You can find many ways of creating an interesting narrative. Some narrative techniques are so subtle that an accomplished author has difficulty describing them; they are simply evidence of the “natural-born storyteller.”
Tip 1: Pausing, Stopping and Starting Action
You can learn some new techniques. One is the method handling a descriptive and writing style. One writer halts the action of his story when he has something to explain; another writer works through explanation without slowing the action. The second technique is more effective, but how do you do it? It is a question of writing each sentence that contributes to the action and making each sentence a part of the narrative.
As soon as you use sentences to explain, the action pauses. How do you inject explanation if you do not devote any sentences to it? The technique is simple but not so obvious. While the principal verbs of the sentences are stirring up action, using subordinate clauses, phrases, adjectives, and adverbs will carry in the explanation. As the action in your story holds your readers’ attention, you can subtly introduce elements of the background without the reader knowing it. You do this by knowing your story thoroughly and telling it straightforwardly, injecting incidentally whatever explanations that your story needs to make each bit of action clear.
Tip 2: Use Point of View to Stir Up Interest
Another way to create interest in a narrative is to tell it from a definite point of view. Unconsciously readers want to feel that they are watching the action. Since the reader cannot
put himself in a number of places at once, he finds it difficult to imagine himself in several places as he reads. He is more interested if you allow him to see where he is. You can do this by using a definite point of view.
Perhaps you decide to place the point of view on a witness or character in the story. You should determine in advance what you want the point of view to be—through whose eyes the story is seen—and keep that point of view throughout the story.
Tip 3: Create Life-Like Characters
To make the characters living and real is another technique. Readers are only mildly interested in an average person, but if you create an individual whom readers can see, they will be interested in watching him. This does not mean that you must stop and describe each character with a biographical sketch. There is an easier way. Acquaint yourself with your characters before you begin to write. You must know your characters thoroughly, including their words and actions, so that readers feel that your characters are real and alive in the story. A proven method to flesh out your characters is to write biographical sketches and descriptions of your characters before you begin to write. This type of preparation will give you a clear picture of your characters.
Tip 4: Write Engaging Dialogue
Actual conversation is necessary in story-telling. You need to create dialogue that is both concrete and sounds interesting. A character who speaks just three words will often reveal more of the story than a page of laborious explanation. Dialogue must be true to life. The characters must not only converse to progress the story, but they must talk in their own characteristic ways. If an educated lawyer talks in street slang or a child quotes Latin, the unreality of the dialogue makes the reader laugh and forget the story.
Tip 5: Know What to Tell
The primary principle of story-telling is to know just how much to tell and how much to omit. Unless you leave something to the reader’s imagination, he is not interested. One way to judge this is by “trying out” the narrative on someone who will point out the unnecessary and unclear parts. Or you may feel that you have told too much and decide to condense the story anyway. If your completed story runs 4,000 words long, it is safe to say that you can improve it by condensing it to 2,000. This process will not only eliminate repetitions, but it will also remove dull sentences that contain no action.
