[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, everyone. I'm Mackenzie, and today we're learning about writing effective narratives. Do you have a story, but you're not sure how to tell it? In this tutorial, we'll learn about elements of writing narratives. We'll discuss how to use who, what, when, where, and why to develop a narrative. And we'll discuss using narrative elements effectively.
When we develop a narrative, there are a variety of different elements for us to consider using in our writing. Every narrative is different, and that means that writers pick and choose what they're going to focus on and which elements they're going to employ in their writing.
Some different elements we can employ in our narratives include drawing the reader in, setting the scene, determining the context and the point of view for the narrative, adding a narrator and characters, crafting a sequence of events for the narrative, adding in conflict, and using narrative techniques and tactics, as well as narrative language in our writing. Each of these helps us to determine how we're going to craft our own narratives. Again, each narrative is different and incorporates these elements differently.
As we're developing our narratives, it's useful for us to focus on specific elements of narrative to decide how we're going to tell our stories. We use a technique called the five Ws-- this stands for "who," "what," "when," "where," and "why"-- to decide how we will develop each of these elements of narrative. Let's begin by using when and where because this describes to us how we're going to set the scene of the narrative.
How do we tell the reader where the narrative is taking place and when it is taking place? This description really helps to draw the reader in to get them to want to read our story.
And then we think about who. This describes who are the characters and who is the narrator. We have a point of view coming into play, and that's all described in the way that we write the narrative. This tells us who is part of the narrative.
Now we think about what. What's going on in the narrative. There must be a natural, logical, smooth series of events for us to follow in the story. There must be relevant details for us to understand what's happening in the story. And depending on the narrative, we may need to introduce some conflict to keep the reader interested.
Lastly, we focus on why. Why is the story taking place? Why is this particular event happening in the narrative? We think about the context of the narrative. And we think about the problem that's being presented in the narrative. When we view our elements of narrative in terms of who, what, when, where, and why-- the five Ws-- it helps us to really pinpoint each of these narrative elements in our own writing.
Once we have considered the ways in which we're going to use different elements of narrative in our stories, we can now focus on developing the characters, the plot, and the conflict within our narratives. And there are a variety of tactics and techniques we can employ to develop these elements of our narrative. We could use different narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, point of view, and even plot lines to develop our characters, plot, and conflict. And we can focus on the language that we use in our narratives, such as concrete details, sensory language, and figurative language to communicate our message and to tell our story in the way that we see fit. All of these ideas help us to write an effective narrative.
In this tutorial, we learned about using elements of writing narratives. We discussed using who, what, when, where, and why to develop narratives, and we learned about using narrative elements effectively. Now you can write your story. I'm Mackenzie. Thanks for listening.