Week 1 Narrative Writing

This week’s session was particularly focused on the narrative genre of writing. Some classmates voiced their poor efficacy in teaching narrative as opposed to being a superb and proficient narrative writer. This was a fair point made because we are expected to not only be good at writing stories but also to be  phenomenal in using different strategies in getting students to compose a good narrative piece eventually. We revisited the main elements of a story such as setting, plot, point of view, theme, problem, climax and resolution; all of which were refreshed through a brainstorming activity during the introduction of the concept. One resonating factor which was new to my group was the development of the characters. We learnt that a character can be developed and expressed in four main domains namely feelings, actions, speech and thoughts. Hence, the acronym FAST. Another acronym “STEAL” was introduced to us. “STEAL” represents speech, thoughts, emotions, action and looks. We have never really thought of characters being different in those domains rather because we focused primarily on the physical differences and personality differences between characters. Perhaps further sessions on analyzing the various characters of narrative texts would assist us in getting a deeper and broader understanding of how characters are varied in many domains and possibly representing this information using a graphic organizer of choice. Figure 1.0 below illustrates the analysis of characterization through internal and external categories. Outside would comprise physical traits, i.e. what we see. Inside would comprise thoughts, actions and feelings.