Narrative Writing (Storytelling) Assignment
There’s more to writing a story that just telling the events; a real narrative should
teach the reader a meaningful lesson by captivating him with a well-told and artful tale.
That’s why it’s most likely that all the best stories you’ve ever read had something you
could take away from them that mattered to you in the real world.
Here are some things a good narrative should do:
 Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation,
establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introduce a narrator
 Create a smooth progression of experiences or details (good storytelling means
telling the right things at the right times, which is called pacing)
 Uses narrative techniques (dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and
multiple plot lines) to develop experiences, events, and/or characters
 Sequence the events of the story so that they build on one another to create a
coherent whole
 Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language (sight,
smell, taste, touch, and hearing), to convey a vivid picture of the experiences,
events, setting, and/or characters
 Provide a conclusion that follows from a reflects on what is experienced,
observed, or resolved over the course of the narrative
Your assignment is to write a narrative about the child victim of the Holocaust you
were given. This narrative should be somewhere between fiction and non-fiction; there
should be realistic details about your child that you learned from your biography, but
how the events unfold is up to you. Here’s what your narrative MUST HAVE:
1. A conflict or problem
2. A narrator and/or complex characters: the narrator can be you, your
character, or whomever, but you must establish this for your reader; don’t
be afraid to tell the story from the point of view of more than one
character!
3. Multiple plot lines: there is never only one thing going on at a time in a
story; there should be some “Meanwhile…” moments in your story
4. Dialogue: conversations between two or more people that take place in
quotation marks
5. Pacing: don’t let the story drag forever, but don’t rush it—trust me, your
reader can tell!
6. Vivid description/Sensory language: your reader should be able to see,
hear, smell, taste, and feel what you are describing as though it were really
happening
7. Chronology: the reader should be able to sense the passage of time in
your story, not because you constantly mention the time, but because of
techniques such as flashbacks/flashforwards, foreshadowing, and suspense
8. Conclusion: reflect on what has been experienced, observed, or resolved
in the story; the conflict that began your story may not necessarily have
been resolved, but tell what has become of the situation