DIRECTIONS: Follow the prewriting steps below to record all of the ideas you will need to begin
the draft of your narrative.
Prewriting Steps
1 Decide if your story will be a personal narrative or a fictional narrative (short story).
2 Identify a compelling conflict to serve as your story’s “problem” to be solved.
3 List the complications your main character will face while trying to resolve the conflict.
4 Write notes about how the main character will try to address each complication.
Step 1: Decide if your story will be a personal narrative or a fictional narrative (short story).
A personal narrative is a true story about something that happened to you. A fictional narrative,
or short story, is your chance to imagine characters and the things that happen to them.
Though a short story might be based on something that happened to you, many of its events
and details can be made up by you the story’s author. Check one of the options below.
My story will be about something that happened to me—a conflict that I had to
resolve and the complications or obstacles that made the problem hard to solve.
My story will be fictional. I will create a main character who will experience the events
of the story and attempt to resolve its conflict.
Step 2: Identify a compelling conflict to serve as your story’s “problem” to be solved.
If you decided to write a personal narrative, your conflict will be something that actually
happened in your life—a problem that you had to solve. If you decided to write a fictional
narrative, you get to make up the conflict. Either way, it’s a good idea to make a list of several
conflicts, so that you can choose the one that you think is most interesting. Write a possible
story conflict for each of the kinds of conflict listed below.
Kinds of Conflict Your Ideas for Conflicts
Person vs. Person
Person vs. Self
Person vs. Society
Person vs. Nature
Person vs. Fate
Person vs. Technology
Elements of Narrative
Step 3: List the complications that you or your main character will face while trying to resolve
the story’s conflict.
Choose one of the conflicts you listed in Step 2 to be your story’s problem. Be sure to choose a
conflict that is not too simple or too difficult—one that can be resolved in 5-15 pages of
narrative writing. Write the conflict you chose on the conflict row below. Then describe the
complications or obstacles that you faced or that your fictional character will face as he or she
tries to resolve the conflict.
Description of Conflict and
Complications (Obstacles)
How You or Your Characters Will Try
to Overcome This Obstacle
Conflict
Complication 1
Complication 2
Complication 3
Step 4: Write notes about how the main character will try to address each complication.
Now, in the third column of the chart above, make some notes about how you or your
character will try to resolve the conflict and the complications you listed for Step 3. Remember,
these are just notes—not your actual story. You will write the first draft of your story at the end
of the next lesson.