Developing Narrators And Characters

Once you have chosen a narrator and introduced your characters, the next step is to keep the story moving. Developing narrators and characters means adding dialogue and description so readers can follow what happens, in an order that makes sense. This builds on the work you did in Establishing Story Narrators And Characters, where you first picked your narrator and named your characters.

A good story does not jump around. It moves from one event to the next in an order readers can follow. Think about telling a friend about your day. You would not start with lunch, then jump to breakfast, then jump back to lunch again. You would tell it in order: first this happened, then that happened, then this happened.

Writers use time words to help readers follow the order of events. Words like first, next, then, after that, and finally act like signs on a road. They tell readers which way the story is going. When you plan a story, you can list your events in order before you even start writing.

Dialogue is what characters say out loud. It is shown with quotation marks, like this: "Watch out for that puddle!" shouted Ben. Dialogue does two jobs at once. It moves the story forward, and it shows readers what a character is like.

If a character says, "I am not scared at all," but their hands are shaking, readers learn something about how that character really feels. Adding one or two lines of dialogue at an important moment helps readers hear your characters, not just read about them.

Description uses details about how something looks, sounds, smells, or feels. Instead of writing "Maya was scared," you could write "Maya's hands felt cold, and her heart beat fast." This kind of description shows the event instead of just telling it, and it helps readers picture the scene.

You can use description for your setting, for your characters, and for the actions happening in your story. A short, clear detail is often more powerful than a long list of describing words.

Look at how one small story uses order, dialogue, and description together.

Each box builds on the one before it. The narrator (Maya, telling her own story with "I") stays the same throughout, but readers learn more about her feelings and actions as the events unfold in order.

Narrator: The voice telling the story, such as a character using "I" or an outside voice using "she" or "he".

Dialogue: Words a character says out loud, written inside quotation marks.

Description: Details that show how something looks, sounds, feels, or smells.

Sequence: The order in which events happen in a story, from beginning to end.

Time Words: Words like first, next, then, and finally that show the order of events.

Event: Something that happens in a story, like finding a kitten or hearing a strange sound.

Try writing three events from your own day using time words to put them in order: first, next, and finally. Then pick one event and add a line of dialogue that shows how you felt in that moment.

As you keep growing as a storyteller, you can explore how a narrator's point of view changes the way events are told in Crafting Narrator Perspective And Characters.

Related lessons

• Establishing Story Narrators And Characters