Ways in

Adventure readers want to be moving, so open with the character already in trouble: The rope held for exactly three more seconds. The shape that works is a clear goal, then obstacles that each make the last one look easy, then a cost. The usual trap is a chain of “and then” events at the same level of danger; the reader stops worrying by the second one. Keep the hero's choices doing the work. If she escapes because the cave “happened to” have a back door, you have solved her problem for her. Try it: write the first line of a story where a boy must cross a river before the sluice gate opens at six.

A mystery is a fair game: the reader should be able to solve it, which means the clues are on the page before the detective names them. Hide them inside other sentences, such as the missing slipper mentioned while describing a messy room. A red herring is a clue that points the wrong way for a good reason, and it is what makes the real answer satisfying. The trap is the cheating ending, where the culprit never appeared or the key clue was never shown. Too many suspects and the reader stops caring who did it. Try it: write three sentences describing a classroom after the class pet has vanished, hiding one real clue in them.

Fantasy works because its impossible things obey rules. Decide one rule of your magic (it only works at night, it costs a memory) and never bend it when the plot gets difficult, because that is where readers lose faith. Ground the strange in the ordinary: a dragon is more believable with burnt jaggery on its breath than when it is simply “huge and terrifying”. The trap is explaining the whole world before anything happens. Give the reader one strange thing, one ordinary thing and a problem, and let them find the rest. Try it: invent a magic that costs the user something small, then write the line where they pay for it for the first time.

Science fiction is a “what if?” followed through honestly. Change one thing (rain has been banned; homework is marked by a machine that reads your face) and then ask what that does to ordinary people on an ordinary Tuesday. The technology should explain itself through how people use it, not through a lecture. There are two traps. The first is the ending where it was all a simulation, which cancels everything the reader just cared about. The second is a story that is all gadgets and no person; put loneliness, fear or loyalty at the centre and let the technology press on it. Try it: write the next two sentences after “Ever since the marking machine learned to read faces, nobody in our school dared to look confused.”

Dread comes from what you hold back. Describe small, quiet wrongnesses (a tap dripping in a house with no water, a door that was shut a minute ago) and let the narrator's body react instead of announcing “I was terrified”. Short sentences quicken the pulse; one long, winding sentence can stretch a silence until it hurts. Keep the monster offstage, because what the reader imagines is always worse than what you describe. The trap is rushing to the scary reveal: the ten seconds before it are the story. Try it: write four sentences of someone climbing a dark stairwell, with one sound and no ghost.

Historical fiction puts a made-up person inside real events, so the reader learns the past through one small life. Choose one year and one place, then find three real details (what people ate, wore and travelled in) and let those do the work. Dialogue should sound believable: not museum-formal, but with no modern slang either. The first trap is anachronism, such as a character checking a phone in 1920. The second is writing a history lesson with names attached; the story is what your character wants on that particular day. Try it: pick a year and write one sentence containing a food, a sound and a worry.

Realistic stories live in small moments: a lost match, a borrowed pen, a promise broken at the bus stop. Their power is in exact feeling: he turned the pencil over and over and did not sharpen it tells us more than “he was sad”. Let the dialogue stay messy, with people interrupting and not quite saying what they mean. The ending should be quiet and true rather than a miracle: the character changes a little, perhaps only in what they decide to do next. The trap is fitting a whole term into one story; choose one afternoon. Try it: write a six-line conversation in which neither person says the thing they actually mean.

Comedy runs on a person who wants something badly and is bad at getting it. The pattern of three is the workhorse: two ordinary items, then a surprise (the lion was fierce, enormous and afraid of the bath mat). Keep the narrator straight-faced; the situation is silly, the voice is not. Put the funniest word at the end of the sentence, because that is where the laugh lands. The traps are explaining the joke, and forgetting that a funny story still needs someone we care about. Try it: write three sentences about a boy hiding a failed test, each making things slightly worse than the last.

A fable is a very small, very tight story: one problem, three attempts, one lesson. Characters are types, each with a single trait (the greedy crow, the clever jackal), which is why the Panchatantra's animal tales have lasted for centuries. Repetition is the rhythm: each attempt echoes the last, then the third breaks the pattern. Let the moral come from what happens; if you state it, use one line and do not explain it. The trap is the lecture, an ending that spends three sentences telling the reader what they have just watched. Try it: write a tortoise's three failed attempts to cross a road, each failing differently, then one line of moral.

A sports story is about one moment that decides everything, told slowly. Stretch the last over or the last lap across most of the page: the ball in the air, the crowd gone quiet, the thought that arrives half a second too late. Use the sport's real words correctly, because readers who play will spot a wrong one at once. Give the player an inner opponent as well as the one on the field: fear, a past mistake, a coach's voice. The trap is the play-by-play, a list of everything that happened in the match. Choose the final moment, and allow yourself one flashback at most. Try it: write the six seconds before a penalty kick, one sentence per second.

A dystopia is a world that has gone wrong in an orderly, polite way. Show one rule that feels wrong being enforced calmly, and let ordinary details prove the control: grey uniforms, tokens for water, a bell that decides when you may speak. Your hero is the one who notices what everybody else has stopped noticing. Keep the world small, because one corner shown well is more convincing than a whole country sketched badly. The best dystopias exaggerate something real. The trap is overthrowing the whole system on a single page; leave the ending open instead. Try it: invent one school rule that sounds reasonable until you say it aloud, then write the moment someone breaks it.

Survival stories are about decisions with consequences, so limit what the character has: one bottle, one match, one hour of light. A clock (dusk, the tide, a dying battery) gives the reader a reason to turn the page. Be precise about the place and the discomfort, such as what hot sand does to a blistered heel, because specifics make danger believable. Show choices and what each one costs; a character who rations the water and still runs out is more interesting than one who is simply lucky. The trap is rescue by coincidence, a helicopter that appears because the writer ran out of ideas. Try it: list three things a character has, then write the decision that spends one of them.

Narrative is the container every genre sits in: a character wants something, meets trouble, and ends up changed or not. Most weak narratives spend three paragraphs getting out of bed and half a line on the moment that matters. Plan four beats on rough paper (opening, build-up, climax, ending) and give the climax the most words. Decide the tense before the first sentence and keep it; sliding between “walked” and “walks” in one paragraph is the commonest slip. One or two scenes told slowly beat a whole week summarised. The trap is cramming: a story that tries to hold a holiday, a fight and a reunion has no room to make you feel any of them. Try it: write the four beats of a story about a lost key, one line each.

Personal-experience writing is true, and it is marked on voice and reflection as much as on events. Think of three layers: what happened, what it felt like, and what it meant. Beginners write only the first, in order, from waking up onwards. Pick one moment instead (the first time you spoke on stage, the day the match was lost) and give it the senses: the hot lights, the dry mouth, the sound of your own voice. Then add the part that lifts the mark, the then-and-now: what you thought at the time and what you think now. The traps are listing the whole day and inflating a small moment into melodrama; a small honest detail beats an invented disaster. Try it: write five sentences about a moment you were nervous: one event, one sense, what you thought then, what you think now, and what changed.

A diary is private, so the writer never explains what they already know: nobody writes “my sister, who is nine and called Anika” in their own notebook. It sounds like thinking: half sentences, afterthoughts, a worry that arrives mid-line. Exams usually give a situation (your first day at a new school) and reward three things: a clear event, real feelings, and a voice that sounds like a person rather than a report. The traps are writing a polished story in diary clothes, with scenery and full descriptions, and writing a timetable (“I woke at seven, then I ate, then I went to school”). Choose one event, react to it, and finish by looking ahead. Try it: write a five-line entry with a date, one event, one feeling, one worry and one plan.

Descriptive writing holds a place, a person or a moment still so the reader can stand in it. The beginner’s habit is a pile of adjectives on one noun: a big, old, dark, scary house. Pick instead one detail that only this place has (the smell of wet chalk in the corridor, the one tube light that buzzes) and let it carry the mood. Move like a camera, from wide to close, so the reader is never lost. What the narrator notices tells us how they feel: an anxious person notices exits, a happy one notices light. Use one strong comparison per paragraph rather than five weak ones. Try it: describe your school canteen at lunchtime using smell, sound and touch, and no sight at all.

Good dialogue is conversation with the boring parts cut. Nobody needs “Hello, how are you?” “I am fine, thank you.” Start late and leave early. Two people arguing about who ate the last ladoo are usually arguing about something else, and that hidden layer is what makes a line worth writing. Use “said” most of the time; it disappears, whereas “retorted” and “bellowed” shout over the words. Add small actions between lines (she tapped the desk) so the voices are not floating. The mechanical rules are marked: a new speaker means a new line, and punctuation goes inside the speech marks, as in “I’m not going,” she said. Try it: write six lines in which a brother asks his sister for money and she never says yes or no.

Readers decide within a few lines whether to carry on, so open in the middle of something. Three openings that work: an action (The bell rang and Rohan was already running), a voice (Nobody warned me the dog could talk) and a strange detail (Every clock in the house had stopped at 4:10). Avoid “One day…”, “I woke up…” and weather reports; they delay the story. Endings are the opposite problem: stop where the change shows, on an image or an action, and do not explain it. Echoing the opening line is a reliable way to close the circle. The trap is the cheat ending, and then I woke up. Try it: write three different first lines for a story about a missing bus: one action, one voice, one odd detail.

Point of view is the answer to “who is telling this?”, and it decides what the reader can know. In first person you can only report what the narrator sees, hears and thinks; if she cannot know what her brother is feeling, she has to guess or notice his hands. In third person, stay close to one character per scene rather than hopping between heads. Pick before line one and keep to it. Tense works the same way: past is the safest choice, present gives urgency, and both are fine as long as you do not swap midway. The commonest slip is a story told in the past that drifts into the present at the exciting bit. Re-read once, checking only the verbs. Try it: rewrite one paragraph from “I” to “she” and notice what you can no longer say.

An informal letter is a conversation on paper, and the marks go to tone and to covering every point in the question. Underline each thing the task asks you to mention (describe the trip, say what you liked, invite her) and give each its own paragraph so none gets dropped. Use the layout your teacher expects: your address and the date, a greeting such as Dear Meera,, the body, then a warm sign-off. Contractions and everyday words are fine; slang piles and text-speak are not. The traps are formal stiffness (“I am writing to inform you”) and forgetting to ask the reader anything back. Try it: write the opening two lines of a letter to a cousin, thanking her for a gift and naming one specific way you will use it.

A news article gives the most important facts first, because readers stop when they have what they need. The first paragraph should answer who, what, where, when and why; the rest adds detail in descending order of importance. The headline is short, specific and active (Gully cricket ban lifted after students’ petition), not a sentence lifted from your essay title. Use quotations with a name and a role (said Mrs Rao, the principal), keep paragraphs to two or three sentences, and stay in the third person unless it is an opinion piece. The trap is writing it like a story, with the surprise saved for the end; news puts the surprise in line one. Try it: write a headline and a two-sentence opening paragraph for your school’s first cricket tournament.

A speech is written for the ear, so test it by reading it aloud: if you run out of breath in a sentence, cut it. Greet the audience, then open with a hook (a question, a surprising fact, a two-line story) rather than “Today I will talk about…”. Give three main points and signpost them (First… Second… Finally…) so listeners can follow without being able to look back. Rhetorical questions and the rule of three suit speaking more than they suit essays. End by repeating the single idea you want remembered, and then stop; do not trail off into thank-yous that go on. The trap is writing an essay and reading it out. Try it: write the opening three sentences of a speech persuading your school to start a daily reading hour.