Once you have finished prewriting you are ready to tell your story in writing. In order to effectively tell your story, you want to start with a strong beginning that will hook your reading, build the action throughout the middle that will reveal the sequence of events while maintaining interest, and end with a strong ending that sums up the action while revealing what you learned through the experience. Working through the following steps will help you write an effective draft to your story.
In the first paragraph(s) of your narrative, introduce your topic and the time and place of your narrative. As you write think about the following questions:
| What details anchor this moment to the time and place in which it occurs? |
| Why am I telling my story? What is my purpose? |
| How can I hook my reader so he/ she wants to continue reading? |
By creating an engaging beginning, you can introduce your topic and make your reader want to keep reading. Look at the following table to learn about different strategies that can be used to write an engaging and interesting lead.
| Start in the middle of the action. | “Hurry up,” my mom yelled up the stairs. “We don’t have time for you to grab everything you need. I hear the boat getting closer.” The first floor of my house was covered in waist deep water. Our cars were trapped in the garage and the only way we were getting to the evacuation center was by the boat that was making its way down our street. After avoiding the worst of Hurricane Harvey, we thought we were in the clear, but then the rain came and within a day we were under water and didn’t have time to get out of the house. |
| Begin with a surprising statement or fact. | Heroes don’t always wear capes; mine wore a baseball cap and jeans. Just as I had started to give up hope that we would escape the flooding, we heard the boats coming down our street. Whoever would have guessed that a boat would pull into our driveway and that how we would get out of our house. But, after days of rain, Hurricane Harvey had left my neighborhood completely flooded. |
| Give some important background information. | Hurricane Harvey was one of the costliest hurricanes in United States history. In 2017 it made landfall in Texas as a category 4 hurricane. As a slow-moving storm, the rain in the aftermath was devastating for many Texans, including my family. We thought we would be safe once the hurricane made landfall and didn’t affect us. Little did we know the worst for my family was yet to come, as the storm stalled and dumped 40 inches of rain on our town. |
Choose one of the strategies for crafting a lead and draft the beginning of your story. Add your lead and your introductory paragraph to the historical narrative worksheet.
