Writing a narrative #1

1. What is a narrative? A narrative is a short story.

2. Possible rubrics:
A) Write a story titled "The worst holiday of my life" OR "The secret door", etc. 
B) Write a story that begins with the following sentence
     "John woke up in the middle of a dark room".
C) Write a story that ends with the following sentence
     "I ran as fast as I could and never looked back".

3. Who is the narrator (=the person telling the story)?
    You can tell a story about yourself, in the 1st person (I) or in the 3rd person (he, she, they).

4. What are narrative tenses?

Narrative tenses are verb tenses that are used to talk about the past. You can often find them in stories, textbooks, spoken accounts and in descriptions of past events.

The following are examples of narrative tenses:

Past simple: 'We left for the airport on an exceptionally sunny day.'

Past continuous: 'The sun was shining and it was really hot by midday.'

Past perfect: 'It had been sunny on and off for the previous fortnight.'

Past perfect continuous: 'We had been waiting at the airport for what seemed like an eternity.'

5. What is a proper way to organise our story? (Copy the outline your teacher draws on the whiteboard)

6. How can we make a story more interesting?

There once was a woman who lived with her dog. 

One day she walked to the village and bought some fruit and vegetables. 

When she came back to her home she found that her dog was gone. 

But inside the house she saw a puppy. 

Now, you give it a try:

One day Anna went to visit her father. She took some books and magazines. Her father was happy to see his daughter. They talked, and Anna went home.