Do you want to know the secrets of NARRATIVE WRITING??

Narrative from Agung Adyawardhana

A narrative structure organizes facts, ideas, concepts, etc. in a coherent and emotionally engaging way.

This year we will focus on short stories and legends.

A short story is a short work of fiction. Fiction, as you know, is prose writing about imagined events and characters. Prose writing differs from poetry in that it does not depend on verses, meters or rhymes for its organization and presentation.

Novels are another example of fictional prose and are much longer than short stories.

This year we will focus on one of the most important writers of short stories: Poe. He developed and analyzed the structure of fiction short stories. In fact most of his stories are finely crafty stories. All of them contain at least 5 key elements which are very important for the coherent development of the plot of the story till it reaches a climax and we have the final resolution: character, setting, conflict, climax, resolution, plot and theme
Taking this into account let´s  develop these 5 elements a little bit more:

Setting - Where the story takes place; usually every scene has a change of setting.

Character - Description of the character and a little of their background.

Plot - The series of events that unfold in the story.

Conflict - The struggle between two or more opposing forces.

Climax - The strongest part of the story, where the conflict builds up to the emotional peak.

Resolution - Where the conflict is solved.

The angle from which a story is told, that is,  the type of narrator the author chooses to use  is very important as well:

1. In first-person narration the narrator uses "I" to tell his or her story. The first-person narrator may be a major character in the story or simply an observer.
2. Omniscient third-person narrators can reveal the thoughts of all their characters; they are "all-knowing." 
3. A limited omniscient narrator only reveals the thoughts and feelings of a few characters. 

4. An objective third-person narrator does not reveal anyone's thoughts . They provide objective information. It is like a camera doing a panoramic view.

Characters are very important and they may be described in different ways:

1. Round characters are usually main characters and are fully developed. The narrator gives us many details about them and we know their psychological and physical appeareance in a very thorough way. 

2. Flat characters are usually minor characters who are barely developed. In most cases they are just stereotypes, they are not like real people.

 When writing or telling a story we have to pay special attention to the tenses we use. Narrative tenses are very important to make the story coherent and fluent.
Have a look at the following presentation and check the use of simple past, past continuous and past perfect.

Narrative tenses from Carmen Olmedo Rueda

Let´s try to put into practice all this information and write your own narrative text. Have a look at the following presentation and follow the instructions given. Choose of the pictures given and write a text following the narrative structure explained above. Focus on the setting, characters, conflict and resolution of the problem. Pay attention to narrative tenses as well.

Literary genres and subgenres

Literary genres from Arlene Opina

Literary Genres from krporter