Suspense Writing

Fragile Dreams is a fascinating game. In places it is quite frightening and I would personally limit it to Year 6 or older.

We spent a whole lesson playing the game and collecting powerful descriptive vocabulary.
I decided to focus the writing on the 'show not tell' technique advocated by Pie Corbett. Here the author shows the reader something tense is happening and that the character is scared without telling them the details.

For example, rather than:

A salivating monster pounced from behind the bushes. He was scared.

We might write:

A shadow fell. Leaves began to tremble. A shriek pierced the night sky. He froze. A tight feeling formed in the pit of his stomach.

Whilst walking through the game, the children were able to see lots of shadows or flickering lights and hear eerie noises before any of the events happened so we used this to support our suspense writing.