Using eight-year-old twins Bobby and Alison, create a story - maximum of 1,000 words - that show cause and effect within the story.

I was a little apprehensive about this assignment, not completely sure what was meant by cause and effect. It can be defined as the consequences of an action, event or decision.

My answer:

Bobby and Alison are twins, they are more than just brother and sister, they are best friends as well. Even though they look alike, they both have very different personalities; Bobby is the one who will try new things out without really thinking about the consequences, whilst Alison likes to step back and think things through. 

Bobby and Alison love to play with their friends, they enjoy riding on their bikes, playing football or basketball or sometimes just playing computer games together.

One day, they all decided to go for a bike ride together and were happily cycling down the street when suddenly George appeared. Now, “Who’s George?” you may well ask, well he wasn’t a very nice boy, he teased the younger children and told tales on the older children.

“Where are you all off to?” he demanded, he had positioned his bike across the path so they couldn’t pass him. “We’re going for a cycle in the woods,” replied Jamie, one of Bobby and Alison’s friends. “I’m bored,” George announced, “So I’m going to come with you.” Everyone looked at each other and pulled faces, they didn’t want George to come with them, but it seemed like they had no choice.

They cycled around their local woods, George took great delight in stopping suddenly in front of them, causing them to brake hard to avoid hitting each other.

The path that they were following lead them to a river and tied to one of the trees was a rope swing. As soon as they arrived, George flung down his bike and raced over to the rope swing. “I bet I could do this easily,” he boasted, tugging at the rope to see if it held. The friends peered over the edge of the bank, it was quite high and steep and actually looked a little dangerous.

“Come on then, who’s going to go first?” George asked. They all looked at each other, none of them thought it looked particularly safe. “Do I have to pick someone then?” he asked impatiently, “How about you, Bobby?”

Bobby wasn’t sure that he wanted to go on this rope swing, if he fell, he would fall quite a long way and end up in the water. “Don’t do it, it doesn’t look safe,” Alison told her twin brother, “I’m worried that you may hurt yourself.” Bobby agreed with her and started to tell George that he wasn’t going to do it. “I… I… I don’t—” Bobby started to say, but George interrupted him, “Come on Bobby, what are you scared of? Are you chicken?”

Bobby looked around at his friends, they all looked scared, he had to do it, if he didn’t then George might pick one of them to do it. “Please don’t do it, Bobby,” his sister pleaded, “Let’s just get on our bikes and cycle away.”

“Bobby! I’m waiting,” George shouted, “All your friends will think you’re brave doing this, if you don’t, they won’t want to be your friends anymore!”

He stepped forward and even though his heart was thumping so loud he was sure George could hear it, he said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” Alison gasped, she could see the danger, she stepped forward and grabbed his shoulder, “No, I won’t let you do it, don’t let George bully you into doing this.” But Bobby just pushed her hand away and took the rope swing from George’s hand.

As he held onto the rope, he looked down, it was quite high, but he stepped back, ran forward and launched himself off the side of the bank.

The feeling of flying through the air was thrilling, he went forward and then backwards, closer to his friends, he could see their faces were a mixture of excitement and terror.  George was smiling, he couldn’t actually believe that Bobby decided to do it, he certainly wouldn’t have.

After a few swings, the rope swing started to slow down, until it came to a complete stop. Bobby was stranded, he was dangling over the water and not able to get the momentum to swing back to his friends and George. “I’m stuck,” he shouted, “Can anyone find a branch of something to try to hook onto the rope and pull me back?” They all looked around for something, but there was nothing to be found.

“Bobby, we can’t reach you, we’re going to have to get the fire brigade to come and get you,” Alison shouted, “Hold on.”

George produced a mobile phone, “My parents told me to use it in an emergency and this is an emergency,” so he phoned 999.

After approximately half an hour, a small fire truck arrived with four firefighters. “Well, what’s been going on here then?” the senior officer asked. Alison explained that they were trying out the rope swing and Bobby got stuck, whilst the other firefighters had found a long hook and were pulling Bobby back to safety.

“This rope swing looks pretty dangerous, I think we need to take it down,” the senior officer said to his colleagues, and with that, they cut the rope and the rope swing fell into the water below. “That was a very silly thing to do, you could have been hurt.”

Bobby looked at the ground, he knew he’d been stupid, he should have never given in to the peer pressure from George and then they wouldn’t have had to call out the fire service. He vowed that he would never give in to somebody ever again.

Assessor comment:

Another great idea.

Grade needed to pass: 60%

Your grade: 100%

Explain how you planned your story and any difficulties with the writing aspect.

Fairly self explanatory.

My answer:

I decided to wait to write the stories until inspiration came, rather than sit down and try and think of something to write. So I took my time and found that once I had figured out exactly what I was going to write, then the actual writing of it came easier than I thought. The planning really took the form of beginning, middle and end as these were short stories.

The main difficulty was actually coming up with an idea, especially for the cause and effect story, i had never heard of that before! Another difficulty I found was the word count, the worst story for this wa sthe magic story as I had wanted to go on to do another jigsaw adventure, but in order to not go too much over the 1000 word limit, I had to stop at one story.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing these stories.

Assessor Comment:

Fantastic, well done.

So that is Module 2 finished – I was very happy with my marks, 100% and a distinction. Fingers crossed that I can continue this standard in my future assignments, but I have a feeling it’s gonna get a bit tougher!