Here are three short story examples I created for Year 10 and 11 students preparing for their IGCSE exams. They include the five key elements of storytelling.
A Lonely old Man (Cambridge 0500 English Language Paper 2, Section B - Narrative example 1)
As the mist rolled down the mountainside and breathed between the old, barely-holding-on houses, it thickened the air around for miles. The valley had been silenced. The moaning of cars no longer thundered through the highway the way they did, they had a more depressing moan to them, as if they were always too distant to care for. Thomas, a middle-aged, slightly shaken (trauma does that to people) man, lived alone. He had always lived alone, for as long as anyone had any recollection. He completed the circle of family at an early age—wife, dead; children, gone; even his dog—he suffered isolation.
All he had left was the shaking in his bones.
Like the day turning to the night, the mist had also moved on. It had become a thicker—fog-like entity. It had encircled the only houses in sight, and it held them prisoner. It had taunted them in attempting to leave. Some tried, and what remained was silence, but that was okay. Silence was comfort. It was a blanket in the cold.
A whisper at the door.
A wheeze through the window.
A sigh at the joints.
Silence brings everything to life. As Thomas gazed through the window, he watched the scattering grey dots move like an early 90’s television, when left on an empty channel. As he sighed into the window pane, his breath stained the window with its own signature.
Bang!
“Hello?” Thomas asked. The door had been damaged, and the lights flickered. A moment of panic was superseded with a quiet mind’s reassurance. “Bloody lock, again.” With his disrupted focus, he had walked towards the door with a slight stagger in his movement, revealing an old wound (still marking the skin with the trophy of a loss of flesh). As he rubbed his knee, next to the wound, a breath exhaled from behind him. The breath was so close and so nauseating that it must have came from someone standing close to him.
A table moved.
A chair crashed.
A cup flew.
Smash.
Summoning what little strength he had, he ran towards the kitchen. His bare feet scathed the glass riddled floor, and as the teeth of the sharp edges found a new home, he slipped.
Crash.
A cold breath escaped him. A quickened heart pounded his chest. A dazed, smothering sound robbed him of his senses. He looked down at the damage, and he observed the blood, and yet, for a second he huffed a smile as he couldn’t believe it had happened. “Not much left, is it?” he asked. Looking up, a small, frail and pale beam of light reached him from between the old-grey blinds. It was morning.
Man Up (Cambridge 0500 English Language Paper 2, Section B - Narrative example 2)
Contrary to popular belief, what doesn’t kill you certainly doesn’t make you stronger. It destroys you. In February of this year, Edward died. He died, not in the way that you’d think, instead he died for a second, or two. Maybe four. Who’s counting? The smell of burnt flesh polluted the surgery room as 1,000 volts fried his skin. The doctor even called it in. “Time, 11:30!” and the whirring began to fade into single tone beeps.
Edward was living a normal life as a student in his post-covid years. You know the kind. The ones where everyone expected you to know everything, but they didn’t want to teach you the same way as they did before. Edward knew better. He knew that he made a mistake during his first week back to school. A cough here, a sneeze there and the moaning, grumbling sound of sick peers flooded the school.
It was only a matter of time.
After a day’s worth of being packed like sardines in a can, Edward was left wondering what he could do to survive the week. He plugged in his headphones, he pulled up his mask, and he hid away from the others as best as he could.
By the time Edward reached home, he sighed with heavy relief. The worry was over. The anxiety was reduced. The panic ended. By the time he crawled to his bed at the end of the night, he produced a single cough. It was the type of cough that could have been easily swept away as someone choking, but was it?
The next day, Edward felt like a truck had mowed him down. He felt as though his insides had been turned inside out. He had felt like a ghost… looming around the house… sluggishly escaping his family and shifting his useless husk of a body onto the bus to school. He already knew that his mother would have told him to man up and get on with things, but that’s not always the right answer, is it?
It only took fifteen minutes until Edward was burning up. He was now a shell of what he once was. His friends avoided his husky coughs. Violent expulsions of phlegm and snot captured the room.
It only took a brief moment, before he stood up, and begged to leave before ultimately collapsing on the floor.
Then, the convulsions began, and his whole world went black.
“11:30!” The doctor cried out.
“Doctor?” the nurse nudged him. “He’s awake!”
Edward stared at his surroundings, but all he was left with was a horrendous pain in his chest and a drip in his arm. His mother would be proud, right?
Lost in the Woods (Cambridge 0500 English Language Paper 2, Section B - Narrative example 3)
There was no signal at all. Nada. Nothing. Darkness began reaching all around me. Although I knew it was going to be dark soon, I was not prepared to turn around and go home. I had walked all the way to the highest part of Brecon Beacons, and though it may not have been Everest, or Machu Picchu, it was still going to be a difficult experience. Lost, like a trapped hare in the woods, I couldn’t tell my South from my North: I should’ve brought a compass.
I enjoyed the reach of nature. Sometimes, it feels like it’s going to grab you and pull you in. The mound of mud that I stood on projected this feeling. Although it didn’t last. A crack; a crumble; a crunch… a fall. I slipped. The mud grew loose, and it escaped me.
I tunnelled towards the ground.
Bushes and trees tried to reach for me, to reduce the damage of the fall, but nothing could intercept me well enough to halt me. Full of cuts, scrapes, and a rather painful impalement (I damaged the tree more than it damaged me), I ended my fall with a wince, a wheeze, and a wallow of self-pity.
“How would I get home now?” I asked. I checked my phone again, and it didn’t even show a signal, let alone the “emergency calls only” sign. The phone had defended me well, and a large, searing crack that tore the phone in half, was the proof that I needed that it saved me from greater harm. However, we shared the same qualities of damage.
I looked at my leg, and the bleeding had been stifled by the branch. I knew that if I were to remove it, I would be giving up.
I had to walk with this piece of nature pinning my thigh.
I tried to reach for my bearings, but I couldn’t stand alone: I had to find aid in the forest. I held onto the tree next to me, until I could reach a steady footing, and I stumbled into the next tree, and the next one, until I was eventually tunnelling out of this maze.
Though, I wasn’t really tunnelling anywhere. I had no idea when I was going to be saved, or if I was going to make it. All I could think about was the throbbing feeling of bark lodged in my leg, as though it was feeding on me, and the stomach-churning feeling of the wound dripping. Dripping, as though it was an hour-glass of time.
I wheezed, but that did not help me balance. I fell again… slipping through the shrubs in front of me.
I saw a light.
