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Narrative writing is one of many types of writing students will be asked to do in school. This type of writing spans all subjects—from ELA, to social studies, science, and beyond. To help you guide students when writing their informational pieces, we’re providing 8 steps on how to teach narrative writing in any class so you feel confident in assigning, grading, and guiding your students in these lessons.
8 steps to teach narrative writing
Narrative writing FAQs
[8 steps to teach narrative writing](id-steps)
Use these steps to help your students understand how to write a narrative that sets the scene, tells a story, and paints a picture for readers:
1. Provide examples of good narrative writing
Mentor texts that are good examples of narrative writing can help show students the structure and components of this type of piece. Personal narrative or narrative fiction mentor texts can come from a variety of sources, such as picture books and memoirs, or appear as a writing style in news articles or poems.
To be most effective, students should do more than just read the mentor texts. They should also analyze them. Students should look for places where the authors plot the story. What are the events that lead up to the climax? Is the story told chronologically? How does the structure of the story influence how the reader perceives it? Students can answer these and other questions when analyzing a narrative.
2. Share the narrative writing prompt and rubric early
Sharing the writing activity prompt and rubric early in the lesson or unit can help students get familiar with the topic. The prompt helps them consider what story they want to tell and the order of the events they have to include.
Sharing the rubric early also helps students prepare for grading later in the process. By sharing the criteria and expectations for the assignment, they can use it as a guide when planning and writing their narratives.
After students have had time to look over the prompt and rubric, they can start brainstorming and story mapping. This is the step where they can decide who the characters in the narrative will be, the events that take place, and what order the events will happen. You can share a variety of graphic organizers to help them start outlining their narratives:
Plot diagram: Helps students plot the events that happen at distinct phases of the narrative.
Elements of a setting: Helps students think about the time and place of the narrative and how it affects the plot.
Timeline: Helps students plan the sequence of events they intend to share in the narrative.
Storyboard: Helps students plot and visualize each section or scene of their narrative.
You can model how to use these graphic organizers on a smartboard or overhead to help students consider what they should fill in for each section, as well as the decision-making, planning, and creativity used to get there.
The planning phase is also a great time to teach students about the 5Ws and 1H, a staple in storytelling. When outlining their narratives, students should be able to answer:
What happened?
Who’s involved?
Where did it happen?
When did it happen?
Why did it happen?
How did it happen?
4. Practice narrative writing section by section
Practicing writing section by section can help students learn how to craft a narrative. The main sections to cover include:
Exposition: Sets the scene of the story and gives information about the setting, characters, and events leading to the conflict
Conflict: An event that happens that creates a problem for the protagonist and other characters
Rising action: A sequence of events that happen because of the conflict and may get more intense throughout the story
Climax: The turning point of the story
Falling action: Events that happen after the climax that start to wrap up or resolve the conflict.
Resolution: Closes out any unaddressed plot points and shows how the characters and events have changed throughout the story.
Create mini-lessons that help students learn how to write each part of a narrative. You can teach the mini-lesson for the first part of the class period and use the rest of the time to work on the sections of their own narratives independently. The independent work time is an opportunity for students to practice, ask questions, and research.
Within these mini lessons you can also help students consider elements not directly related to the plot structure, like pacing, character development, and backstory.
How can Newsela Writing help with narrative writing practice?
Newsela Writing has rubric meters to help students evaluate their own narrative writing.
These meters pair with the rubric attached to the assignment for students to monitor how well they’re meeting the assignment criteria. For narrative essays, these meters could include:
Organization/Purpose
Development/Elaboration
Conventions
5. Have students act out their narrative scenes
To help students better understand how to translate what they want to happen in their story on the page, try an acting and directing exercise. In small groups, have students act out scenes from their peers’ narratives. The writer acts as the director and watches the scene, like they would watch a movie, TV show, or play.
As the writer watches how others act out their scene, they should take notes. What’s missing from the scene? What aren’t the actors doing that should be included? Is anything not making sense? Seeing their scene acted out can help students decide if their narrative makes sense, includes enough details, or has the right pacing. The notes they collect can influence their drafts and revisions.
6. Ask students to complete rough drafts and collect feedback
When students are familiar and comfortable with writing each section of their narrative, they should then put them together into a complete rough draft. Within the draft, they can work on making transitions between sections to make sure their ideas flow and connect across each part of the essay.
When the rough draft is complete, students can turn it in to receive feedback from you, or you can set up peer review workshop sessions to have students edit and comment on each other’s work.
7. Encourage students to revise and polish their final drafts
After receiving feedback from teachers, peers, or a writing program like Newsela Writing, students should revise their rough drafts into polished, finished copies. These revisions may include rewriting sentences for clarity, fixing spelling and grammar errors, or reorganizing sentences and paragraphs for flow.
Students should also use this time to self-reflect on their work. They can use the rubric as a guide to make sure they haven’t missed a key area of the assignment. When revisions are complete, students should submit their final draft copies for a grade.
8. Publish or present students’ narratives
After submission and grading, give students the opportunity to share or display their work. This could include hanging their essays up in the classroom or hallway, encouraging them to submit their essays to the school paper, or reading them out loud in class.
Another way to share student work is to look out for Newsela Writing Contests. A few times per year, we invite students to share their best work in a variety of genres for a chance to become published authors on our platform. Check out the winners from our 2024 Fall Writing Contest, where students wrote scary stories..
[Narrative writing FAQs](id-faq)
Have questions about teaching and practicing narrative writing in your classes? Find answers, tips, and resources below:
What is narrative writing?
Narrative writing is a type of writing that uses a plot, timeline, characters, and details to tell a story to the reader. Examples of narrative writing include:
Biographies and memoirs
Novels and picture books
Plays
Do my students need to learn narrative writing?
You may be tempted to view narrative writing as an ELA-only exercise, but it’s not just for fiction. Narrative writing is prevalent across genres. Learning how to write about events in order, describing events and characters, and bringing readers into the story’s world help to make any type of writing captivating. Students should learn how to incorporate narrative writing across subjects to build skills and make their pieces more interesting.
What are some vocabulary words associated with narrative writing?
Aside from the parts of a story, there are other vocabulary words associated with narrative writing that your students should know. They include:
Protagonist: The main character, hero, or “good person” of the story
Antagonist: A character who causes problems or difficulties for the protagonist; the villain or “bad person” of the story
Character development: The process of creating and showing elements of a character’s personality throughout the story.
Plot: The sequence of events that happen in the story.
Plot hole: An inconsistency in the timeline, character development, or events of the story.
Pacing: How fast or slow you move from one event to the next in a narrative.
Point of view: The perspective from which the story is told, and how much the reader knows about the characters’ thoughts and feelings.
Dialogue: Words and phrases that characters say out loud to each other within the story, denoted by quotation marks.
What are some ways I can help my students collect ideas for narratives?
Stories are everywhere. The most important thing your students can do to collect good narrative ideas is to pay attention to the world around them. Some ways to help them find and record ideas include:
Freewriting in a journal
Sharing journal prompts
Creating an idea generator writing station
Having frequent, engaging in-class discussions
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