A Story on a Broken Promise: Model Answer and Marking Notes
Quick answer: An original 180-word exam story about a broken promise between a sister and her small brother in Ahmedabad, with notes on why it scores and three other ways to take the topic.
A broken-promise story earns marks when the promise is small and specific, the breaking is the character's own choice rather than an accident, and the story shows the cost before it shows any repair. The temptation is to have the promise broken by circumstance, a traffic jam, a sudden illness, because that keeps the character blameless. Examiners find that thin. A character who chooses to break a promise and then faces it gives you a real plot. The model below is about 180 words and set in Ahmedabad on the evening of a school play.
Keep the repair honest too. A broken promise cannot be fully mended in the last paragraph; it can only be faced. That restraint reads as maturity, and maturity earns content marks.
The task
Typical wording: 'Write a story in 150 to 200 words with the title A Broken Promise.' Or an outline: 'a promise to a younger sibling ... a better offer ... the choice ... the consequence ... what happens next.' Decide what the promise is and who chooses to break it before you begin.
Model answer
The Second Show. Meher had promised her brother Kabir, who was seven, that she would be in the front row for his school play. He was playing a tree. He had practised standing still for a week and had shown her the costume twice. 'Front row,' she had said. 'I will wave.'
On the afternoon of the play, Riya's message came. A party, the whole class, a house with a pool in Bopal, and Riya's mother could drive. Meher looked at the message for a long time. Then she told her mother she had a project meeting, and went.
She got home at eight. Kabir was on the sofa still in his brown costume, with the cardboard leaves bent where he had sat on them. He did not ask where she had been. He said, 'I looked for you,' and went to bed.
There was a second show the next afternoon, for the parents who had missed the first. Meher sat in the front row alone, an hour early, and when the tree came on she waved until her arm ached. Kabir did not wave back. But he did not look away either.
Why it earns marks
Against content, organisation and expression:
Three other ways to take the same topic
Each makes the breaking a choice and the repair partial.
What writers can take from this
- Make the promise small and exact enough to quote.
- Let the character choose to break it; no traffic jams.
- Show the cost through the other person, in an object or two words.
- Repair only partly; a fully mended promise reads as false.
- Keep the guilty character's feelings off the page; the sofa says enough.
- End on a gesture that is not quite forgiveness.
Try it yourself
Write a 180-word story in which a promise is broken for a reason the reader can understand, and the person it was made to never mentions it, so the story has to show the cost another way.
Questions
How long should a broken promise story be?
Follow the paper: 100 to 120 words in CBSE Class 9, 150 to 200 in most school exams, 300 to 350 for ICSE. Cut the party details to reach 120; the sofa scene must stay.
Can I write the broken promise in the first person?
Yes, and the narrator should be the one who broke it. The risk is a paragraph of guilt; keep the narrator reporting what they saw and let the reader feel it.
Should a broken promise story end with a moral?
Only if the question asks. 'A promise is easier to make than to mend' would fit the model, but Kabir not looking away is the better ending.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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