Easy Narrative Writing is an upper middle school writing series, designed to teach students to write with skill and structure. Students using Easy Narrative Writing develop foundational writing skills as they transition from learning sentence structure to learning narrative writing.

Sentence Structure

To help students understand how words work within the sentence, some basic level grammatical elements, such as dependent clauses, independent clauses, coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and verbals, are covered. To accomplish this task, Chapter 1 covers the following topics:

• Understanding Verbs.
• Understanding Sentences.
• Writing Compound Sentences.
• Understanding Complex sentences.
• Writing Complex Sentences with Subordinating Conjunctions.
• Punctuating Complex Sentences.
• Writing Complex Sentences with Relative Pronouns.
• Punctuating Clauses.
• Writing Complex Sentences with Verbals.
• Writing with Participial Phrases.
• Amplifying Sentences.
• Amplifying Sentences with Strong Verbs.
• Varying Sentence Openers.
• Paraphrasing: An Exercise in Choosing the Right Word.

 

In Writing from Rhetoric, we spend a lot of time covering sentences because sentences are the basic unit of thought, and children must be able to manipulate sentences effectively to communicate their ideas.

 

The Progymnasmata

The progymnasmata are a series of writing exercises which were used during ancient times. These exercises were designed to prepare students for the formal study of rhetoric. Typically, they included the following:

 

Fable                                                   Commonplace                                                Thesis

Narrative                                              Encomium (Praise)                                        Law

Proverb                                               Vituperation (Blame)

Anecdote                                            Comparison

Refutation                                           Characterization (Speech-in-Character)

Confirmation                                      Description

Variations of these 14 exercises are still present in many modern writing programs. They have remained popular because they begin at a level that is easily accessible to students—writing about fables—and progress gradually to persuasive arguments—defending or attacking a law.

In designing this workbook, the progymnasmata exercises were used as a vehicle to introduce timeless writing skills to modern students.

The primary focus of this workbook is on composing complex sentences, writing with varied sentence openers, rewriting fables, writing dialogue, expanding and condensing narratives, writing slanted narratives, and more.

Easy Narrative Writing may be used as a one year textbook for younger students or a one semester textbook for more experienced writers.

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