Test 16 (d) — The Story

The story is the only option with no bullets. That is the whole difficulty.

For (a), (b) and (c) the paper hands you three or four points and the Content mark is largely a matter of covering them. Here there is nothing to cover, so the examiner asks a different question: is this a complete story, or a fragment?

A complete story at 200 words needs four things, and there is room for exactly four:

Part	Words	Job
Situation	~40	Who, where, and what is ordinary — established fast
Complication	~60	The thing that goes wrong or changes
Turn	~60	The decision or discovery. This is the story
Resolution	~40	What is different now. One line of aftermath

Two forms appear. Sometimes you are given an opening sentence to continue; sometimes an outline of events to write up. Read which one you have been given — continuing an outline as if it were an opening line loses Content marks immediately.

Choose this option only if you finish with time to spare. With no bullets to lean on, a story that runs out of words mid-event scores far worse than a plain article that covered every point.

Copying prompt points verbatim awards 0 for Content, and the Zero-Content Gate then withholds every Language, Organisation and Mechanics mark. For this option the risk is different but equal: a memorised story rarely fits the opening line you were actually given.

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1. The parcel on the road

Past paper — 2023, option (d). Complete the story, stating what you did with the parcel.

"I noticed a parcel on the road as I continued to stroll along the road. When I went there and glanced around, nobody was in sight…"

Model answer (207 words)

…so I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, wrapped in brown paper that the morning drizzle had softened at one corner.

My first thought, and I am not proud of it, was that nobody had seen me. I stood there for a while with the thing in my hands, inventing reasons why carrying it home would be reasonable. Then the corner tore a little further and I saw a name written in careful handwriting, and an address four lanes from my own.

The house was small and blue. An elderly man opened the door before I knocked, as though he had been standing behind it. When I held out the parcel he did not take it at once. He asked me to come in, and he called to his wife, and the two of them stood in their doorway looking at a package of medicines that had been posted from Kandy eleven days earlier.

He tried to give me two hundred rupees. I refused, and then accepted a cup of tea, which seemed to settle the matter for both of us.

I have walked down that road many times since. The temptation lasted four minutes. I have been glad about it for two years.

What to steal

• Continuing mid-sentence ("…so I picked it up"). The prompt ends with an ellipsis; picking it up exactly there proves you read it.
• Admitting the wrong impulse. "I am not proud of it" makes the narrator real and the turn meaningful.
• Withholding the contents until the door opens. The medicines arriving late is the whole story, and it lands hardest last.
• The two-line aftermath. Four minutes against two years is the resolution doing real work.

What NOT to steal

• The blue house and the eleven days. Details are what make a story yours.

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2. The good news

Past paper — 2024, option (d). Use the given statements at the beginning and complete the story.

"I felt so proud and wonderful. I was waiting impatiently to tell the good news to my best friend…"

Model answer (195 words)

I felt so proud and wonderful. I was waiting impatiently to tell the good news to my best friend — that after three attempts, the scholarship was mine.

Nadeesha and I had sat the same paper. We had revised together for four months at her kitchen table, testing each other until her mother turned the light off. I had not once considered what I would say if only one of us was selected.

She was at the gate when I arrived, and she knew before I spoke. I watched her arrange her face into something generous while her eyes did something else entirely.

"I knew you would," she said, and she meant it, and it cost her a great deal.

We walked home the long way and did not discuss the list. Near her lane she said, without any particular weight, that she would sit it again next year and that I would have to help. I said I would.

I had imagined that morning for three years. I had imagined the letter, the telephone call, my mother's face. I had never once imagined that the best part of winning would be being forgiven for it.

What to steal

• Using the given lines verbatim and then immediately adding. The prompt says use them at the beginning; the dash completes the sentence into new information.
• The complication being emotional, not dramatic. No fire, no accident — a friendship under strain is enough at 200 words.
• One line of dialogue, placed at the turn. Dialogue is expensive in words; spend it where it counts.
• The closing reversal — expectation against reality.

What NOT to steal

• The name, the scholarship, the kitchen table.

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3. The dog that woke the house

Past paper — 2025, option (d). Use the given outline and write the story.

A fire breaks out in a house at night — a quick-thinking dog wakes the family and leads them to safety — the dog earns praise from everybody — neighbours organise a ceremony to honour the dog.

Model answer (205 words)

The fire began behind the refrigerator a little after two in the morning, quietly, in a house where four people were asleep.

Kaluwa was not a remarkable dog. He was elderly, deaf in one ear, and had spent eleven years failing to catch a single squirrel. He slept on the back step because he had never been allowed further.

What woke him was not the smoke but the sound — a soft ticking as the wiring gave way. He barked once, which nobody heard, and then did something he had been scolded for all his life: he came inside. He pulled the youngest child's blanket onto the floor, and when she sat up and began to cry, the house woke around her.

They were in the lane within two minutes, all four of them, watching the kitchen window turn orange.

By morning the whole lane knew. People who had complained about his barking for a decade arrived with food. The following Sunday the neighbours held a small ceremony at the junction and hung a garland on a dog who had no idea what he had done, and who was mainly interested in the food.

He still sleeps on the back step. Nobody chases him out now.

What to steal

• Covering every outline event in order — fire, wake, praise, ceremony — without ever sounding like a list.
• Making the hero ordinary first. Eleven years of failing to catch squirrels is what makes the rescue land.
• The rule-breaking detail ("he came inside") — the turn works because an earlier line established that he was not allowed to.
• Refusing sentimentality at the end. "Mainly interested in the food" is truer and therefore better.

What NOT to steal

• Kaluwa, the squirrels, the deaf ear. Build your own animal.

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4. The letter in the drawer

Unseen practice prompt. Continue the story.

"The letter had been in the drawer for eleven years, and my grandmother had asked me twice not to open it…"

Model answer (194 words)

…so of course I opened it on the afternoon of her funeral, alone in a house that had never been quiet before.

It was addressed to her in handwriting I did not recognise, posted from Badulla in a year when I had not yet been born. I expected a love letter. My mother had hinted at one for years, in the way families hint at things they hope are true.

It was an apology. Four paragraphs, from a brother she had not spoken of, about a piece of land and a decision made when they were both young and certain. He wrote that he had been wrong. He asked whether he might visit. He left a telephone number.

She had kept it eleven years and never called.

I sat on the floor with it for a long time. Then I copied the number onto my hand, and in the evening, without telling anyone, I dialled it.

A man answered on the fourth ring. When I said whose granddaughter I was, he did not speak for a while.

"She kept it," he said finally. It was not a question, so I did not answer it.

What to steal

• The disobedience stated plainly ("so of course I opened it"). Continuing the given clause with a confession is efficient and immediately characterising.
• Subverting the expected content. The reader expects a love letter; an apology is better because it needs a decision.
• A five-word paragraph at the turn. Isolating "She had kept it eleven years and never called" gives it the weight of the whole story.
• Ending on unresolved dialogue. At 200 words, resolution can be a first step rather than a conclusion.

What NOT to steal

• Badulla, the land dispute, the fourth ring.

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5. Lost on the trip

Unseen practice prompt. Use the outline and write the story.

A school trip to a crowded town — a student becomes separated from the group — the hours that follow — how it ends and what the student learned.

Model answer (194 words)

The bus reached Kandy at nine and Miss Fernando counted us twice before letting us into the market. I was thirty-one of thirty-two. I have thought about that number often since.

I stopped at a stall selling brass — only for a moment, only to turn something over in my hand — and when I looked up there was no white uniform anywhere in the street.

The first ten minutes were merely embarrassing. The next hour was not. I had no money, a telephone with no charge, and a growing certainty that the buses left at four whether or not everyone was on them. I walked the same three lanes repeatedly because walking felt like progress.

It was the brass seller who noticed me pass his stall a fourth time. He did not speak much English and I did not speak much Tamil, and between us we managed school, bus, and police. He closed his stall — closed it, in the middle of a Saturday — and walked me to the station.

Miss Fernando was already there, grey-faced, counting a group of thirty-one.

I never learned his name. I have never since assumed that someone else will help.

What to steal

• The number as a thread — thirty-two, thirty-one, returning at the end. A repeated detail makes 200 words feel structured.
• Escalation in three steps: embarrassing, then not, then frightening.
• The cost paid by the helper ("closed it, in the middle of a Saturday"). Kindness that costs something is more moving than kindness that does not.
• Two-sentence resolution that states the change without announcing a moral.

What NOT to steal

• The brass stall, Miss Fernando, the language detail.

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6. The promise

Unseen practice prompt. Continue the story.

"I had promised not to tell anyone, and by evening I had told three people…"

Model answer (203 words)

…and by the following Monday it had reached the staff room, which is how these things end.

Dinesh had told me at the interval, quickly, looking at the ground. His father had lost the job in Colombo and they would be moving to his aunt's house in Matara before the term ended. He asked me not to say anything. He wanted to tell people himself, in his own time, which I did not understand then and understand completely now.

I told Sachini because she asked why he had been quiet. I told Ruwan because Sachini already knew. I told my sister because I had been carrying it for six hours and it had become heavy.

None of them told anyone out of malice. It simply travelled, the way water finds the lowest path.

On Tuesday a teacher said something kind to him in front of the class, and I watched him understand, in about two seconds, exactly what had happened and who had begun it.

He was not angry. That was the worst part. He said, "It's fine, everyone would have known anyway," and then he did not sit next to me again.

We still write, sometimes. I have never repeated anything since.

What to steal

• The three tellings as three short sentences. The rhythm enacts how fast it spread.
• Removing malice deliberately. Nobody is a villain, which makes the harm harder to dismiss.
• "He was not angry. That was the worst part." The turn is a refusal of the expected confrontation.
• A consequence that is small and permanent — he did not sit next to me again.

What NOT to steal

• The names and the Matara detail.

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7. The morning the power went

Unseen practice prompt. Use the outline and write the story.

A power cut during an important school examination — the hall in darkness — what the invigilator and students do — how it is resolved.

Model answer (206 words)

We were forty minutes into the term test when the fans stopped, and the hall went from bright to brown in about a second.

Nobody spoke at first. Ninety students sat in a room with high windows on one side only, and those of us in the far three rows could no longer read our own handwriting. Someone's chair scraped. Someone laughed, too loudly, the way people do when they are uncertain.

Mr Wijesinghe did not raise his voice. He said, "Pens down, papers face down, nobody leaves," and the ordinariness of it settled the room faster than shouting would have. Then he walked the aisles and moved, one by one, the students in the darkest rows to the floor beside the windows.

It took perhaps six minutes. We wrote the rest of that paper sitting cross-legged on the tiles with our answer sheets on our knees, and the ones by the window read questions aloud for the ones behind them when the light failed again.

The power returned twenty minutes after we finished.

I do not remember what was on that paper. I remember ninety students on a floor, and a man who solved the problem without once mentioning that it was not his fault.

What to steal

• A sensory opening — fans stopping is how the room notices, better than "the power went out".
• Dialogue used once, for the instruction that changes the situation.
• The unremarked heroism in the final clause. Saying what the character did not do is often stronger than praise.
• Forgetting the paper, remembering the room — a precise way to say what mattered.

What NOT to steal

• The invigilator's name and the six minutes.

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8. The woman at the bus halt

Unseen practice prompt. Continue the story.

"The old woman at the bus halt asked me for the time, and that is how it began…"

Model answer (201 words)

…though it took me most of an hour to understand that she had not wanted the time at all.

I told her it was half past four. She thanked me and asked again about ten minutes later, and then a third time, and I began to watch her more carefully. She had a cloth bag, a folded umbrella, and a bus ticket to Kurunegala that she kept smoothing flat on her knee.

Four buses to Kurunegala came and went. She looked at each of them and did not move.

When I finally asked, she said her son was meeting her and that she did not want to arrive before he did, because he would worry. Then she said it again in slightly different words, and I noticed she had asked me the time four times and told me the same thing twice.

I sat down. I asked whether she had his number. She had it written on a paper in the bag, in handwriting much younger than hers.

He arrived within twenty minutes, out of breath, having searched two other halts since three o'clock. He did not thank me so much as look at me as if I had returned something.

What to steal

• The delayed understanding stated in the first line — it promises the reader a discovery.
• Evidence before conclusion. The repeated question, the smoothed ticket, the four buses — the reader works it out alongside the narrator.
• Never naming the condition. The story is stronger for not using the word.
• Describing a reaction instead of an emotion ("looked at me as if I had returned something").

What NOT to steal

• Kurunegala, the umbrella, the twenty minutes.

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9. The money on the counter

Unseen practice prompt. Use the outline and write the story.

A student finds a wallet of money — the temptation and what it could pay for — the decision — the consequence, expected or otherwise.

Model answer (199 words)

The wallet was on the counter of the photocopy shop, between the stapler and a jar of pens, and the shop was empty for the whole time I stood looking at it.

There were eight thousand rupees in it. I know because I counted them, which is the part I still think about — not the taking, which I did not do, but the counting, which I did.

Eight thousand was the tuition class my mother had said we would discuss again in January. It was the shoes. It was not having to ask.

I put it back exactly as I had found it and went to look for Nimal at the photocopier, and I told him, and then I left quickly because I did not want to be there when the owner returned.

The consequence was not what I expected. Nobody praised me. The owner never knew my name. Nimal forgot about it within a week.

What happened instead was smaller and has lasted longer. I know now, precisely, what I am like when nobody is watching and there is something I want. Most people never find out. I found out at fifteen, in a photocopy shop, for free.

What to steal

• Confessing the smaller wrong. "Not the taking, which I did not do, but the counting, which I did" is the most interesting sentence available on this prompt.
• Making the temptation specific — shoes, tuition, not having to ask. Abstract temptation is not tempting.
• Denying the expected reward. No praise, no discovery. It forces a truer ending.
• A resolution that is internal — what the narrator now knows about themselves.

What NOT to steal

• Eight thousand, Nimal, the photocopy shop.

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10. The dry well

Unseen practice prompt. Continue the story.

"Everyone said the well was dry, and everyone had said so for as long as I could remember…"

Model answer (195 words)

…which is why nobody had looked into it for eleven years, including the people who said it.

It stood behind my grandfather's house under a jak tree, covered by a sheet of corrugated metal held down with two bricks. As children we had been told to keep away from it, and we had, in the way children obey a rule that nobody is enforcing.

The drought came in my final school year. The tap gave nothing after nine in the morning, and the queue at the village tank began before dawn. My grandfather was too old to stand in it and too proud to say so.

So I moved the bricks.

The smell that came up was not the smell of a dry well. I lowered a bucket on a rope, further than I expected to, and it came back heavy.

The water was low and it was not clean and it needed boiling, and for eleven weeks it was enough for two households.

The well had never been dry. It had only been covered, and then it had been covered for long enough that covered and dry became the same word in everybody's mouth.

What to steal

• The one-line paragraph at the turn ("So I moved the bricks"). Isolating the decision gives it the weight the story needs.
• The sensory proof — smell before sight, weight before water. Evidence the reader can feel.
• Withholding the motive until the drought makes it necessary.
• A closing that generalises from the object without stating a moral outright.

What NOT to steal

• The jak tree, the eleven weeks, the final sentence — especially the final sentence.