Writing
Continuing a story
Carry on a story that somebody else began, keeping its narrator, its tense and everything it has already established.
Continuing somebody else's story is not the same as writing your own. The opening has already made every big decision for you — who is telling it, when it happened, what is true in this world — and your job is to honor those decisions while still making something happen. Most marks are lost on the honoring, not on the making.
Keep the narrator
If the opening says I, every sentence you add says I. Slipping into she or they halfway through is the single commonest fault, and a reader notices it instantly even when the writer does not.
Keep the tense
A story begun in the past stays in the past to the last line. The exception is the same one as always: a real shift in time earns a shift in tense — "I still keep the letter" is allowed at the end of a past-tense story, because the keeping really is now.
Honor what is already true
If the lamp has gone out and there are no matches, you cannot light it. If the garden was empty, it cannot be crowded three lines later. Reread the opening and list what it has fixed before you write a word.
Make something happen
Describing is not continuing. A continuation that spends its length on the color of the envelope has not moved. Something must change: a door opens, a fact is discovered, a decision is taken.
Finish it
End on a line that settles the situation the opening set up. "And then something strange happened" is not an ending; it is a promise to write more, and there is no more.
Worked example
Continue: "I had left the window open, and by the time I came back the rain had reached the desk."
List what is fixed: the narrator is I, the tense is past, the window was open and the desk is wet.
Four constraints, found in twenty words. Everything you write has to survive all four.
Try it together
Check a continuation against its opening.
The opening is: "I had left the window open, and by the time I came back the rain had reached the desk." Answer each step with one word.
1.Name the person the story is told in.
Have a go
Opening: "We had missed the last bus, and the road home was a long stretch of dark." Which continuation fits?
Ready to practice?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.