Story Writing 101

There is a common theme and pattern to every story in TPRS:  There is someone and they want something.  They go somewhere to get it, but they are unsuccessful.  So, they go somewhere else and resolve their problem.  Once you understand this structure, writing your stories are simple.  Here's how...

1. If there are specific structures or words you want to learn in the story, list those first.
2. Get the skeleton of your story:
• Setting it up:
• Who/what is the main character?
• What do they want?
• Unsuccessful attempt:
• Where do they go to get it?
• Why can't they get it there?
• Successful Attempt:
• Where do they go?
• How is their problem solved?
3. Add details.   If you don't already have structures, now's the time to decide what they will be and how they will repeat throughout the story.  Whether you decide what they are now or if you had them from Step 1, now's the time to work them in as much as you can.  Get as specific as possibile - details are what build interest!  You don't have to answer all these questions, especially since your students will be personalizing the answers to their class anyway.  However, this gives you a basic framework and direction to build from.  TIP: stick to using ONLY the structures that the students know, whether they have already been taught or you are teaching them today.  I also recommend working in structures that are more recent and/or students are still struggling with.
• Who/what is the main character?
• What are they?
• What is their name?
• What do they look like?
• What is their personality?
• Where are they?
• Why are they there?
• What are their circumstances?
• What do they want?
• Why do they want it?
• What kind do they want?
• How many do they want?
• What are they going to do with it?
• What do they have to do to get it?
• Where do they go to get it?
• Why do they go there?
• How do they get there?
• Who is there? (Add details about this character as well.)
• What is it like there?
• Why can't they get it there?
• Where do they go next?
• Why do they go there?
• How do they get there?
• Who is there? (Add details about this character as well.)
• What is it like there?
• How is their problem solved?
4. Write your story
• At this point, your story has practically written itself.  Now, you just have to put it into story form and decide what you're going to let the students add and what is most important to focus on and circle.  Many of these things will be decided when you're actually asking the story with the class and adjusting based on what they know and what they need more practice with
• Here's a magical tip that took me a while to discover:  One insight I recently had was to write stories so that they follow a brief pattern which includes all of my structures and then simply repeating that pattern. This will:
• Ensure that you've taken advantage of working in your structures multiple times and will increase your repetitions while giving students a template for what's going to happen at each location! 
• Keep your story on-track and focused on the structures you want to teach.
• Simplify your preparation for a story since you only need to know one smaller set of questions that repeat themselves in different ways for your entire story! 
• Give you infinite ability to add additional locations for students to get more practice with the structures in a new context (or just want to extend the story).  It will be easier to do so on the fly because the story is already following a set pattern - you only need to ask the same questions as you did for the last attempt and the students will fill in the details!