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General
English Level 6 V 3
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A story or narrative usually has three parts:
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It
was a dark and stormy night on an unlit, deserted stretch of road.
It was about 1 am and John was on his way home from a friend's party.
The rain was coming down hard and he could barely see the slippery
road in front of him. It took all of his concentration to keep his
car from sliding off into the bushes bordering the road.
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Occasionally headlights
flashed out of the darkness …
Suddenly out of the night a figure appeared, running towards him
...
Hesitantly, John opened his door …
Gently he touched the woman on the shoulder and said …
John scanned the road ahead but there was nothing to see - no car,
no other people.
When he got back in the car the woman was curled up with her head
resting on the window. John looked at her and gasped …
"No!" the woman sat up and stared at John with her strange
eyes. "Take me home!" She reached into her dress and pulled
something out. John could see it was a driver's licence …
He started the car and as he slowly drove along the road looked
…
John drove on with the woman silent beside him. He tried to imagine
how this woman had come to be on this deserted road on this cold,
wet night.
After ten minutes he turned off the road into the street on the
woman's licence …
John turned to open the door but as he did the woman grabbed his
arm …
John hurried up to the house and rang the bell …
The woman looked at John and said, "That's not possible. Jane
died five years ago …
For the next hour John sat in the kitchen with Jane's mother …
The woman paused, then continued. "Two years ago, the same
thing happened …
Then John remembered what the young woman had asked him to do …"
Walking back to his car John heard a voice call out softly behind
him. "Thank you …
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Driving home John felt
calm and strangely happy. He knew that somehow he had helped Jane
make peace with her mother. Now she could leave this world and continue
on her journey into the next.
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In the introduction the writer
sets the scene
.
The writer tells the reader
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The writer also creates an
atmosphere
:
'
The rain was coming down hard …
It took all his concentration ...
'
In the introduction to a story we set the scene. We tell the reader
the
when
,
where
and
who
of the story. We also
create an
atmosphere
.
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In the main body the writer tells us
what happened
.
It reports the events that make the story interesting and worth
telling. What happens in the main body of the narrative makes it
different from a simple recount of everyday events.
The writer uses
past tense
, mainly past simple and some past
continuous, to tell us about the events:,
appeared, threw, was,
touched, was trying
. Because narratives are always about the
past, we usually use the past tense. Sometimes, however, we use
the present tense to tell a narrative. This can make the story more
interesting.
To make the record of events clearer the writer uses
time words
,
phrases and clauses
to say when things happened.
S
uddenly,
after ten minutes, when he got back in the car …
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We can divide the main body into three parts
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Here the writer introduces and develops the
main
point of the story
- the
problem with the woman.
In the build up the writer
introduces and
develops the main point
o
f
the story - the problem, a relationship, a new experience, a mystery
…
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In this part of the story the main character,
John, discovers that Jane is a ghost. This is the most important
or exciting point of the story. We call this the
climax
.
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In this part of the main body the writer tells
us what happened to John after he discovered Jane was a ghost. Here
the confusion and problems of Jane's appearance and disappearance
are explained. We call this a
resolution
.
At the end of the main body there is usually a resolution of the
problems or things that have happened in the story.
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In the conclusion the writer writes, "John
felt
calm
and
strangely
happy
." The writer tells us how the main character
felt at the end of the story
, after everything that had happened
to him. The writer also writes, "He knew that
somehow he
had helped Jane make peace with her mother
." Here the writer
lets us know
what the main character has learnt / gained
from the experiences of the story.
The conclusion makes some
comment about what happened
in
the story. This comment can be how the characters felt about, or
what they learnt from, the experiences.
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4. How do I make my story more interesting?
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The first sentence gives a basic description of
a setting. It is clear, but not very interesting. It does not tell
the reader what kind of night it was or what kind of road it was.
The second sentence answers these questions. This gives the story
more atmosphere and life. It does this because it uses
adjectives
-
dark, stormy, unlit, deserted …
To give a story
more atmosphere and interest
for the reader
it is important to use
adjectives
.
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The first sentence tells us what John did, but
it does not tell us how he did it. The second sentence tells us
how he did the action:
"
Gently
he
touched
…" This gives the story more atmosphere
and the reader a better understanding of the character, John. To
do this the writer uses
adverbs
.
To give the story
more atmosphere and describe the characters
better
, we use
adverbs
.
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