What you'll learn
Narrative writing is storytelling: a piece of writing with characters, a setting and events that happen one after another. On the SEA English Language Arts Writing paper you are given three items in 50 minutes, and a narrative task asks you to write a story of your own. This guide covers planning a story that holds together, opening in a way that makes the reader continue, using sensory and figurative language, showing feelings instead of naming them, varying your sentences, and finishing properly. The marks reward organisation and control as much as imagination, so a simple story told well beats an ambitious one that loses its way.
Key terms and definitions
Narrative — writing that tells a story.
Character — a person or animal in the story. The main character is usually the one whose thoughts the reader is told.
Setting — where and when the story happens.
Plot — the events, in the order they are told.
Conflict (the problem) — the difficulty the character faces. Almost every story has one.
Resolution — how the problem is settled at the end.
Sensory detail — a detail that appeals to sight, sound, smell, taste or touch.
Simile — a comparison using like or as: the sea was like a sheet of glass.
Metaphor — a comparison without like or as: the sea wore a coat of light.
Personification — giving human actions or qualities to something that is not human: the wind screamed.
Dialogue — the words characters speak, written inside speech marks.
Core concepts
Plan before you write
Five minutes of planning saves ten minutes of rescuing a story that has wandered. A plan needs only four lines:
- Who is in it, and where and when?
- What is the problem?
- What do they do about it?
- How does it end?
The SEA writing objectives name effective organisation of ideas directly, and this is where those marks are earned. A story that reaches the end of the page without ever resolving anything cannot score well, however good the sentences are.
Open with something happening
Weak openings announce that a story is coming: This is a story about a boy and his dog. Strong openings drop the reader into the middle of something and raise a question:
The gate was open, and Rusty was gone.
The reader immediately wants to know what happens next, which is exactly what an opening is for. Beginning with an action, a piece of speech, or a problem all work. Beginning with I am going to tell you about does not.
Show, don't tell
This is the single most useful idea in narrative writing. Instead of naming a feeling, describe what the reader would see.
Telling: She was very frightened.
Showing: Her hands shook as she reached for the handle.
Telling: Devon was disappointed.
Showing: Devon folded the paper and put it in his pocket without a word.
The showing version is longer, but it makes the reader do the work of recognising the feeling, and that is what makes a story feel real. Aim to show the important feelings and tell only the unimportant ones.
Use the senses
The SEA objectives ask for descriptive language and sensory details appropriate to stories. A scene becomes real when the reader can hear and smell it, not only see it.
The bread smelled warm and sweet. (smell) The rain hammered on the galvanise. (sound) The mud was cold between his toes. (touch)
Two or three sensory details across a whole story are enough. A story where every sentence is loaded with description becomes slow, and the marks come from the writing as a whole, not from decoration.
Figurative language, used sparingly
Similes, metaphors and personification are named in the objectives, so use them — but a few good ones beat many tired ones. The clouds gathered like a crowd waiting for something to begin gives a picture. As fast as lightning does not, because the reader has met it a hundred times.
Vary your sentences
The objectives ask for a variety of sentence types. Three ways to get it:
Change how sentences begin. Not every sentence should start with the subject. Slowly, Anisa walked to the gate. opens with an adverb; When the rain stopped, they went outside. opens with a clause.
Change the length. Several long sentences followed by a very short one gives the short sentence real force. Then the lights went out.
Use dialogue. Speech breaks up description and lets characters reveal themselves. Remember that every new speaker needs a new paragraph.
Paragraph properly
Start a new paragraph when the time changes, the place changes, or a different person speaks. This is where a lot of straightforward marks are lost — a story written as one solid block is hard to follow no matter how good the content is.
End the story, don't just stop
A good ending resolves the problem the story raised. Kern carried Rusty home, and the gate was shut behind them. closes the picture. Two endings to avoid: Then I woke up and it was all a dream, which cancels everything that happened, and That is the end of my story, which announces the ending instead of writing one.
Worked examples
Example 1: Improving a flat paragraph
A pupil writes: "It was a nice day. We went to the beach. It was fun."
Three problems: the words nice and fun say nothing precise, all three sentences are the same shape and length, and there is no sensory detail at all.
An improved version:
The sun was already hot when we reached Maracas. Salt spray came off the water and settled on my arms, and the sand burned through my slippers all the way to the shade. We swam until our fingers wrinkled.
The improvement is not longer words. It is precise detail the reader can sense, and sentences that vary in shape.
Example 2: Turning telling into showing
Rewrite "Anisa was nervous on her first day" without naming the feeling.
Anisa stood at the gate and counted to ten before she went in. She sat at the desk nearest the window and arranged her pencils in a neat row. When the girl beside her asked her name, the answer came out so quietly that she had to say it twice.
Nothing states that Anisa is nervous, yet the reader is in no doubt. The counting, the tidying and the too-quiet voice do the work.
Example 3: Planning a complete story in four lines
Task: write a story about something that went missing.
- Who and where: Kern, in his village, late afternoon.
- Problem: his dog Rusty is gone and the light is going.
- What he does: searches the standpipe, the shop, the breadfruit tree; calls until his voice is hoarse.
- Ending: just as he turns for home, he hears a sound from the drain and finds Rusty, muddy and hurt.
That plan is enough to write from. It has a problem, rising effort, and a resolution that arrives at the last possible moment — which is what makes an ending satisfying.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
No ending. The story stops when the page runs out. Fix: plan the ending before you start writing.
Announcing the story instead of starting it. I am going to tell you about… Fix: open with an action, a problem or a line of speech.
Naming feelings instead of showing them. Fix: pick the two most important feelings and describe what the reader would see instead.
One long paragraph. Fix: new paragraph when the time, the place or the speaker changes.
Vague words doing the work. Nice, fun, good, bad, nasty. Fix: replace each one with something specific.
Every sentence the same shape. Fix: start at least two sentences with something other than the subject, and use one short sentence for effect.
Spelling and punctuation forgotten in the rush. The objectives include accurate use of grammar, spelling and mechanics, so these marks are available in a writing task too. Fix: leave three minutes to read it back.
How parents can help at home
You do not need to be a writer to help with this, and correcting spelling is not the most useful thing you can do.
Ask for the plan, not the story. Before your child writes, ask the four questions: who, where, what goes wrong, how does it end? If they cannot answer the last one, the story is not ready to start.
Ask "how would I know?" When your child writes that a character was scared or excited, ask how a person watching would be able to tell. Their answer is usually a much better sentence than the one they wrote, and they came up with it themselves.
Read stories aloud together. Any story. Ask what the writer did in the first line to make you want to hear the second. Noticing openings is how children start writing better ones.
Praise the specific. If one sentence in a piece has a real detail in it, say so and say why. Children repeat what gets noticed, and a single well-chosen detail is worth more than a page of adjectives.
Exam technique for narrative writing
Spend the first five minutes planning. Write the four-line plan in the margin. Examiners reward organisation, and you cannot organise what you have not thought about.
Keep the story small. One problem, one or two characters, a short stretch of time. A story that tries to cover a whole holiday in 50 minutes ends up as a list of events with no shape.
Decide your ending before you write your opening. Knowing where you are going stops the middle from wandering.
Leave three or four minutes to read it back. Look for missing full stops, missing capital letters, and any paragraph that has grown too long. These are marks you have already earned and can easily lose.
Write legibly. A marker who cannot read a sentence cannot award anything for it.
Quick revision summary
- Plan four lines first: who and where, the problem, what they do, how it ends.
- Open with something happening, not with an announcement.
- Show, don't tell — describe what the reader would see instead of naming the feeling.
- Use two or three sensory details across the whole story, not one per sentence.
- Use a few fresh similes, metaphors or personification; avoid worn-out ones.
- Vary sentence openings and sentence lengths; a short sentence after long ones lands hard.
- New paragraph when the time, the place or the speaker changes.
- Resolve the problem at the end — no dream endings, no "that is the end of my story".
- Leave three minutes to check spelling, capitals and full stops.