It was a dark and stormy night

When I was young, one of my favorite things to do was to tell stories in the dark with my siblings and the neighborhood kids during the long hot nights of summer. Like most kids in summer, we got bored. To keep things exciting, we would gather together after dinner and sit in a circle in one of my neighbor's back yards. Someone would sneak a flashlight from home, and under the dark of night we would do our best to scare one another by inventing outrageous stories around that circle. Aside from the stars, and the moon, and maybe the lights from our neighbor's back porch, the only light we had in that circle came from the flashlight, which we used to great and eerie effect. We would pass the flashlight around the circle, illuminating only our faces as we made our best effort at telling a frightful tale. Without fail, someone would begin her story with the words "It was a dark and stormy night."

Telling stories is as old as time. Think about it. When you come home from school, your mom and dad usually invite you to tell them a story when they ask, "So, how was school today?" We are always telling stories. When we finish a particularly good basketball game, we want to tell our friends what happened, even if those same friends were there playing the game with us. When we go on a trip, have a birthday, receive a present, take a cooking class, we eventually want to share the adventure with someone by telling them a story. 


The act of telling a story is called narration. Narration typically involves some sense of time order or chronological order. All this means is that something happened first, and, then, many other events followed. Sometimes a storyteller begins at the end to make the story even more interesting. This way, as the listener or reader, you have to watch for the clues that lead to the conclusion you heard at the start. Making up a scary ghost story and relating it around a camp fire, or on a neighbor's lawn as we did when I was a kid, is an act of narration. Narration generally means any kind of explaining or telling of something. It is usually used in reference to storytelling.

A story can be told in first person or third person. When a story is told in first person, the narrator becomes the "I" of the story. He/She becomes the eye, too. In other words, everything that happens in the story is experienced or witnessed or told by the narrator. When a story is told in third person, every character is referred to by the narrator as "he", "she", "it", or "they", but never as "I" or "we."  It is clear that in third person narration, the narrator is a person who tells the story and is not a character of any kind within the story.

Common examples of narration include: a retelling of something that happened; a history; a family story, like how my parents first met; a report; an account; a chronicle; a diary or journal entry; an autobiography; or a biography. The art of narration lies in the tension or conflict that exists in the story and that has to be resolved in some way by the characters or the narrator herself. A narration can explore an idea or teach a lesson. Micah used the example of a roller coaster when he shared his experience of moving back to California and what it felt like to start all over making friends. The tension builds or the conflict comes to a head as the roller coaster inches its way toward the top. Then, as it descends, the conflict is resolved and the lesson is learned.

Your assignment for next week: Continue to work on the narration you started with the free write we did at the beginning of class yesterday. Include characters and details. Include events. Be sure to tell us what happened first and what came next. In the beginning, give us a hint about the lesson that will be learned.

Your other option is to respond to the following prompt, which I read to you at the end of class yesterday: "Your school prints a magazine every year. The editors have decided to devote one entire issue to heroic adventures and daring rescues. Think about Gerta's heroic adventure in A Night Divided, and write a story about her." You may, as Nathan requested, write about Gerta from another person's perspective. For example, you can write about Gerta while making Fritz, her older brother, the narrator.

As always, please submit your work by 7 p.m., Wednesday, July 26, if you would like to see it on the blog.