Historical Fiction Writing Competition by Mrs Cartledge

Last term the History department launched a Historical Fiction Writing Competition for year 7 and 8. The brief was to write a short historical fiction story about any period or place in the past. There were lots of entries, and the History department had great fun reading them. It was very difficult for staff to pick a winner, but this is what we were looking for in the stories:

• Historical accuracy– even down to the choice of the names you give to your characters, and any props you use in the historical setting
• A riveting readwith a good plot!
• A convincing story- i.e. is it plausible that these events and/or this character could have existed at the time?
• Use of historical knowledgeto feed the plot, context and character
• Effective use of historical vocabularyand literary conventions, including where dialogue is included in the story
• Creative and interesting perspectivesof story-telling.

The winner was Timothy R in 7W3 whose story ‘Living up to my name’ was about embalming in ancient Egypt and passing the sacred tradition and skills down from father to son. The main character of Darius was brought to life in the story and the historical accuracy was excellent. Well done Timothy!

Special mentions must also go the students below, who all worked incredibly hard on their entries:

Alexa B in 702 wrote a fantastic story called ‘The mighty battle.’ It was a diary entry on the battle of Hastings and was written from the point of view of one of the soldiers fighting in the battle. Eloise T in 7S3 also wrote about the battle of Hastings with her story was called ‘the fight for freedom.’

We had other excellent stories by Max B in 7S2, who wrote about the dinosaur age and Sean C in 701 whose entry ‘The Avenger’ was about the pharaoh Rameses. Harley A in 7S3 wrote a story titled ‘Tragedy at sea’ which was about the sinking of the Titanic, which also inspired Jack M in 8S2 to write ‘the unsinkable ship’. Darcey L in 803 and Aliza I in 702 both wrote about the be-heading of Anne Boleyn.

Libby H in 7M1 used great creativity in her diary entry about being the first woman on the moon and Martha W and Star G of 7M1 worked together on their entry about evacuation during war time. Rosie I in 701 also impressed with her knowledge of Boudica in her story.

All the above students received an initiative LORIC badge for their hard work, and Timothy also received a £25 Amazon voucher.

Well done everyone!

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