Narrative Menu Comments

Elements

Topic Sentence - The topic sentence of the first paragraph of a story should introduce that story.

First Person - Use first person (I or we) when telling an autobiographical story.

Third Person - Use third person (he, she, it or they) when you are telling a story that does not pertain to your own experience.

Chronological - A narrative paragraph should be arranged chronologically within context (i.e. the order the events occurred).

Interesting  - A narrative paragraph should be meaningful and\or interesting to the reader.

Singular Focus - Generally, keep a single episode in one geographical location, with a consistent participant, or set of participants.

Dramatic - Use effective grammatical ways to signal a story climax or rising tension, such as the historical present (i.e., using present tense in a historical event) and shorter clauses.

Point-in-Time - Use short-duration punctiliar (point-in-time) verbs in the main clauses that record the primary plot line.

Components - A narrative paragraph should answer most of the following: who, what, when, where, why, and how?

Components

Who - Who is this about?

What - Add more detail about what happened.

When - When did this take place?

Where - Where did this happen?

Why - Why did this happen?

How - What were the events that caused this to take place?