iron ears turned, this way,
that way. He was hearing the sea. His eyes, like headlamps,
glowed white, then red, then infra-red, searching the sea. Never
before had the Iron Man seen the sea.
© www.teachitprimary.co.uk
8190
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© www.teachitprimary.co.uk
8190
Slide 1 of 6
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