Narrative Technique and Structure
PREPARATION:
One of the techniques of narrative writing, whether in poetry or prose, is the use of sensory language- language that appeals to any of the five senses (taste, touch, sight, smell, or sound). Examine Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" below and note the many details that appeal to the five senses.
These sensory details create the experience of the poem for the reader. Think about how this poem would read if none of these details were included: it would be flat, uninteresting, and unrelatable. Instead, we get a sense of how in tune Frost is with nature - how he notices, feels, smells, hears, and touches this experience.
The same is true in nonfiction texts. To make a true story more interesting, authors will often include sensory details to help their readers relate to the experience.
ASSIGNMENT:
Write a narrative about a simple event in your day - having a meal - which you describe in detail using sensory language. If you wish, you can include activities surrounding the meal such as choosing the setting (kitchen, dining room, outside, etc.), shopping for the food, preparing the meal, and even cleaning up afterward.
After Apple-Picking - by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear. My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
For all
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep.

200 word