How to write a great story

Our ‘Write story’ page allows you to easily add text, photos and video. 

Sharing stories is central to being an active member of the Your Move community and is all about sharing what your school or organisation has been up to recently. It also earns you points to spend on great items for your school or organisation!

Before you start writing your masterpiece, you might like to take a look at our hot tips for writing better stories below.

Tips for writing better stories

• Include lots of details of how you went about your event, competition, activity or initiative – this helps others learn from your experiences!
• Add photos (and videos!) that show what you did – this can be of planning sessions, competition entries and all the action on the day
• Make sure you 'add any activities' that you completed (see below 'How to add activities to a story')
• Include reflections on the lessons you learnt along the way - what did and didn’t work
• Add your observations of any changes of travel culture e.g. stories or results and data
• Share anything you have created, such as action plans, lesson plans, art work or quiz questions
• Including innovative activities will earn bonus points

Check out the video below and the step by step instructions to learn how to post a story and add activities.

Finding the ‘Write story’ page

You can find the 'Write story' page on your Dashboard or the Stories page. 

• On your Dashboard, scroll down to the ‘Top stories’ section and click on the blue ‘Write a story’ button.
• On the Stories page (whether you’ve selected ‘All stories or ‘Our stories’), click on the blue ‘Write a story’ button.

How to use the ‘Write story’ page

Our ‘Write story’ page allows you to easily add text, photos, activities and video links. Make sure you are logged in in to your school or organisation's account first, then just follow these simple steps below.

Writing your Story

1. Write the title of your story in the ‘Story title’ field at the top of the page.
2. Add a preview image so that your story looks nice and really stands out amongst all the other stories
3. Type your story content in the ‘Story body’ field. TIP: you can copy and paste from a word processor, and it will keep your basic format for headings, dot points etc.
4. To add a photo, click on the ‘Add media’ image button and select the image in the dialog box. You can also drag and drop images from your computer.
5. To add a video, you will need to make sure your video is hosted on YouTube or Vimeo first. Then copy and paste the URL (found in the the address bar up the top) from YouTube or Vimeo.
6. Just like any other word processor, if you want to remove a word or line of text, simply highlight it and press delete or backspace until it has disappeared. 
7. Add activities to a story: We want to give you points for the activities you complete and now it is easier than ever! You can add an activity to a story as you write it.
   1. click the ‘Add activity’ button to add any activities that you completed as part of the event, promotion or initiative you are writing about.
   2. You can search for activities, or
   3. You can find the relevant activities in the categories listed in the 'accordions'.
   4. Once you’ve found the activity, select it and click the blue ‘+ Plus’ button to add it to your story.
   5. Then when you’ve added all the relevant activities, press ‘Save and exit’.

Note: With the new YM website, you can now add more than one activity to a story!

1. To post your story, click the blue ‘Submit’ button at the bottom of screen to post it now, or 
2. you can click ‘Save as draft and exit’ to come back to it later.
3. Once you have submitted your story, it can be edited for around 24-48 hours (or until our story markers have reviewed it).

Note: There is now an ‘Auto-save’ function for writing stories, so no more lost stories if your connection times out!