Mastering Narrative Writing: Crafting Compelling Stories

1. Overview of Narrative Writing5th grade Narrative Writing

2. Defining Narrative Writing • Narrative Writing: Writing that tells a story or gives an account of something that has happened. The purpose is to recount a story grounded in personal experience or the writer’s imagination. • Method: • Uses a setting, characters, circumstances or events, a plot, a point of view, and a sense of resolution to tell a story. • Description of these elements is a key factor. • May employ strategies such as flashback, foreshadowing, dialogue,tension, or suspense.

3. What Narrative Writing Is and Is Not

4. What Narrative Writing Is and Is Not

5. Overview of Ways to Organize Narrative Writing

6. Focus in Narrative Writing • In narrative writing, the focus of the story may be character development, the plot, a setting and time period, or a deeper theme. • Part of maintaining focus is selecting relevant details that advance the story and leaving out information that may distract the reader from the focus of the story. • The focus is usually implied rather than stated directly. • Maintaining a clear point of view also indicates focus.

7. Narrative Purpose • The purpose of a narrative is to tell a story and capture the reader’s interest. • Writers may have many purposes for telling a specific story: • Some stories have a meaning that goes deeper than simply the events. • Sometimes the writer has a point to make. • Sometimes the writer wants the reader to understand something personal about himself/herself or to present a lesson about living.

8. Character Development • Characters can be developed through: • Action • What the characters do, feel, or think • Dialogue • What the characters say • Description • What the characters look like

9. Types of Language • Interesting Language • Sensory Details: what the characters see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. Writers use details that appeal to the senses to help the reader imagine the events of the story. • Descriptive: conveys an idea, image, or impression. • Figurative: figures of speech or phrases that suggest meanings different from their literal meanings (hyperbole, metaphor, simile, irony). • Simple, Ordinary Language • common words that are correct but not precise.

10. Narrative Organizational Patterns • Beginning, middle, end • Flashback: end, beginning, middle • Beginning, situation or conflict, climax, resolution of the conflict