Tags
competitions, Flash Fiction, micro fiction, mini sagas, poetry publishers, stone age fiction, stories in a hundred words, young writers
Young Writers, who are a children’s poetry publisher, have launched a competition in primary schools for key stage two children (aged 7-11), asking them to write a mini saga.
You can access the Young Writers website by clicking on the link here.
Mini sagas, or micro fiction as they are sometimes called, are the shortest of short stories. In this case, the maximum word limit for the mini saga is 100 words per story.
The competition is entitled Stone Age Stories.
The winners will receive £1,000 with £500 as the second prize and £250 as the third prize.
Each child who takes part will receive a book mark and a certificate of merit, and the winning entries will feature in a regional anthology, which the school will receive a complementary copy of.
You can find more information and downloadable forms on the website, which you can access by clicking on the link here.
The teacher can also download (or receive a hard copy by post) of a Key Stage Two lesson plan to help you introduce the topic to the children.
The entries can be returned by free post.
The competition finishes on July 26th 2013.
This could be a perfect way of introducing your class to the key elements of story telling. With such a restrictive word number the children are required to think hard about what elements are absolutely necessary to make a story work, and which things are extraneous. They are also required to be clever and creative with language in order to keep the reader interested, even for such a short time.
Writing mini sagas is a really useful skill to teach children as it can provide excellent foundations for writing longer, more intricate story lines and plots later on in their school career.
