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Narrative writing

Literary Develop an imagined experience or even based on characters or events from the passage or
anything related from your personal experience

Use effective technique, descriptive details, and clear sequences

Informational Read two-four informational passages

Develop a nonfiction chronological account from the experiences/events in the given passages

Use effective technique, descriptive details, and clear sequences

Sample prompts

Closely analyze two models for elements/components needed for a narrative. unusual word choice?

a beautiful phrase?

an illuminating insight?

a surprising event?

anything else particularly interesting or engaging?

Learn how authors use effective techniques when creating a narrative

Determine what the rubric requires for narrative writing

Apply what we learn to write our own narratives

• What is narrative? A narrative is a story about an experience or set of events. It can tell a
story about a real or imagined experience or event. inform, instruct, persuade, or entertain

• Can take the form of creative fictional stories, memoirs, or anecdotes

• It develops these experiences or events by using effective technique, well-chosen details, and
well-structured event sequences. The elements of a narrative include setting, characters, plot,
point-of-view, and problems/situations/observations. Develops these experiences or events
by using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences

• Remember that the elements used to develop narrative include the following:

a plot, including setting and characters ● a climax (This is when the plot is solved.) ● an ending

In the beginning of your story, you should introduce your characters. ● The reader should also know
about the world your characters live in (the setting) and the something about each of the characters
in your story. ● The beginning of your story is also the place where your plot

Middle Your story needs to build to something exciting, the climax. Write about a simple conflict, a
task that must be completed, a question that must be answered, or a barrier that must be
overcome.
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Include ● Actions ● Dialogue ● Sensory Details ● Thoughts and Feelings ● Suspense (Remember to
build to a climax.)

End This is the big finish. The end should reveal how you overcame your problem. All conflicts are
resolved and everything goes back to normal.

Extractt: explanation of elements

The writer introduces the setting of the story. It takes place sometime in the past during a hot night in
July, since the writer establishes “[i]t was July” (par. 1).

• The writer introduces the first-person point of view of the narrator by writing “I had been
working” (par. 1).

• The writer introduces a few of the characters. The narrator worked in an ice cream shop
owned by the narrator’s father at that time. The narrator’s mother was sick, and she asked
the narrator to bring her “hot soup” (par. 1).

• The writer introduces the main problem in the story: the narrator “took something that didn’t
belong to [the narrator]” (par. 2).

• Techniques

• In narrative writing, a writer uses a variety of narrative techniques to develop the content of a
story and create an engaging and nuanced experience for the reader.

• A writer may use multiple techniques simultaneously depending on the writer’s purpose.

• On the other hand, effective narratives do not necessarily use all of these techniques in every
section of a narrative; rather, effective writers use techniques in order to appropriately
develop their settings, characters, and plots.

• Elements

• Dialogue - lines spoken by characters in drama or fiction; conversation between two or more
characters (***can also use interior monologue)

Your story needs a strong beginning. You can achieve this using one of the following methods: ●
Dialogue (Conversation) “ Hurry or you’ll be late ● A Question!”( Have you ever had a day when you
wished you had stayed in bed?) ● A Vivid Description ● An Interesting Fact (Shock has been known
to kill ten year olds.) ● Sound Effects (“Buzzzzzz!” The sound of my alarm clock droned in my ears

• Pacing - how the author handles the passage of time in a narrative, moving through events
either more quickly or slowly to serve the purpose of the text

Be sure your story has paragraphs. They tell when you're switching time, place, topic or speaker, and
they help break the page up so it is not just a solid block of writing. Capitalize ● Beginnings of
Sentences ● Proper Nouns ● Punctuate ● End Marks (question mark, period, exclamation marks) ●
Commas when joining two sentences with a conjunction, addressing a person, with quotations, etc.

• Description - a statement that tells you how something or someone looks or sounds
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• Reflection - consideration of a subject, idea, or past event

• Multiple plot lines - different plots of a literary text

• Use of Figurative language (similes, personification and metaphor)

• The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead
(personification), imagination, like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving
masks.(similie ; comparison between two unlike things that have something in common using
like or as e.g hungry as a bear or My heart is like an open highway

• (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde)

• Subtlety/ show, don’t tell

• ! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of
lustrous black,

Example

The writer primarily uses description to convey the setting in the model.

When the narrator returns to the “old neighborhood” (par. 6), the narrator describes the blocks
between the apartment in which she or he grew up and the ice cream shop as being “punctuated by
newer, cleaner apartment buildings full of younger, wealthier families” (par. 7), which gives the
reader a sense of what the setting looks like.

The writer develops the narrator’s character through description. The narrator tells the reader that
the narrator was “well known and well liked” and “as good a kid as parents could want” (par. 3).

The writer develops the narrator’s character by using reflection. The narrator thinks about his or her
actions as a child, remembering that she or he “visited old people in the neighborhood because [she
or he] genuinely liked their company and their stories” (par. 3).

• In the second paragraph, the writer tells the reader that the narrator stole something that
night, but then the writer gives a lot of detail about the narrator’s character and the narrator’s
relationship with the restaurant and Mr. Liu before describing the actual event of stealing the
object. This pacing emphasizes the importance of the event, because it creates suspense.

• Then, the writer jumps ahead 20 years to describe the day the narrator returns to the
restaurant. This sudden shift in pacing also highlights the importance of the event, because
the writer skips over 20 years’ worth of information to return to the event.

• How can I maxmize

• Provide vivid details of scenes, objects, people, experiences and events.

• Use sensory/figurative language. (e.g. savory, mouth-watering, sweltering)

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• Depict specific actions. (Vivid Verbs- sauntered, sashayed, sprinted, etc.)

• Use dialogue and interior monologue that provides insight into the narrator’s and characters’
personalities and motives.

• Manipulate pace to highlight the significance of events and create tension and/or suspense.