A Story on an Unexpected Visitor: Model Answer and Marking Notes
Quick answer: An original 180-word exam story about an unexpected visitor to a Nagpur home, with notes on how it earns marks and three other ways to take the topic.
A story on an unexpected visitor turns on one question: who is this person and what do they want. Answer it by the third paragraph, let the answer change something small in the household, and end on what the visitor leaves behind. The visitor should be a surprise to the characters but never a threat; boards want warmth or mild mystery, not danger. The model below is about 180 words and brings an old man to the gate of a house in Nagpur on a Sunday morning.
The commonest weak version is a long-lost relative who arrives, is welcomed, and leaves. Nothing turns. The stronger version gives the visitor a specific request and lets the family decide whether to grant it.
The task
Typical wording: 'Write a story in 150 to 200 words titled An Unexpected Visitor.' Some papers offer an opening: 'The doorbell rang at nine on Sunday morning, and nobody was expecting anyone.' Decide the visitor's request before you start; it is the plot.
Model answer
The Neem Tree. The doorbell rang at nine on Sunday morning, when Rohan's family was still in its pyjamas. An old man stood at the gate in a pressed white shirt, holding his hat with both hands. He said he was sorry to disturb them. He said he had been born in this house.
Rohan's father was cautious, but his grandmother came out onto the step and looked at the man for a long moment. Then she opened the gate. The man walked straight past all of them to the neem tree in the corner of the yard and put his palm flat against the trunk.
'My father planted this the week I was born,' he said. 'It was shorter than I was.' He asked if he might see the back room, and stood in it without speaking, and then thanked them and made to leave.
At the gate he took a photograph from his wallet: the same house, whitewashed, in 1971, with a sapling no taller than a child beside it. He gave it to Rohan. 'Keep it with the house,' he said. Rohan pinned it above his desk, where it still is.
Why it earns marks
Against the three heads:
Three other ways to take the same topic
Each gives the visitor a request and the household a choice.
What writers can take from this
- Give the visitor one specific request.
- Let one family member decide; a hesitation makes it a story.
- The visitor should surprise, not threaten.
- Plant an object early and let the visitor leave a matching one.
- Keep the visit to a single morning or evening.
- End on what remains after the visitor has gone.
Try it yourself
Write a 180-word story in which the unexpected visitor asks to see something ordinary in the house, a cupboard, a window, a tree, and the reason turns out to matter to the family more than to the visitor.
Questions
How long should the unexpected visitor story be?
As the paper states: 100 to 120 words in CBSE Class 9, 150 to 200 in most school exams, 300 to 350 for ICSE compositions. Cut the back-room paragraph to bring the model down to 120.
Can I write this story in the first person?
Yes, and it works well if the narrator is a child watching the adults decide. First person also lets you end on what the narrator kept, which is a natural close for this topic.
Is a moral required for an unexpected visitor story?
Only if the question asks. This topic rarely needs one, and a moral about hospitality tends to flatten a story that has already shown it.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
Enter a Writory story contest
Enter the Writory Short Story Contest and have your own story read and scored out of 100. Entries close 25 November. That first entry makes you a Writorian.