When solving a word problem, I often give my students a scenario (rather than a word problem) and have them develop the problem through a narrative format:

• Conflict: What is the urgent need being addressed by the scenario?  What type of conflict could exist?  
• Setting: Where does this problem occur within the world?  How have you seen a problem like this in your world?  
• Plot: What are the different ways that people would try and address the conflict? Which methods would work best?  
• Characters: Who, in life, would actually have to solve this type of a problem? 
• Climax: What happens in the end?  
• Resolution:  How can the ending be communicated?  How can you prove that this solution works? Why did this problem make sense?

At the beginning of the year my students tend to hate word problems.  Some hate them, because they struggle with the vocabulary.  Others hate them, because the word problem was always this long, laborious ending to a thirty-problem set of algorithms.  A bit like finishing a sprint with a marathon.

Most, however, didn't hate word problems.  What they hated were poorly constructed stories.  Phony stories.  Not so much unrealistic stories.  My students would have enjoyed a few wizards or dragons or drunken wood gnomes.  What they hated were the stories that went against the human condition, like the fire fighter who uses the Pythagorean Theorem to choose a ladder or finding the surface area of a pyramid that you'll be adding to your backyard.