 Narrative Writing

I. Check the left margin of your text. o Are your paragraphs varied in length, giving a sense of breathing space? o Or are they all roughly the same length? o If they all seem to be about the same size, try breaking up one or two of them. II. Have you checked that your scenes are connected by transitions. o Have you transitioned smoothly and quickly from one idea to the next? o Have you highlighted the critical part of each scene within the story? o Does each element of your story build up to the “So what?” III. Check the range of your sentences. o Take the sentence with the highest number and subtract by the lowest number. What is your range? o A “comfortable” range is between words. o Are your sentences varied enough? Is your sentence range too large? o Break away from repetitive sentence structure by combining sentences with conjunctions, commas, etc. o Break a long sentence into multiple sentences. IV. Tell yourself the story out-loud without looking at it. o Don’t summarize, really tell it to yourself as if you’re talking to a friend. o Are you struggling to get all the points in within a reasonable amount of time? How long does it take you to tell the story? o Are you finished telling it too quickly for the amount of time your story takes to read? V. If your story has action, have you achieved an “arrive late and leave early” technique? o Have you started inside the action or with an element of suspense? o Have you avoided the dull details that don’t move the plot or contribute to the piece’s overall message or tone?

1. Look over your 5 drafts and pick 3. o Which 3 drafts would you like to work on and revise to make them better? 2. Read your story OUT-LOUD using the reader phone. 3. Plot your story on your “heart-rate monitor” and determine the range. o Is it a “healthy” range? o Between word range from the longest sentence to the shortest sentence. o Determine the range of your story by taking the longest sentence and subtracting the shortest sentence. Is the range between 20-25?* o Have you killed your reader? 4. Re-examine your rough draft and proceed through the yellow Revision Checklist for each story. You will repeat these steps with EACH of the 3 drafts you want to use in your final book. *Please remember this is an “average” range.