7th-Grade Mystery Story
It is a clear, crisp fall evening – just before dark, and you and your friend are walking along a street that is lined with huge oak
trees on either side. A soft wind causes the limbs of the trees to tremble slightly, and in the distance on a hill, you and your friend
see a huge, old house that is three stories high. It is surrounded by high, stone walls.
Your friend says, “I’ve heard a lot about that old house. It’s supposed to be empty, but people who have gone near it say they have
heard all sorts of strange noises coming from it at night, as if someone is in there. The weirdest thing of all…is that some people
say they have heard a strange voice calling out, ‘I’m the wise person, and I alone am able to give you the answer to any questions
you wonder about.’”
“Now if that’s true, I have some questions I’d sure like to have answered,” you reply.
Your friend wails, “Well, I wouldn’t go in there to get them answered! I wouldn’t go in that house if you paid me ONE
THOUSAND DOLLARS!”
“Well, I’m not afraid to go in. Come on. Let’s go see what’s in there!” you exclaim.
“NO WAY!” your friend snaps back passionately. “Besides, once you hear some of the strange noises that come out of that house,
I’ll bet you ten dollars you will be running out of there like lightning!”
Just to show your friend that it takes a lot to scare you, you decide to do just that and go to explore the house. As you approach it,
you notice there’s a huge, iron gate, which is locked; however, just several feet down from the gate is a heavy, wooden door in the
high, stone wall. You notice that it is open an inch or two, so you walk over and peek inside. What you see is a gloomy, weedchoked garden. You decide to enter the doorway.
Before you are a huge tangle of thorny bushes and weeds which are growing everywhere. You find what looks like used to be a
path and tunnel through the thick bushes to the house. Suddenly, you hear a scratching sound behind you, so you quickly jerk
around to see…nothing. You tell yourself that maybe it was just a squirrel. You then feel a sharp pain on your right cheek, so you
reach up to touch it. You feel something warm trickling down your cheek and realize that you have been cut. “It must have been
just a scratch from one of the thorns,” you say quietly aloud to yourself. Summoning your courage, you continue following the
path and tunnel to the house. You finally reach the house and walk up creaky steps to the front door. You try to turn the doorknob
and find it’s not locked, so you cautiously step inside.
What you see before you is a scene as dreary as you could ever imagine. By now, the sun has begun to set, it’s getting dark, and
everything looks gloomy. However, there is still enough light for you to see that the inside of the house is well towards becoming
a complete wreck. The walls are covered with black splotches of mildew, and some of the floorboards have broken loose and are
sticking up on their ends. A chill – not completely due to the night air – is in the room and makes you feel cold. You notice there
are sagging bookshelves (with an odor of musty, old books) that are lining the walls. White sheets have been flung over the
furniture, or at least they used to be white. You hear little, scratching noises someplace in the room, and as you look down, you
see two little, black field mice scurrying over the crooked floor. As you walk around the room, glancing this way and that,
suddenly something about the size of a cat jumps out with a rush towards you and runs squealing into the darkness. You stand
frozen still; your heart beating out of your chest, and you try to catch your breath. You feel as if your spine has suddenly become
hollow and someone has filled it with particles of ice, but you are determined to continue on and explore the entire house.
You see a door down a passageway, so you slowly open it. Before you are some dark, cold, stone steps. You decide to go down
it. To steady yourself, you put your hand against the wall. It’s damp and cold, and you can hear a sound of slowly dripping water
somewhere in the distance. As you look around this new room of the house, you curiously call out, asking, “Hello? Is anybody
down here?” Your mouth and throat feel dry. No one answers your call.
You decide to go back up the stairs of the passageway and explore the rest of the house. You notice that your heart is pounding
like a hammer inside your chest. Back up on the main floor now, you hear your footsteps echo as you walk through the house. A
bit ahead, you see a wide stairway, so you approach it and begin to climb the stairs. As each step takes you higher, the faint,
evening light from the windows below grows more distant, and by the time you reach the second floor landing, you are nearly in
darkness.
A long hallway lies ahead of you and blurs into complete darkness. Beside you, a second flight of stairs (narrower than the first)
starts up into the darkness. Your throat feels tight. You notice that you are barely breathing, but you decide to continue up this
second flight of stairs. As you reach the top, you enter a huge room which stretches into the shadows. You walk cautiously
around the room. Something rushes past your ear. Your hair feels like it’s standing on end; you notice that your hands are cold
and sweaty. Gathering all your courage, you exclaim to yourself, “I’ve come this far! I must go on!”
You walk towards the door and give two tiny knocks. You hear footsteps, slow and shuffling, coming toward the door…
Now you get to write the remainder of the story! Remember that it is up to your imagination to take
this journey around the house, and you get to write the events from this point.

1st Step = Plan/Outline/Brainstorm/Prewrite. You will need to explore three (3) new areas of the house, while also
developing more of a storyline (plot), including a bit of a conflict (problem), climax (highest point of suspense), and
resolution (ending). Decide what areas you will describe/develop, and determine if there will be some major
action/events in each area. Tie all loose ends of your story. Think about your friend…is he/she still in the story?
There is a bet…does anything happen with this? There is shuffling “coming toward the door”…what happens
next? It’s your story. Have fun but detailed! Be sure to use great “TRANSITIONS” to move from one scene to
the next and from sentence to sentence. Develop your characters well so that readers can see them clearly and
connect/understand them.

2nd Step = Write your rough draft. You MUST turn in your rough draft. This is your “sloppy copy”, but try
hard to do as many things correctly for capitalization/punctuation/grammar/etc. so that your revision and editing
later is easier for you. It’s also not a bad idea to double-space EVERY line of your rough draft so that you can
make changes, add details, etc. when you revise and edit later. Your rough draft can be done in pen or pencil.

3rd Step = Revision/Editing. You need to edit/revise your rough draft for grammar, punctuation, capitalization,
spelling, paragraphing, and for the content of your story. You (and you ONLY) MUST definitely revise for the
content of your story, but ask for help from an older sibling(s), a parent(s), and/or a good friend to read your story
and give advice/tips on what to revise for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and grammar, because sometimes
you do not catch your own errors; otherwise, you wouldn’t have them in the first place (unless you just didn’t
edit/revise carefully).

4th Step = Type and print your final draft. It must be neatly lined up at both margins (your computer will do it
automatically), with a font size of 10 to 12. (The example on the front of this paper is in size 10 font. I would
usually use size 12, but I wanted to save paper and money, so I tried to get it on one side of the paper.) Please use
one of the standard font styles: “Times New Roman”, “Arial”, or “Sans Serif”.

You can put a name to the characters (“You” and “your friend”) and/or even add in characters. Have fun!
Happy writing!

This is NOT a horror story, so violence and brutality should NOT be included. Rule of thumb: If you have to ask
if what you write is okay to have in your story, then it is NOT probably okay and should NOT be written.

You don’t want to “over describe” things in your story, but if I were to close my eyes and you read your story
aloud, I should be able to really feel and see your story as if I were sitting in a movie theater watching your story
on the big screen.

Use the “inner movies” in your head to create your story. Picture things you want to describe and then use your
five senses (feel, hear, see, smell, and taste) to describe it. Don’t tell the story; show it instead with great
description/details in the form of IMAGERY! Also, use FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (similes, metaphors,
hyperboles, onomatopoeias, personifications, etc.)

“Showing” in your writing is this: “As Spot’s scrawny legs fought to move, one after another, he quickly gained
speed and moved across the wet, grassy field.” (“Telling” is this: “Spot ran.”)

Other forms of descriptive writing can (and should) be used (see “Descriptive Writing” notes).

As for beginning new paragraphs in your story, you need to be CONSISTENT with whatever style you choose.
You can choose one of the following:
1. Line up all paragraphs at the left and be sure to double-space between each paragraph
2. Indent (hit the “tab” button on your keyboard one time) all paragraphs. If you indent all paragraphs, you
MUST have the same spacing between all of them. You will either skip ZERO lines (called “singlespacing”) or have one blank line (called “double-spacing”) between all of them. Whatever you do between
the first two paragraphs is the style of spacing you’ll do between all paragraphs for the rest of your story.

If you decide to have characters speaking (dialogue), please use correct capitalization/punctuation, dependent
upon what type of quote/dialogue you use (Regular Quote, Interrupted Quote, and/or Quote Within a Quote).

If you decide to have characters speaking (dialogue), please begin a new paragraph each time a speaker talks.
Look at paragraphs two, three, four, five, and six of the beginning of the story on the front side of this sheet.