how to write a narrative

1. STAGES IN A NARRATIVE
PRE-WRITING
WRITING
PROOF-READING

2. PRE-WRITING
1. Write an outline of what the story is going
to be about. Read the exam rubric carefully.
2. Brainstorming for ideas, Write down any
ideas, words and phrases that you can think
of which to the topic of your composition.
Group your ideas and put them into a logical
order.
3. Layout, Your ideas should be organized
into paragraphs consisting of three parts:
Introduction, main body and conclusion

3. How to tell a story
Narratives are either imaginary or real
stories. They can be written in the first or
third person and describes a series of
events.
PAST SIMPLE, PAST CONTINUOS and PAST
PERFECT are the tenses used to write
in the past.

4. Parts of a story:
1. Introduction
You describe when and where the story took
place and who were involved.
We catch reader's attention by talking
about our feelings (strong adjectives are
preferred) furious, miserable, terrified,
petrified, annoyed.....and make him/her want
to continue reading the story.

5. Example:
I had been working the whole morning
and I just wanted to go home and had
a nap after such a tiring day.
Suddenly, when I was driving past La
Ballena I remembered there was
nothing to eat at home so I changed
my mind and drove into the shopping
center instead.

6. 2. Main body
It consists of two or more paragraphs. We tell the
events in the order they happened:
Example: It was four o'clock in the afternoon and I had just
finished my shopping at Carrefour with my trolley
completely packed with lots of articles I had bought, drinks,
dairy products, cleaning products....... so I headed towards
the conveyor belt to put the shopping into my car. As soon
as I placed my trolley on it I knew something was going
wrong. There was no belt there, it was an electric stairway,
and consequently the trolley started rolling down the stairs.

7. Sudde nly, Isaw myse lf flying o ve r the tro lle y and falling do wn
in fro nt o f it with all the thing s hitting me o n my he ad. Iwas
te rrifie d and starte d sho uting fo r he lp. Ayo ung man who was
be hind me o n the stairs, co uld g rasp the tro lle y so it didn't g e t
me .
Two minute s late r, so me pe o ple in the sho pping ce ntre
we re he lping me . Ico uldn't sto p crying afte r such a sho ck.
Luckily, Iwas unhurt but abso lute ly pe trifie d. Eve ntually, o ne o f
the g uards at the sho pping ce ntre , afte r making sure Iwas all
rig ht acco mpanie d me to the car.

8. 3. Conclusion
We write what happened in the end,
saying the consequences and describing
our feelings/reactions.
Example:
Eventually, I arrived safely at home.
Lying on my comfortable sofa, I couldn't
stop thinking about my terrible
adventure. Nothing really serious had
happened but I knew for certain that it
was my last shopping at La Ballena .

9. Points to consider
Sequence of events. Sequencing refers to the
order in which events happened. These are
some of the most common ways to sequence
in writing:

10. Beginning: Continuing:
●
Firstly
First of all Then,
To start off with After that,
Next,
As soon as / When + full clause,
... but then
Immediately,
● Adding new ● Ending
Elements:
Finally,
Suddenly
In the end,
Unexpectedly
Eventually,
Lastly,

11. Use adjetives and adverbs to describe
feelings and actions. Instead of using
common ones (hungry), we should
use more interested words (starving)
● delightful, enormous, ● absolutely,extremely,
huge, tiny,horrible, throughly, angrily,
gigantic,fabulous, miresably, nervously,
wonderful, nasty confidently,.......
unpleasant, glad,
delighted, depressed,
disgusting........

12. Proofreading
Read through the story in order to see if you
can find any mistakes.
● Make sure you stick to the question.
● Evaluate the layout and organization.
● Revise grammar.
● Revise vocabulary.
● Revise spelling, capitalization and
punctuation

13. Exercises
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