Write a short story in which the main characters are an old woman, a small child and a little puppy.

MODEL ANSWER (approximately 335 words)

THE ARRANGEMENT

Mrs. Kurian had lived alone at number nine for eleven years and had a reputation on our lane for shouting at children.

The reputation was deserved. She shouted at them for cycling on the pavement, for shouting themselves, and once, memorably, for existing near her gate. The children were frightened of her and their parents apologised about her at parties.

The puppy arrived in August, during the rain, and belonged to nobody. It was brown, extremely thin, and it chose — for reasons no adult could explain — the gap under Mrs. Kurian’s gate as the place to live.

She did not shout at it. She put out rice.

Meera, who was six and lived at number four and had not yet learnt to be frightened of anybody, came to see the puppy on the second day. She stood at the gate and looked through the bars. Mrs. Kurian came out onto the step and the two of them regarded each other.

"It is not mine," said Mrs. Kurian.

"It is not mine either," said Meera.

This appeared to settle something. Meera was permitted through the gate.

The arrangement that followed lasted two years and had rules, though nobody wrote them down. Meera came at five, after homework. She was allowed to feed the puppy, who was named Biscuit by her and Dog by Mrs. Kurian, who claimed not to have named it at all. Meera was not allowed to touch the piano. Mrs. Kurian was not required to be cheerful.

What the lane noticed first was that Mrs. Kurian had begun sitting on her front step at five o’clock. What it noticed later was that she had stopped shouting at anyone.

At her funeral the year before last, Meera — who is fourteen now and has the dog — was asked by someone’s mother whether she had been frightened of the old woman, like everybody else.

She said she had never understood why anybody was. She said Mrs. Kurian had simply been waiting for somebody to come to the gate.

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

THREE characters are prescribed — an old woman, a small child AND a little puppy — and all three must be MAIN characters. The puppy in particular tends to become scenery; here it is the thing that brings the other two together, which gives it a function in the plot.

A prescribed cast is a gift, because the relationships are already implied. The natural shape is that the animal or the child changes the adult — and the strongest version shows the change rather than announcing it. Notice that the model never says Mrs. Kurian became kind; it says the lane noticed she had stopped shouting.

AVOID the rehearsed plots: the lost puppy reunited with its owner, and the lonely old woman who dies and leaves everything to the child. Both are written by hundreds of candidates.

Keep to the PAST tense, punctuate the dialogue correctly with each speaker on a new line, and give the story a definite ending. FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see "Composition — grade bands and marking" in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter, along with the worked model for this composition type.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.