ELA 5.8.1

Narrative Story Revisions

ELA Lesson 5.8.1

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Story Inspiration

Remember, your story may have been inspired by one of the following pictures, OR you may have come up with your own original story idea.

*AI may NOT be used to create your story!

Open your draft!

Locate your story and open it. Let's check formatting

Double Spacing

​MLA Font and Size

MLA Formatting

MLA Formatting

​MLA Title
and Paragraphs

​MLA Heading

Starting with a hook

​Hook your reader from the start!

Show, Don't Tell

​Imagery and Figurative Language

Remember, you want to SHOW your reader your story, don't tell it to them. To do this, engage the reader's senses using descriptive language.

Tell:

She had been crying.

Show:

Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. Dried streaks ran down her face, leaving discolored patches on her makeup.

Dialogue

​Rules for writing dialogue:

1) Use speaker’s tags to identify a speaker:

“Go team!” screamed the cheerleaders with excitement.
2) Put quotation marks (“”) around a speaker’s exact words:

“This cake is delicious,” Amanda said as she took a bite.
3) Place a comma before a quotation:

The teacher asked, “Did you study for the test?”
4) Capitalize the first word of a quotation and the first word of each sentence:

“The basketball game was great. We won by twenty points!” exclaimed Mark.
5) Place periods, commas, question marks, & exclamation marks INSIDE quotation marks (Put period at end of the sentence if a speaker tag follows!):

“Your hair looks pretty today,” Amanda said as she passed Maggie.
6) Begin a new indented paragraph each time the speaker changes:

“How are you doing?” asked Karen. She felt really bad for Tyler because he had been feeling sick since lunchtime.

“I’m feeling a little sick,” replied Tyler.

Editing

C...Capitalization

~first word in a sentence

~proper nouns

U…Understanding

~makes sense

~beginning, middle, ending

~interesting detail

~indent where needed

P…Punctuation

~periods, question marks, exclamation points, commas, quotation marks

S…Spelling

~ Check online dictionary

Revising

A… Add

~words, sentences, details

R… Remove

~words, sentences, unnecessary details

M…Move

~sentences to fit better

~word order

S…Substitute

~overused words

~ juicy words for plain words

~detailed sentences for boring sentences

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