This themepage looks at ways in which you can express your thoughts and ideas more efficiently. Its aim is to improve your personal writing, help you plan your essays better and encourage your creativity.

Crawling before you Walk

• Get Writing - Approaching Short Stories
  Handy hints about writing short stories.

• Descriptive Writing Techniques 
  Tips to help you in descriptive writing.
  
  
• Writing Dialogue - How to Improve your Short Stories
  A great help to improving your use of dialogue in personal writing. (PDF)
  
  
• Planning Your Essay - Persuasion Maps
  Helps you plan and visualise your essay.

Finding your Feet

• The Personal Writing Worksheet 
  Description: A worksheet that helps you plan your essays better.

• Personal Writing - Creative Characters
  Helps you create memorable characters in your stories.

• What are Diaries - An Introduction to Personal Journals
  An introduction to diary and personal journal writing.

• Interactive Personal Narrative 
  Helps you to understand effective personal narrative writing.

• Diary Writing Prompts 
  A list of prompts to help you write authentic diary entries.

Running the Big Races

• Expressing Your Opinion. Writing Better Debates!
  Helps you prepare, structure and write debates.

• Writing to Argue, Persuade & Instruct
  Helps you to create good debate-style essays.

• Writing a Good Book Review
  Step-by-step guide to writing a good book review.
  
  
• Do-It-Yourself Fairytale Kit
  Storylines and ideas to help you write fairy tales.
  
  
• Taking Sides - Writing Persuasive Essays 
  Interactive aid to writing from a specific point of view.

• Discursive Essay Writing
  Helps you plan and structure a discursive essay.
  
  
• What Makes a Good Short Story
  Examines the techniques in writing a good short story.
  
  
• Descriptive Writing with Virginia Hamilton
  Advice about descriptive writing from the author Virginia Hamilton.