When you boil down the essentials of so much writing, what you get is the need for vivid, original detail. In a college essay, the story comes alive when a student goes way past the generalities and gives specific examples. In an argument essay, the intricate examples and counterargument that is explained with depth makes the most impact. In any kind of research, carefully exploring the core of the ideas with the most interesting possible language will hook and hold the reader’s attention. And in narrative – as we’ve seen, eminently transferable to other areas of writing – it’s the details.
I took a copywriting class once where they boiled this concept down to a sandwich. Never say someone ate a sandwich. Say it was a pastrami on rye with extra mustard and a sheaf of pickles. Say it was a PB & J positively oozing J. Say it was a double-decker smash burger with Jimmy’s special sauce and extra crispy sweet potato fries.
See the difference?
But here’s the thing. When you tell a kid they need more details, that doesn’t exactly come alive for THEM. You need more details in your request for details. They need to SEE and FEEL what you mean, just like you need to see and feel the world of their writing. So today on the pod, let’s dive into six strategies you can use with your students to help improve their narrative writing detail. Your students may already have some of these down, but others may be new, or areas that will help with something causing them to struggle. As with any set of writing strategies, teach what they actually need. Apply it to their current writing projects.
Introducing the Six Strategies
So here are the six strategies we’re diving into: use sensory detail, incorporate dialogue, trigger memories within the action, build suspense by throwing a ball in the air, when it comes to emotion show don’t tell, and make use of internal monologue. Each one adds a helpful layer to narrative in its own way, and they can all be layered together, like an amazing narrative sachertorte.
Narrative Strategy #1: Sensory Details
This one’s the oldest trick in the book, so let’s start here. Sensory details are an essential part of narrative writing, and I think most students have heard that by the time they get to secondary English. But they might not realize how much they’re focused on certain senses. In his book, Narrative Writing, George Hillocks Jr. focuses in on helping students with the more forgotten senses, like touch and smell. He shares some fabulous activities for these, including bringing in shells for students to touch and then describe in their writing so that others can try to match the shell to the description of it, and bringing in tiny bottles of different scents to help students consider the range of smells out there (highly recommend the book!).
There are a lot of ways to practice sensory details. One that jumps to mind for me is to use the ideas behind Angela Stockman’s pioneering work in the writing makerspace. Have students create (in just a few minutes, no need to spend ages) a collage for a setting including aspects that cross all five senses, then begin writing a scene set there. Another I’ve used is to bring in postcards and have students pull one and write in their own notebooks (so the postcard stays clean) as if they’re sitting wherever the postcard is set, painting a sensory picture for a friend on the other end of the postcard. You might share a drone video of a stunning place, then pause it and ask students to set up a character walking through that space engaging all five senses.
Narrative Strategy #2: Dialogue
Next up, a core of narrative, dialogue. Characters can reveal so much about themselves by what they say, eliminating the need for long exposition in a story.
Let students go spelunking in their choice reading books to search out examples of great dialogue, and make a mural up on your wall or white board with their favorite examples. Help them see how dialogue is punctuated – a common stumbling block to clarity – by looking at examples.
I wouldn’t recommend the popular “said is dead” graveyard activity, where you put “Here lies Said” on a gravestone on an anchor chart and offer alternatives all around it. Personally, I think said is very much alive, and a helpful go-to much of the time. BUT, there are a lot of other great options when the time is right. That’s why I prefer to offer a dialogue attribution buffet which includes said, rather than a list of alternatives.
Imagine a dialogue without any said:
“That’s great,” purred Karen.
“I don’t think so,” muttered Fred.
“Well, I don’t care what you think,” raged Karen.
“I don’t care whether you care,” groused Fred.
“Whatever. I’m leaving,” howled Karen.
Yeah, you get the idea. It’s a bit over the top.
One fun way to practice dialogue would be to have students, in partners, come up with characters to go to a party. They should have a picture of their character, their name, a few attributes, and a dialogue bubble for how they might respond to the question “Hey, what’s up?” or “How’s it going?” Let the whole class put these images on the wall and walk around, creating a scene at the party involving conversations between as many of these characters as they wish.
Narrative Strategy #3: Trigger a Memory
The “Trigger a Memory” strategy gives students an easy, memorable way to play around with pacing and order. They can build in a scene from a previous part of a character’s life, providing helpful information about that character, at any time within a story. They can zoom in on a moment in a unique way.
Here’s how it works.
One minute, the character is sticking their hand in a buttery bowl of hot salty popcorn. In the next, they’re remembering the last time they ate popcorn, with their favorite cousin Jake, on a 12-day backpacking trip through the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota, right before that black bear wandered into camp.
One minute, a character is putting on a necklace before a formal dance. In the next, they’re remembering their mom clasping it behind them when they were three and saying “Make a Wish.”
One minute, a character walks by a garage sale where they’re selling an old copy of Monopoly. In the next, they’re back in 2nd grade playing a weekend straight of monopoly with their best friend Kate, and we find out that’s when they realized they wanted to be a realtor.
There are a lot of ways you could play around with this strategy. One of my favorites is to use decks of cards – physical, if you have a barrage of them like my family, or digital, if you’re handy with screenshots and can put together a fun slide of wacky card decks. Invite students to write a scene in which characters play a game together, but when one goes to grab a deck (students choose which deck) it triggers a memory which reveals something about that character’s past. It can be about the place where they got the deck, who they got it with, a game they played with the deck in the past and something going on in their life at that time, etc. Then, invite students to use this same strategy in whatever writing project they’re working on, except it doesn’t have to be a deck of cards. It could be anything.
Narrative Strategy #4: Build Suspense
I used to think the idea of building suspense was so tricky to learn. Then I thought of the ball in the air, and now it just makes sense. For this strategy, teach students that one easy way to build tension is by throwing a ball in the air. Something has to happen before it hits.
For example, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (spoiler alert), Rowling throws a ball in the air when Sirius is captured by dementors and Harry and Hermione have just a few hours to turn back time, save Buckbeak, and fly to the tower to save Sirius before they catch up with their own timeline. For a long chunk of the story, there is a strong current of tense suspense as readers wonder if they can beat the clock.
Or for another example, in The Sun is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon throws a ball in the air when she introduces one character who is being deported the next day, and then brings in another character who wants to make her fall in love with him before she leaves.
The ball can be small – maybe a character needs to make a cake for their best friend’s birthday later that day, but they’ve never made a cake before.
The ball can be big – maybe a character needs a scholarship to go to college and they only have two hours left to finish their essay when they get food poisoning.
The more you hunt for this idea of the ball in the air in mentor texts, and brainstorm ways to throw the ball in small and large ways in stories, the easier it gets to wield this tension-building strategy.
Narrative Strategy #5: Show Don’t Tell: Emotion
We often tell writers “show, don’t tell.” But that can feel a bit general. One way to drill down is to help them see the difference between showing and telling emotion. When they tell emotion, they almost always use the “to be” verb. I think it was William Zinsser, in his book, On Writing Well, that first clued me into the idea that “to be” is often a sign of weak writing.
“He was sad,” “She was delighted,” “She was depressed.” Sure, these phrases tell a bit of the story. But how do you know she was delighted? Did she dance around the room making up a song about how excited she was to go to tennis camp? Did she hug everyone in the room? Think of Taylor Swift’s line from the song, “I can do it with a Broken Heart:” “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday, every day.” She does start with a bit of telling and a “to be” verb with her “I’m so depressed” but she quickly elaborates with a memorable image that paints a picture of her behavior.
Just as with “said” as a dialogue attribution tag, there’s a mix to be had here. Students can use some “was” with helpful, specific language around emotions.
But mostly they need to SHOW how their characters feel. The student on the edge of their seat, pulse racing, foot tapping, is far more powerful in the story than the student who “was nervous.” The toddler who screams for 45 seconds straight, cheeks slowly turning purple with fury, grips the reader far more than the toddler who “was mad.” I know you know.
Invite students to re-read drafts in search of the to-be verb, circling every instance of “was” and “were,” and see if there are some spots where they can level up on emotions and actions, showing instead of telling.
Narrative Strategy #6: Internal Monologue
Internal monologue is actually so fun, and so easy to practice. It gives students the chance to say what characters are really thinking when they’re in all manner of situations. You might warm up on this strategy by showing photos with dialogue bubbles for what characters are saying outwardly, then let students invent what they’re really thinking. Or you might show a brief clip from a T.V. series or movie your students love in the middle of a loaded moment, and invite them to write internal monologue for one character.
Student can write internal monologue in one of two ways – by switching over to italics, or by letting the reader know they’re going internal with a quick cue like “she thought to herself” or “Jeff frowned, wondering…” You can show some mentor texts, or let students find their own in their choice reading books, to show them these options. Page one of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime has a great example. (You can check it out in the sample on Overdrive here).
Remember This
As you build workshops to teach these strategies, keep in mind that as you practice a new craft move, you’ll want to immediately apply it to what students are working on. So build these in along the way as students are writing stories, memoirs, scenes, etc. Don’t just randomly roll them out every Friday for six weeks. My best advice would be to integrate the ones that feel relevant to your kids within your narrative unit, on a piece of writing students are working hard on, hopefully for an authentic audience. And along the way, to use mentors from your choice reading program and your whole class reads, so they’re also seeing the connections between what they’re reading and what they’re writing.
Want the Full Narrative Unit?
I built this unit for The Lighthouse, so members can grab it there. It’s also now available on TPT here.
Sources:
Hillocks Jr., G. (2007). Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Heinemann.
Graham, S., MacArthur, C., & Hebert, M. (Eds). (2019). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. The Guilford Press.
Stockman, Angela. (2015). Make Writing. Hack Learning Series.
Zinsser, W. (2004). On Writing Well. Harper.
