Harvard University
The Harvard Chaucer Page: English Romance
A survey of Geoffrey Chaucer's work, which was much influenced by romance, the dominant mode of secular fictional narrative in his time.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Back Story
This lesson introduces the back story in fiction writing. W.11-12.3c Narrative Org
Caro Clarke
Caro Clarke: Pacing Anxiety, or How to Stop Padding and Plot!
This is the seventh installment of a series giving advice to the author who is new to writing novels. This article focuses on how to take your characters and use them and their conflicts to develop the plot of your story. W.9-10.3b...
Caro Clarke
Describing Your Characters Through Their Actions
This is the tenth in a series of articles designed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how to develop characters through their actions instead of simply relying on dialogue and description of thoughts. W.11-12.3d...
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Education: Telling Your Story
A lesson in which young scholars gain empathy for people who lived during a historical time period by writing a first-person story with experiences that would have happened during that time.
Caro Clarke
Caroclarke: Dialogue: The Best Action
This is the fourteenth article in a series published with the goal of helping the new novel author. This article focuses on using dialogue to advance the action of the story. Links on the left offer other information about story writing.
EL Education
El Education: Fanta
8th grade students in Fort Collins, Colorado each created a historical character file (HCF) as part of a Learning Expedition on slavery. Each HCF is a fictionalized account of an historically/geographically accurate character. Each file...
EL Education
El Education: Diseased
This fictionalized journal was created by a high school student in Denver, Colorado. It tells the haunting story, through a combination of text and images, of a young woman who is stricken with tuberculosis (and later HIV). This...
EL Education
El Education: Dwarf Dwelling
A student from a 5th/6th grade classroom in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, created this illustration of a dwarf dwelling as part of a Learning expedition on architecture. The task given to students was to create a prehistoric cave home in...
Utah Education Network
Uen: Cinderella Stories From Around the World
In this lesson plan, 5th graders will compare and contrast different versions of the fairy tale "Cinderella." Students will use a compare and contrast chart chart. After the shared readings, students will use all the elements of a fairy...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Go West: Imagining the Oregon Trail
A 2,000-mile trek across a continent-with no idea what awaits you on the other side. Tell your students to put on their traveling shoes and prepare for the journey of their lives! In this lesson, students compare imagined travel...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Character Development
This lesson explains how characters develop in fiction writing. W.11-12.3d Sensory/precise lang narratives
Georgetown University
Georgetown University: Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849)
This site is a professor's guide for students. This guide features information on how to distinguish between Poe and his narrators in his stories.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Character
This lesson introduces the purpose and types of characters in fiction writing. W.9-10.3b Narrative techn