Writing Cool Short Stories textbook - Carol J. Amato, Author

Writing Cool Short StoriesChapter 7Writing Narrative and ExpositionNarrative is to tell or recount a story as it happened or is happening.It’s a sequence of events with all of the juicy details.It’s the chunks of text woven between the speaking parts—thedialogue. Narrative is the blocks of paragraphs where the charactercan unload all of his/her thoughts, emotions, or reactionsto a situation. Here’s one example:Why do I have to apologize? Jack’s the one who threwthat paper airplane at the author. Everybody laughed. It’snot fair. I get blamed for everything. It’s not my fault that Iwas born with that same guilty look that Dad had as a kid.Here’s another sample of narrative:The substitute teacher was a clown. She taught us how toplay the kazoo. Then at recess the wind ripped her rainbowcolorwig off her head. Some of us kids chased after it. Thewig rolled across the playground, then got stuck against thebaseball backstop. Everyone roared laughing when Mrs.Ruffles pulled on her clown wig. Her head looked like atumble weed!Students can also punch up their narrative by using the fivesenses. The five senses include: sight, sound, smell, touch, andtaste—though it’s not necessary to use all of them at once.Take a look at the following sentence:Rain slid off John’s jacket as he crunched through thedamp red and yellow leaves littering the sidewalk. Hekicked at a pile, dreading what his teacher would say whenhe got to school without his homework.This sentence uses sight (the rain, red and yellow leaves litteringthe sidewalk), sound (crunched), and touch (damp). The ideais not to say merely, “It was raining. Leaves were all over theground. John went to school without his homework.” The idea is27