Have a look at good narrative stories that 1-B2 students have written. Check the way they have organised their writing!
Enjoy!
A FRIGHTENING EXPERIENCE by Carmina Botija
Planning
Paragraph 1. Introducing characters and their circumstances at the time the story occurs.
Paragraph 2. Setting. Description of the scene of the incident.
Paragraph 3. Climax and description of the facts.
Paragraph 4. Conclusion. Explanation about how the character feels as a result of the experience lived.
Final draft
It was the summer of 1998. At that time, I was studying my degree and I used to fail some subjects every year, therefore I had not many holidays in the summer and I spent those days in the countryside, at my grandma´s house, studying and working hard to pass September exams. My grandma´s house was a huge cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, mountains and wild animals. Summer days were very hot in that place and there were a lot of people, family and friends, spending the summer there, consequently I used to study at night. I remember that at that time my family was on a two day trip on the beach; as a result, I was alone.
It was almost midnight, everything was quiet, only the sound of the cicadas singing broke the silence and there was a full moon. While I was memorizing some boring lessons, I heard a strange noise outside. All of a sudden, the noise went louder and louder.
I was curious and frightened at the same time, so I got up, switched off the lights and went towards the window. I had a pen in my hand and I held it as if it was a sword! As I stood near the window, a shadow appeared in the dark. I caught a sight of something small flying towards me. It was a bat! Suddenly, hundreds of them appeared. I was terrified and I ran as fast as I could up to my bedroom. I didn´t feel able to get up out of bed and in spite of the fear, I finally felt asleep.
On the next day, however, with the sunlight and the hustle and bustle of my little cousins running all the way up through the house, I realized the fear was in my mind, as a result of darkness, the calmness that could be taken at night and the fact that it was the first time I was alone in that house.
I thought I was not the kind of person who is frightened easily; but I must admit that after that night´s “terrifying” experience I had to change my mind.
THE DEAD RABBIT by María Suárez
SCHEME
1- PLANNING
-Purpose It’s a narrative. I will write a frightening experience.
-Content structure The rabbit’s neighbour.
my friend´s dog
We were very nervous.
-Organization
First paragraph: Main characters and provides settings of the story
Second paragraph: The first part of story and unexpected problem.
Third paragraph: Continues the story introducing new character.
Fourth: The climax of the story
Fifth paragraph: Provides an amusing conclusion.
2- DRAFTING
Angel, my friend, has a dog called Nanuk. One day the dog turned up with a dead rabbit in its mouth. It was the neighbour’s rabbit. We were getting into trouble.
One summer I visited a friend, who has a house near the Beach in the South of Spain, on my holidays. My friend Angel had a dog, Nanuk. This dog was always getting into trouble, and it had already completely wrecked their house and dug up his garden. One Saturday Nanuk turned up with a dead rabbit in its mouth, which it brought into the house and dropped on the floor. I immediately recognised this rabbit as the one that belonged to the little girl next door, Lola,she kept this rabbit in a hutch in her garden, so we thought the dog must have got into their garden and killed it. So my friend Angel had a look at the Rabbit, which was all muddy and dirty, but it didn’t seem to have any tooth marks on it and it wasn’t damaged in any way. So we had an idea.
He cleaned the rabbit up an he dried it with a hairdryer, and made it look really nice, later on that night when the neighbours had gone to sleep, he slipped over the garden fence and put the dead Rabbit back in its hutch. The next morning there was a ring at the doorbell, it was the little girl’s mother, and she was looking really upset .And my friend said ‘What’s the matter? ‘.Our faces were very pale, we were very nervous and frightened. Nanuk had killed her rabbit! And she said ‘It’s terrible. It’s little Lola’s rabbit. I just can’t understand it. The rabbit died two days ago, and so we took it out of its hutch and buried it in the garden, and this morning I went back out into the garden to clean out the rabbit hutch so we could sell it- and there was the rabbit back in the hutch.’ We didn’t know what to say her. It put me in an awkward situation. We will never do it again.
FEAR IN A STUDENT¨S RESIDENCE by Laura Fernández
DRAFTING
INTRODUCTION:
· I live in a hall of residence.
· Men follow a girl.
DEVELOPMENT
· He enters and steals in the rooms.
· At night, a girl said she have seen a men in her window
· The police arrive.
CONCLUSION
· A boy and a men were in the street
· The police arrest him
· Fear can make you see things that are not real
I have been living with a hundred girls in a student residence for four years. I could say that these years are being the best years of my life, we spend funny moments, but we have also had frightening experience, for instance, when I was still a rookie three years ago.
At about five o’clock one afternoon, a resident went back towards the student residence while a man was following her. She was scared and she started to run. The girl arrived where we were and told us what had happened. However, we kept doing what we were doing and we did not care. About that, an hour later while all of us were in our rooms, a man jumped the fence from the terrace and went into the residence. He went up, he was looking at the rooms and got to steal in some rooms. He was even struggling with some of the residents, but the intruder got out of the building. We felt very scared.
In the night a girl began to shout about ten o’clock and she said “A MAN IS CLIMBING THE WALL OF THE ROOM”. I listened to her, so my roommate and I left the room, but we closed the windows and the doors with the key first. While approached reception, the girls said that the man was nearer.
You can image one hundred nervous girls in pyjamas talking to the police, while an old woman, spent all night at the residence if this would even happen again, telling us that we had no fear that she was there to protect.
Later, the police looked through the window; they only could see a boy that was painting on the wall and another man who was sleeping under it because he didn’t have a place to sleep. The man, they were looking for, stole two days later in a shop and they could arrest him.
In conclusion, fear can make you see things that are not real and it tends to exaggerate the situations. This night all of us slept a little nervous, although the next day we laughed about our reaction.
