Story Structure: Distinctive Narrative Voice

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

Read ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’? No? Well, go and do so. I’ll wait here until you’ve finished.

Finished? Good! Daniel Handler, the author of A Series of Unfortunate Events, does something clever with his narrator.

The book is written in the third person, but he uses a character to tell the story. Lemony Snicket is not part of the action – he does not appear in the story – but he constantly comments on the action.

Read all of the Unfortunate Events. Now get The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily.

Note some of the distinctive features of this style:

Opening a chapter – in your case, the story – with an incongruous – a word which here means ‘having nothing to do with the main story - comment
Warning the reader not to read on, or that the next part of the story will be upsetting. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
Defining what words mean, e.g. "Count Olaf decided to define – a word which here means ‘explain what a word means’ – torture for the Baudelaire siblings."
Insisting the story is true, and it is your ‘solemn duty’ to tell it.
Snicket frequently comments on the action, e.g. telling the reader he would not have been as brave as the Baudelaire children had he been in their situation.
Using footnotes to add to the action*

Write your own Lemony Snicket story, describing what happened to the long-lost fourth Baudelaire sibling.

*This is a footnote. It is a way of adding extra information – and a clever technique to include in an 11+ exam.

Last updated on August 13, 2007