My room is small but I like it because it makes me feel like I am in a burrow, like a wombat or a platypus. I have lots of brown things in my room, like a brown dressing table and a brown desk and a brown doona cover. I like feeling like there is dirt all around me. Not dirty dirt, like crumbs or bits of hair that get stuck in the bathroom drain. Clean dirt, the kind that’s under grass and that worms like because it’s soft and spongy and warm. Sometimes when I’m in my room I feel like a worm must feel, and it is a good feeling. It is a cosy, busy, eyes-shut feeling.

When you write a story it’s important to use lots of details, but it’s also important not to use superfluous details. Superfluous means something you don’t need. In a story, superfluous details are details that the reader doesn’t need to know to understand the characters. For example, you don’t need to spend a lot of time describing someone’s shoes (even if they are really cool shoes like those runners that have lights on them) unless they show you something important about that person (like they want to be an athlete, or they have a lot of money).

Sometimes it’s hard, though, being the writer of the story and trying to decide what you (the person reading the story) need to know and not know, because we are different people. For example, maybe you really like dogs and you like to imagine the world in a dog sort of way, and because of this you need to know more details about Simon. (Just in case you are that sort of person: Simon is a Brittany spaniel, and he likes to eat dog food and bananas, and he is scared of storms and vacuum cleaners.)

In this story I’m going to try to give you enough details so that you can understand, but not so many that you get bored and stop reading and go to the park or the zoo instead. Here are some important details about me that you need to understand this story:

1) My name is Cassandra, but most people call me Cassie (unless it is a Special Occasion or they are mad at me). My name comes from a Greek myth about a princess who can see the future, but when she tells people about it they don’t believe her. This is an important detail because I also know what it feels like when people don’t believe you (it feels like having no friends and being told off by teachers and yelled at by your mum).

2) I have really curly hair (like my dad) that is long because if I get it cut short it goes springy and makes my head look like a triangle. I have pale skin and freckles (also like my dad) and I get sunburnt really easily so I have to Slip Slop Slap as soon as it is summer.

3) I’m eleven-turning-twelve years old and I’m in Grade Six at school, even though I can read and write at a Year Seven level. In the school readathon last year I read twenty-six books (chapter books, not picture books) and raised $72.60. Dad says I could have skipped a grade but because my school is so small the class was full.

4) I like reading stories and I like telling them, too. The other night when we were having tea I told a story about how I couldn’t eat silverbeet anymore. I couldn’t eat it because the school had given all the Grade Six kids vaccinations that made them allergic to green leafy vegetables, and if I ate silverbeet I would break out in pus-filled scabs and die. When I told that story Diana laughed and said, ‘Good one,’ and Mum said, ‘If you don’t finish all your tea you won’t get any sweets,’ and Dad said, ‘What about cabbage?’

5) The last detail you need to know about me is that I’m really, really afraid of snakes. It’s important that you know this so that if there is ever a snake in this story you will be ready to hold your breath and stomp your feet really loud and scare it away.