1. Look back through your story at each new sentence. Are they varied, or do lots of them start with a name or the?
Try to make sure that you have a range of starts. You could try using some of the following:
- emotion words such as: scared, worried, anxious...
- adverbials of time such as: later that day, when everyone was asleep, in the morning...
- prepositional phrases such as: on the floor, in the distance, up above...
- adverbs ending in ly: suddenly, quietly, unusually...
Don't forget though, that you can obviously keep some of your starts such as 'the, a name or a pronoun such as she or he). Writing sounds strange without any of these.
2. Try reading your work aloud. Pause at every full stop.
If you are struggling to read the whole sentence because you need to take a breath, it is possible that you have forgotten some full stops. Have you linked all of your sentences together by using and, so, also etc? If you have, think about where you could take one of these conjunctions out and add a full stop. You will need to then also think about a good way of starting that new sentence.
3. Check that you have included enough detail, and that your story makes sense.
4. If you want to start writing up your story today, take a quick look at tomorrow's work for ideas.