Narrative Writing

Narrative writing refers to a style of writing based on a series of events, usually according to the sequence of the events. Many of the composition questions in the HKCEE Paper 1 will require narrative writing.

1. Some possible forms of Writing

Letter -- e.g. a letter to a relative describing an experience
Article -- e.g. an article to the school newspaper about a school event
Story

2. Some features of narrative writing

(a) Introducing a story

- Setting the scene of a story: time, places, events, actions of people involved, adverbs indicating something would happen

e.g. Introducing a story in which you saw a ghost in a haunted house:

Last Sunday I went to Lantau Island to celebrate my birthday with my friends. After we had arrived, we decided to stay overnight there. On the way of going to the hotel, suddenly, someone put a hand on my shoulder. …

(b) Development of the story

This is the main body of the passage. The story goes from one event to another connected by a time sequence. We started at the beginning and work forwards towards the end.

Pay attention to the following points:

- Students often mix up what tense should be used in the story. If wrong tense were used in the whole passage, marks for the accuracy would probably be very low.

Let’s consider the table below about different tenses:

Present tense	To be used to talk about your feelings or what you have learnt from an incident
Simple past tense	To describe a series of event which took place in the past with time phase (e.g. Last Sunday, two months ago)
Present perfect tense	To be used when talking about a past action which has lasted for a duration of time without indicating the exact time of happening. e.g. I have read the book for two hours.
Past perfect tense	To be used when a past action took place before another one. e.g. After I had finished my homework, I started watching television.

- Good organization of the events is necessary. It is important to have a logical flow of incident in the story.

We may use some phases that help us to link events in time:

e.g. and / Then / After that / Before (doing something), …… / After (doing something), ... / as soon as / while / ……

However, do not use these kinds of phases too many times in the passage. Also, remember that action should be followed by consequence.

- Dialogues can be used in the development of the story if they are suitable to the content, but should be used correctly.

- Let the story develop one climax in the story. A climax usually takes place just before the end of the story.

In the ending, you can describe the result or express your feeling.

e.g. Ending a story about ghost

Result: I went home quickly and didn’t look back.

I was lucky that I could escape successfully.

Feeling: I think I will never visit my uncle house again!

I really hope I will never have such kind of experience.

Note the following points:

The ending should not be too artificial.
Never ‘cheat’ the readers, telling then what they have read is a ‘dream’.
Not every story has a happy ending, but it must be logical and interesting.

3. Some useful tip

(a) Use simple sentences. A simple sentence means that it has the structure:

Subject + Verb + Object

But sometimes you can use connectives to join simple sentences. (Don’t use too often!)

(b) Do not have too many verbs in one sentence. Otherwise, you probably make mistakes in the

tenses.

in the story.

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