Story Structure: One Story, Two Perspectives

Inventing Characters Read! Journal Word Notebook

Choosing Titles The Fab Four Golden Rules Generating Ideas Stealing Ideas From an Idea to a Plan Planning from a Picture Stories Based on a Passage Stories Based on a Sentence An Example of Good Planning

Describing a Location Longer descriptions Describing a character's appearance Dialogue Distinctive Voices Show, Don't Tell Characterisation: Shown Feelings More Characterisation Techniques Playing with Sentences Playscripts Action Suspense

What is story structure? 1 Exciting opening line 2 Set the scene 3 Talking and describing character 4 Characterisation 5 Suspense 6 Action 7 Cliffhanger Standing Out: How can you stand out from the crowd? Clever Clogs: Non-Linear Clever-clogs: Two perspectives Clever-clogs: Narrative voice Practice 11+ exam titles

Checking your story in an exam Redrafting = improving your story What if I run out of time in an exam? The Grumpy Examiner's Pet Hates

Year 2 into 3 Lemony Snicket After Harry Potter Must-Read Authors Spy Novels Horror Stories Classics Animal Stories Adventure Historical Fiction Myths & Legends Fantasy Family Stories & Comedies

Ever seen something like this in the playground?
A pupil a (let’s call him Bob) is playing football. He’s just lost the ball, and is really annoyed with himself. He chases after the ball, and in the process barges through a classmate, Sally. Sally, naturally enough, begins crying.

Sally runs to the teacher, and tells her that “Bob hit me!”. The teacher calls Bob across. Bob is furious, shouting that ‘I didn’t do nuffink!”

The truth is that they’re both right! From Sally’s point-of-view, a naughty boy ran across for no reason and hurt her. But Bob was so busy thinking about the ball that he didn’t even notice he’d bashed Sally!

Let’s study an example in detail, for a story The Burglar.

There are two characters in this story, the burglar and the old lady. If they were telling a friend what had happened, they would have very different recollections of this event. The burglar would probably feel embarrassed by the way he was caught; the old lady might be frightened.

We could tell this story in the third person, like this:

Alternatively, we could tell the story in the first person:

With ‘one story, two perspectives’, you could tell the story in the first person from two different points-of-view. The first half could tell the story from the burglar’s point of view; the second half is the landlady’s version.

It gives you the chance to show off your clever prose style. You can write the one of the characters using short, clipped sentences, and make the second version full of complex sentences ,semi-colons, colons and brackets.

As with non-linear stories, you have the chance to develop irony. In ‘The Burglar’, what the burglar says is amusing once you know the old lady’s version.

Last updated on August 14, 2007