A Story on the Day the Lights Went Out: Model Answer and Marking Notes
Quick answer: An original 180-word exam story about a power cut in a Kolkata apartment block, with notes on how it earns content, organisation and expression marks and three other plots.
A story on the day the lights went out earns marks when the darkness changes what people do, not just what they see. A power cut is a situation; neighbours who have never spoken ending up on the same roof is a story. Keep the cut to one evening, put the characters somewhere new because of it, and end when the lights return with something that has changed. The model below is about 180 words and set in a Kolkata apartment building during exam week.
The commonest weak version describes candles and boredom for three paragraphs and then the power returns. Give the dark a job to do.
The task
Typical wording: 'Write a story in 150 to 200 words titled The Day the Lights Went Out.' Or an outline: 'evening ... sudden darkness ... a household adjusts ... an unexpected discovery ... the lights return.' Decide what the darkness makes possible before you start.
Model answer
The Roof. The power went at half past seven on the evening before Ritwik's maths exam, and the whole of Salt Lake went with it. He sat in the dark with his textbook on his knees and listened to the building come alive: doors opening, a child laughing on the second floor, Mrs Bose calling for candles.
By eight the flat was too hot to bear. His grandfather picked up a torch and a straw mat and said, 'Come.' They climbed the four flights to the roof, where half the building had already gathered, sitting on the water tank and the low wall.
Nobody had a phone with charge. So people talked. The man from 3B, whom Ritwik had passed on the stairs for five years without a word, turned out to have taught mathematics for thirty of them, and by nine he had explained the theorem Ritwik had been stuck on since Tuesday.
The lights came back at ten with a cheer from the street below. Everyone went down. Ritwik passed the exam, and on the stairs after that he always said good evening.
Why it earns marks
Against the three heads:
Three other ways to take the same topic
Each gives the dark a job.
What writers can take from this
- Give the darkness a job: it must cause something.
- Move the characters somewhere new because of it.
- Use the clock as your paragraph markers.
- Let the discovery be a person, not a treasure.
- End when the lights return, with one visible change.
- Sounds describe darkness better than adjectives do.
Try it yourself
Write a 180-word story in which the lights go out in the middle of an argument, and by the time they return the argument has ended without anyone apologising.
Questions
How long should 'The Day the Lights Went Out' be?
Follow the paper: 100 to 120 words in CBSE Class 9, 150 to 200 in most school exams, 300 to 350 for ICSE. Drop the second paragraph's heat and mat to reach 120.
Can this story be in the first person?
Yes, and a first-person narrator sitting in the dark listening to the building is a natural opening. Keep the tense in the simple past and avoid describing the darkness for more than a sentence.
Is a moral needed for a power-cut story?
Only when asked. A gentle line fits the model above: 'Sometimes the dark shows us our neighbours.' Otherwise let the good evening on the stairs carry it.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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