Writing a Story-Unit 2 (Ticket to English)


DEFINITION

A narrative is an account of a sequence of events usually presented in chronological order. A narrative may be real or imagined, nonfictional or fictional. Another word for narrative is story. The structure of a narrative is called the plot.
Narrative writing can take various forms, including personal essays, biographical sketches (or profiles), and autobiographies in addition to novels, short stories, and plays.

Writing a story for you as a high school student is not really tough if you own the basic requirements.
⇒ Time and place (when and where?)
⇒ Some imagination
⇒ Relatively large vocabulary repertoire
⇒ A descriptive style. All that you need, then, is an idea to talk about employing the following fundamental elements:
⇒ Events (what happened and how?)
⇒ Characters with roles in the events (who is there?)
⇒ Climax (The peak of the story)
⇒ Denouement (closure/ending) 

In other words, a narrative paragraphtells a story’, that is, it tells about a series of events that happened to the narrator. It is usually told in time sequence with a definite beginning, middle and end. Any student writing a narrative paragraph for the first time must use transitions. These special words help the writer develop a logical, unified paragraph. The most common kind of transition used in narrative writing is the time relationship transition. 

Time Relationship Transitions


after
afterwards
before
during
earlier

eventually
first
in the meantime
later
meanwhile

next
now
once
second
soon

sooner
then
today until
Finally
while
when 


PRACTICE!

1. The following narrative paragraph lacks time transitions. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate transitions to give the paragraph coherence. (glues the structure together)
2. When does the story take place? 
3. Who is there?
4. What happened?
6. What is the most critical moment in the story?
7.  How does the story end? 
_____________________________________

On a stormy chilly night, we were all at home. 1._______________my mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner, 2.____________ my father was upstairs trying to install the new wireless mouse on his computer, my elder brother, Ahmed, and I were in the living room. I was watching Tom and Jerry cartoon on my tablet 3._____________whereas Ahmed was listening to his favourite band, One Direction . All of a sudden, a deafening scream shook the house. Ahmed and I immediately rushed to the kitchen. We got there in almost no time to find our mother standing on a stool with a broom in her trembling hand. - “Mom! What’s wrong with you?” Ahmed kept repeating trying to get an answer, but in vain. Our poor mother was so pale and thunderstruck that she couldn’t say a word. She was just gazing and pointing to the sink. 4._______________, Ahmed and I approached slowly to discover that there was a black snake with white spots. We immediatly screamed out of fear, i could feel butterflies in my stomach. 5.__________________, my father rushed in, we could all see the tail of the snake exiting from the window.



⇓ Answers ⇓:





1.
1.   While                   3. Whereas
2.   and                       4.  Then

5.  Finally
2. On a stormy chilly night.
3. Mother, Ahmed, the narrator, the father. 
4. a deafening scream shook the house. / Ahmed and I approached slowly to discover that there was a black snake with white spots.
5.All of a sudden, a deafening scream shook the house.
6. Finally, my father rushed in, we could all see the tail of the snake exiting from the window. 

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