Lesson 6.09: Perfectly Polished Papers

Narrative writing provides an account of something that occurs over time. Effective narration requires a writer to give a clear and detailed sequence of events that is either fictional or nonfictional.

A narrative has characters with a definite plot. There is usually a beginning, a middle, and an end. The plot provides the information to all of the reader's questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Whether you are writing an essay or a short story, your narrative should have believable characters. Writers who were influenced by realism focused on ordinary people, so they let the dialect reflect their culture, or way of life.

Writers create dialogueA conversation between characters. to add detail to a scene. Dialogue is meant to

• reveal characters' relationships to one another,
• move the story forward, and
• increase tension.

Dialogue uses quotation marks.

Mandy saiddialog tag, "I want my pencil back right now. You didn't ask me if you could borrow it."
I found it on the floor," saiddialogue tag Paul. "Finders keepers!"

Notice that the dialogue is in paragraph form so the reader won't get confused as to whom is speaking. A dialogue tag identifies the speaker.

Visit the Dialogue Tags presentation to review the purpose of these words.

The characters in the story should be believable. A huge trait of American Realism is the focus on ordinary people. If the character isn't convincing, then the writing isn't authentic to the reader.

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American Realism represented the typical experiences of ordinary characters. Writers were tired of the extraordinary characters of Romanticism. They wanted to describe life without fantasy. The United State was rapidly changing, and there was a literary need to reflect this change.

In this unit, you have read about characters that were like real people. The authors created dialogue that reflected their geographic region; writers wanted to portray life as it really was.

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