As a child, I remember my fourth grade teacher looking over a story I’d written for Young Authors and telling me I needed to “add more details.” Wanting to please my teacher, I nodded my head and returned to my desk, then stared at my story with a blank look on my face. I had no idea what to add!
I’m sure this is a direction we’ve all received as students and, unfortunately, something we’ve all said to our students during writing conferences as well. The problem is, if we don’t explicitly teach our students what “details” are, then they will be unsuccessful with adding them to their stories.
When teaching my students how to develop their details in narrative writing, I start with the four most common and simple kinds: action, conversation, thought, and emotion. Taking these four kinds of details into account, it’s much easier to turn this:
I loved every bite of my mom’s apple pie!
into this:
I was moping in my room after a hard day at school, feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly, a deliciously sweet smell wafted through the door. “Do I smell pie?” I thought. I ran into the kitchen as fast as my legs would carry me. “I made you an apple pie to cheer you up!” my mom explained. Biting into that pie, I felt happier than I’d been in a very long time. “Thank you for making my day better,” I said as I gave my mom a big hug.
By thinking about what I did, said, felt, and thought around the moment when I ate my mom’s pie, I was able to add action, thought, conversation, and emotion details to my story. These details developed one boring sentence into a story-telling paragraph that painted a picture in my reader’s mind.
So, next time you notice that your students’ stories are boring due to lack of detail development, do them a favor and teach a mini lesson right then and there on the different kinds of details and how they can be added to improve narrative writing. You will be amazed at the difference in your students’ narratives!
