A Story on a Village Fair: Model Answer and Marking Notes
Quick answer: An original 180-word exam story set at a winter fair in a West Bengal village, with notes on how a fair story earns content, organisation and expression marks.
A village fair story earns marks when the fair is a place where something happens, not a place that gets described. Give your character one want they bring to the fair, a saved coin, a wish for a particular toy, a person they hope to see, and let the fair change it. Use three or four sensory details of the fair at most, spread across the paragraphs rather than piled into the first. The model below is about 180 words and set at a Poush mela in a West Bengal village.
Students treat this title as a description exercise and produce a catalogue: the stalls, the wheel, the sweets, the crowd. Description alone cannot earn content marks. The fair needs a plot walking through it.
The task
Typical wording: 'Write a story in 150 to 200 words with the title A Village Fair.' Or an outline: 'a boy saves money ... the fair arrives ... he sees something he wants ... an incident ... what he takes home.' Decide what the character wants before you write the first stall.
Model answer
The Clay Flute. Tinku had been saving for the Poush mela since October: forty rupees in a tin under his bed, counted every night. He knew exactly what it was for. The plastic flute at the toy stall, red with a silver mouthpiece, which he had seen last year and dreamt about since.
The fair came to the field behind the school in the last week of December. There were jalebis frying, a wheel that creaked, a man with a monkey nobody was supposed to feed. Tinku walked past all of it towards the toy stall with the tin in his fist.
Halfway there a potter's cart tipped in the mud. Pots rolled everywhere, and the potter, an old man with a bad hip, stood looking at them. Nobody stopped. Tinku put the tin in his pocket and spent an hour gathering pots and stacking them, and by the time he finished the toy stall was packing up.
The potter watched him look at the empty stall. Then he reached into the cart and brought out a small clay flute, the colour of the field. It played three notes. Tinku still has it. He never did buy the red one.
Why it earns marks
Against content, organisation and expression:
Three other ways to take the same topic
Each brings a want to the fair and lets the fair change it.
What writers can take from this
- Give the character one want before they reach the fair.
- Three or four sensory details, spread out, then stop describing.
- Let something at the fair test the want.
- The reward should fit the story, not the wish.
- Use the calendar as your time markers: October, December, an hour.
- End with the object the character takes home.
Try it yourself
Write a 180-word story set at a fair in which the character arrives with money for one thing and leaves with something they could not have bought, and never mention the crowd.
Questions
How long should a village fair story be?
Follow the paper: 100 to 120 words for CBSE Class 9, 150 to 200 for most school exams, 300 to 350 for ICSE. Cut the jalebis and the monkey to reach 120; the potter is the story.
Can I write about a fair in the first person?
Yes. A first-person narrator with coins in a fist is a strong opening. Keep the tense in the simple past and resist describing every stall you pass.
Does a fair story need a moral?
Only if the question asks. The model above could carry 'Help given freely comes back in its own shape', but the clay flute already says it.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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