Shitty Stories and Narrative Devices

Things that make stories kinda shitty:

 

 

Flat tone: monotonous, lack of description, unstrategic or unnecessary repetition, sentence structure is repetitive.

 

Unclear or unspecific expression: lack of detail or specificity, no depth (nothing learned, states the obvious, lack of novelty), humor (?)

 

No tension : lack of a problem or struggle or suspense/surprise, a slow or bad plot (nothing interesting or important is happening)

 

No audience consideration : the story is not relatable (*) or uses a vocabulary (diction) not appropriate for the target audience.

•      * a story doesn't HAVE to be "relatable" to be good, effective, or important. It's ONE thing you might consider, but the audience also has the responsibility of listening thoughtfully and engaging with what is written. To the audience member who just can't relate to someone else's story, I say, "Not everything is about you" ;)
  

 

Lack of PLOT SEQUENCE : the order of events (or the timeline) isn't clear.  There are no effective transition words or sentences to make clear any narrative shifts in time.

 

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A NARRATIVE DEVICE is any feature of writing that HELPS us tell our story, the common features of a text that make story telling possible. Here are a few:

 

COMMON NARRATIVE DEVICES:

-       Temporal markers / timeline

-       Characters (character development)

-       Monologue / Dialogue

-       Narrative Voice

                    - Direct address to the reader (?)