Narrative Writing by Ms. Hollnsteiner

1. Narrative Writing by Ms. Hollnsteiner

2. What is Narrative Writing? A narrative is a story that tells about people (or animals) doing something at some time and place. Example: Franz and I walked through the crowd on November 9, 1989, in West Berlin.

3. Understanding Types of Narratives There are three basic types of narratives: • Personal • Biographical • Fictional Example: We were heading to the Berlin Wall. Only a year before, we had escaped across that wall from East Berlin. Today, everyone was talking about tearing down that wall.

4. Personal Narrative Writing About Your Own Experience A personal narrative tells about a real experience that happened to the writer. When you write a personal narrative, do the following: • Use the first-person voice (I, me, my, we, our). • Focus on one important experience or time. • Show the reader why the experience was important. Example: When we arrived, the crowd was thick, and a man with a sledgehammer pounded the top of the wall. I climbed up beside him and gazed across no-man’s-land to East Berlin. Another crowd stood there, and at the front of the crowd stood my brother.

5. Biographical Narrative A biographical narrative tells about a real event that happened to a person other than the writer. When you write a biographical narrative, do the following: • Use the third-person voice (he, she, him, her, they). • Study the experience and, if possible, interview the person. • Show the reader why the experience was important. Example: Aunt Helga smiled and began to cry when she saw her brother. She wanted to tear down the wall, but she didn’t have a hammer. Instead, she grabbed a loose brick and began pounding with it. “I’ll use the wall to tear down the wall!” she said.

6. Fictional Narrative Writing About a Made-Up Experience • Make up interesting characters. • Create a conflict, a problem the characters must overcome or solve. • Tell whether the characters succeed or fail. Example: Just then, a huge mother ship descended from the sky. Laser beams shot from its edges and blasted the Berlin Wall to rubble. The Grande High Emperor of Andromeda stood in one window of the mother ship, and he shouted, “Earthlings, you must learn to live as one.”

7. Narrative Writing Templates templates can help you plan and organize a narrative. • Person/character chart • Sensory chart • Timeline • Story map

8. Person/Character Chart

11. Example Sensory Chart

13. Literary Time Line Example

15. Story Map Example

16. Most narratives are organized by time. Transition words and phrases that show time can help you organize your writing. while first meanwhile soon then after second today later next at third tomorrow afterward as soon as before now next week about when suddenly during until yesterday finally

17. Example of transition words in writing: Suddenly the wall shifted beneath Helga. Someone grabbed her arm and saved her as that part of the wall tumbled into no-man’s-land. Then Helga could only watch in awe as the crowd pushed forward through the hole. At that moment, she cringed, remembering the shots the guards in the towers had fired at her during her escape. Tonight the guards did not fire. Helga climbed down and joined the others, determined to meet her brother.