It’s Week 5! As always, your responses to Week 4’s prompt were fabulous. Everything from Sylvia Plath to Hogwarts to Taylor Swift – that’s the best thing about fiction, it’s as unique as the people writing it! I particularly loved Annie’s serial killer take on La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and Inaya’s beautiful story inspired by The New Colossus.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had you play around with different forms of writing – diaries and poems – and so this week I’ve decided to go a different route and get you thinking about a particular genre, time travel stories. This is any story where a character moves between times – this could be to last week, two years in the future, three hundred years into the past … they could hop between times easily, be stuck in the past or future or be trapped in the present desperately trying to get to another time! You can also use your time travel story to write about aliens (like Doctor Who!), romance, magic, war … anything you want. So this week, please write a time travel story!

The rules, as always:

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. I don’t want to see you apologising for your story or minimising what you’ve done when you post – writing a story is a triumph and you should be proud!
8. Please do not use your full name when you comment – first names are fine, or you can make up a username that you like! Also remember to stay safe online and not get into private discussions with anyone you don’t know in real life without telling an adult first.
9. 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.
10. I can’t promise to give feedback on any individual stories – I’m not marking them!
11. 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.

This week, remember not to compare yourself to anyone else or worry you’re not good enough. Remember that you’re doing your best, and that’s perfect – life, just like these prompts, isn’t a competition. I’m proud of each and every one of you!