How to Write a Story
What to write about?
Any tale of a true-life experience counts as a true-life story. No matter how mundane or extraordinary your true-life story or stories may seem, there will be someone out there who will benefit from it being told.
Writing about your whole life might be a daunting task (but you can if you wish to). For your first go why not choose one episode or event in your life?
It would be good if it’s an uplifting or helpful experience for others, but it doesn’t have to be.
If you’ve never written a story before, head to the bottom of this page to find a beginner’s guide.
Writing about your whole life might be a daunting task (but you can if you wish to). For your first go why not choose one episode or event in your life?
It would be good if it’s an uplifting or helpful experience for others, but it doesn’t have to be.
If you’ve never written a story before, head to the bottom of this page to find a beginner’s guide.
How to write a story
It’s easy to send your story to us. You can type it into a word document and copy and paste it into our upload form. Please don’t type it directly into the upload form, as any disruption to your internet connection may mean that your work gets lost.
Once we receive your story, we will check it for bad language, libel or identifying others. We won’t make any other edits without your permission. It’s your story in your own words.
Stories should be written anonymously and it’s important that the people you write about remain anonymous too. Make sure they are not identifiable and use aliases rather than their real names.
Once we receive your story, we will check it for bad language, libel or identifying others. We won’t make any other edits without your permission. It’s your story in your own words.
Stories should be written anonymously and it’s important that the people you write about remain anonymous too. Make sure they are not identifiable and use aliases rather than their real names.
Help someone else to tell their story
Many people have great stories from their life but aren’t able to easily share them through writing. By recording their story and typing it up later (with permission) you could help someone to share their story.
A Beginner’s Guide to writing a story
Here is a step-by-step beginner’s guide to writing a story. You can use this even if you’ve never written a story before.
As an example, we will walk you through how to write about your favourite place or a time when you were really happy. You can use this as guidance to write about anything.
Example 1: Your favourite place
- Write a sentence to say what is your favourite place.
- Write a sentence to say where it is.
- Write a sentence to say why you like it.
- Write a sentence to describe your feelings when you’re there.
- Write a sentence to describe how you feel when you think about it.
- For each of those 5 sentences, try to write another one saying more about it. For instance, what colours are there? What sounds? What scents? How did you first come across it? Do you go there with others or alone? Have you only been a few times, or do you go there often? What makes it special for you?
- You’ve now got 10 sentences!
- Are there any that you could expand by writing another sentence?
Example 2: A time when you were really happy
- Write a sentence to say where you were.
- Write a sentence to say when that was.
- Write a sentence to say what made you happy.
- Write a sentence to say what other feelings you had.
- Write a sentence to describe how you feel when you think back to that time.
- For each of those 5 sentences try to write another saying more about it. For instance, what was happening in the world around you? Who else was involved? What did you do? Does that time remind you of other times?
- You’ve now got 10 sentences!
- Are there any that you could expand by writing another sentence?
You can apply that way of working to any idea for a story.