NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
Situation
Set the scene, introduce major characters, provide background info as needed
Conflict
Main point of the story, purpose to telling the story, why you are telling the story
Thesis statement
Struggle
Details of the conflict, chronological order
Major Events (Primary Support) / Supporting Events (Secondary Support)
Outcome
The end of the story, what happened last, resolution
Meaning
The lesson, universal truth, personal reflection and truth
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES
Description, Dialogue, Transitional Words, Verb Tense
Descriptions
Use active verbs, modifying phrases and clauses and present action vividly. Use sensory details
to create texture, excitement, and tension.
Since in the two preceding plays the concentration of the play had been elsewhere, I had felt
alone with the flanker. Now, the whole heave of the play was toward me, flooding the zone not
only with confused motion but noise – the quick stomp of feet, the creak of football gear, the
strained grunts of effort, the faint ah-ah-ah of piston-stroke regularity, and the stiff class of
instruction, like exhalations. “Inside, inside! Take him inside!” someone shouted, tearing by me,
his cleats thumping in the grass. A call – a parrot squawk – may have erupted from me. My feet
splayed in hopeless confusion as Barr came directly toward me, feinting in one direction, and
then stopping suddenly, drawing me toward him for the possibility of a buttonhook pass…”
– George Plimpton, Paper Lion
Dialogue
Quoted vs. Summarized dialogue
“Are you tired?” she asked.
“No, but I got a sliver from the frame,” I told her. I showed her the web of skin between
my thumb and index finger. She wrinkled her forehead but said it was nothing.
“How many trays did you do?”
I looked straight ahead, not answering at first. I recounted in my mind the whole
morning of bend, cut, pour again and again, before answering a feeble “thirty-seven.” No
elaboration, no detail. Without looking at me she told me how she had done field work in Texas
and Michigan as a child. …She then talked about school, the junior high I would be going to that
fall, and then about Rick and Debra, how sorry they would be that they hadn’t come out to pick
grapes because they’d have no new clothes for the school year. She stopped talking when she
peeked at her watch, a bandless one she kept in her pocket.
– Gary Soto, “One Last Time”
Transitional Words:
After
Eventually
as
finally
at last
first
before
last
during
later
meanwhile
next
now
second
since
soon
then
when
while
First I typed on pink, green, blue and white work sheets the hours put in by the 10,000 evacuees,
then sorted and alphabetized these sheets, and stacked them away in shoe boxes. My job was
excruciatingly dull, but under no circumstances did I want to leave it. The Administrating
Building was the only place which had modern plumbing and running hot and cold water; in the
first few months and every morning, after I had typed for a decent hour, I slipped into the rest
room and took a complete sponge bath with scalding hot water. During the remainder of the day,
I slipped back into the rest room at inconspicuous intervals, took off my head scarf and wrestled
with my scorched hair. I stood upside down over the basin of hot water, soaking my hair,
combing, stretching and pulling at it. – Monica Sone, “Camp Harmony”
Verb Tense
One-time Events: Simple past tense
When Uncle Chul amassed the war chest he needed to open the wholesale business he had hoped
for, he moved away from New York.
– Change-Rae Lee, “Uncle Chul Gets Rich”
When Dinah Washington was leaving with some friends, I overheard someone say she was on
her way to the Savoy Ballroom where Lionel Hampton was appearing that night – she was then
Hamp’s vocalist.
– Malcom X, The Autobiography of Malcom X
For immediacy, giving the sense that the readers are there with you: Present tense
I sit alone at the bar, one empty bottle of Bud in front of me, a second in my hand. I drain the
beer, order a third, and stare down at the pink juice spreading outward from a crumpled foil
pouch and onto the bar.
– John T. Edge, “I’m Not Leaving Until I Eat This Thing”