Descriptosaurus: Ghost Stories

Alison Wilcox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317510932
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Descriptosaurus: Ghost Stories builds on the vocabulary and descriptive phrases introduced in the original bestselling Descriptosaurus and, within the context of ghost stories, develops the structure and use of the words and phrases to promote colourful cinematic writing. This essential guide will enable children to take their writing to the next level, combine their descriptions of setting and character and show how the two interact. Children can then experiment with their own ghost stories, armed with the skills, techniques and vocabulary necessary to describe their ghostly scenes in a way that allows the reader to feel the characters' fear and visualise the source of their terror within the setting.

This new system also provides a contextualised alternative to grammar textbooks and will assist children in acquiring, understanding and applying the grammar they will need to improve their writing, both creative and technical.

Part 1

The setting

	1
	Hooks to build suspense

Note: Apart from aiding the flow of your writing, this chapter can also be used to stimulate quick, brainstorming activities to get your creative juices flowing by asking the questions – Why? How? When? Where? Who? What happened next? It is amazing how many stories can be created as a result of these quick activities.

OPENINGS

If you had asked him whether or not he believed in ghosts, he would have said no … a couple of months ago. But not now!

How different things would have been if they had never:

inherited that house;

won that holiday;

visited the church/hotel/house/ruins/great uncle;

opened that diary/box/door.

He should have followed them, or run the other way, but he stood frozen in shock as the door opened. And that was when everything started to go wrong.

As soon as she opened the door to the cellar and stepped inside, she knew. She knew that she had made a terrible mistake.

Nobody had come this way for a long, long time.

Something terrible had happened here – she could feel it – sense something ominous, menacing … wanted to get away, to run from whatever waited for her.

He sensed that something was wrong here. Very wrong. Why had he come? Was it too late to turn back?

She looked up at the dark, unblinking eyes of the (house) and she got the weirdest feeling; a feeling of unease and a sense of a threatening, malignant presence.

As soon as he had stepped into...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Key elements
• Part 1: The setting
• Part 2: Creating suspense
• Part 3: Atmosphere
• Part 4: The ghost
• Appendix