A Story That Begins 'I Opened the Old Box': Model Answer and Marking Notes
Quick answer: An original 180-word exam story continuing the line 'I opened the old box', set in a Goa attic, with notes on how it earns content, organisation and expression marks.
'I opened the old box' hands you a first-person narrator, a past tense and one question: what is inside. Answer that by the end of the second paragraph, then make the contents change something between the narrator and another person. The box is a device; the story is what the narrator does with what they find. The model below is about 180 words and puts the box in a grandmother's attic in Goa.
The commonest weak version lists the contents for three paragraphs, old photographs, a medal, a letter, and ends with 'I understood my grandmother better now'. Nothing happens. Choose one object and let it cause a scene.
The task
Typical wording: 'Begin your story with the line I opened the old box and complete it in 150 to 200 words.' Copy the line exactly as your first sentence, keep the first person and the past tense, and decide before you write what single object inside the box will drive the ending.
Model answer
The Ticket. I opened the old box and the smell of my grandmother's house in Margao came out of it, camphor and old paper and something like cloves. It had been under her bed for as long as I could remember and I had been told, every summer, not to touch it. She was in the kitchen. I was fourteen and I told myself I was only looking.
Inside were letters tied with ribbon, a brass key and a concert ticket from 1968: Bombay, the Shanmukhananda Hall, one seat in the fourth row. On the back, in a young hand I did not recognise, someone had written 'The night I decided.'
I took the ticket downstairs. My grandmother looked at it for a long moment without taking it from me. Then she told me that she had once sung, that a music teacher had heard her, and that her father had said no.
She had not sung since. That evening, with the kitchen door shut, she sang for me. Her voice was old and not quite steady, and it was the best thing I had ever heard. I put the ticket back in the box myself.
Why it earns marks
Against the three heads:
- Content: the given line is copied exactly, the box is opened with a reason (forbidden, fourteen, alone), one object is chosen from its contents, and that object causes a scene with a second character and a change in her, not just in the narrator.
- Content: the ending action (putting the ticket back) closes the loop of the opening line.
- Organisation: title, four paragraphs, a single afternoon from attic to kitchen to evening.
- Expression: first person and simple past held; the smell does the work of description; the grandmother is revealed through one fact and one action rather than a paragraph of history.
Three other ways to take the same topic
Each picks one object and lets it cause a scene.
- A boy in Manchester finds his father's school report in the box and discovers his father failed the same subject he is failing now, which changes the conversation at dinner.
- A girl in Nairobi finds a map of her own neighbourhood drawn by her grandfather as a boy, with a tree marked, and goes to see whether it is still there.
- A boy in Kyoto finds a photograph of a girl he does not know in his grandmother's box, and the story is his grandmother explaining, for the first time, that she had a sister.
What writers can take from this
- Copy the line exactly and keep 'I' and the past tense.
- Give the narrator a reason to open the box now.
- Choose one object; do not list the contents.
- Let the object cause a scene with another person.
- The other person should change, not just the narrator.
- End by doing something with the box or the object.
Try it yourself
Begin a 180-word story with 'I opened the old box' and make the object inside belong to the narrator, not to a relative, from a time the narrator does not remember.
Questions
Must I keep the first person after 'I opened the old box'?
Yes. The given line fixes the narrator as 'I' and the tense as past, and switching either would cost content and expression marks. Other characters can speak in the present tense inside dialogue.
How many things should be in the box?
Name two or three at most and use one. Examiners see lists of photographs, medals and letters in every batch; a single object that causes a scene is worth more than a full inventory.
Does the story need a moral?
Not unless the question asks. The model above could carry 'Some boxes are meant to be opened', but the grandmother singing is a better ending than any moral.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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