Hello Detectives! I hope you’re all doing OK. I know that everything is feeling very strange and disrupted at the moment, and I also know that a lot of you have a bit more time on your hands than usual.

That’s why I’ve decided to start weekly writing prompts – to help you take your mind off things, and also to help you improve your writing! If you practice writing more often, you’ll get better and better at it. Plus you can start having fun with it immediately, and all you need is a pen and paper, or a computer screen, to get you started!

This week’s writing prompt is: write a story based on something mysterious from history. This can be a person you’re interested in, an event that you’re curious about … literally anything you want, as long as it’s real and it happened! If you want to research your story on the internet, you can – but remember to check your sources (have a look on several websites to make sure they’re all saying the same thing). You don’t have to get all of your facts right, of course – this is a story, not a history lesson, so you can make stuff up!

The rules:

1. It can be as long or as short as you like, and take you as much or as little time as you want.
2. It can be any genre (type) of story you want.
3. You are not allowed to worry about grammar or spelling.
4. You are not allowed to worry if it isn’t perfect, or criticise yourself as you’re writing.
5. You are encouraged to make a plan before you begin, to make it easier for you to get to the end of the story. This can be two words or a whole page! But if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.
6. Get to the end of the story without stopping to go back and fix bits you don’t like. Once you’ve finished, read it through again. If you still don’t like those bits, you can edit them now!
7. If you want (and only if you want!) you’re allowed to post the first 500 words of your story in the comments below. I have to moderate the comments so it may take a while for them to show up – please be patient.
8. If you like someone else’s story, you are allowed to comment to say so! If you’d like to give them ideas that might make their story even stronger, that’s OK, but please be kind and remember how deeply we all care about our writing. A good format for feedback might be something like: ‘I loved ****! Have you thought of ****? I think it might make your story even better!’ I will delete any comment if I feel it’s critical without being constructive.
9. I can’t promise to give feedback on any individual stories – I’m not marking them!
10. This isn’t a competition, and there will be no winners and no prizes, though I may choose a story or two to highlight in future posts.

Good luck, detectives, and most importantly, have fun! I’ll be back next Monday with more …