Identification and Application:

When selecting a text structure for a story, writers consider the theme and the kind of story they want
to tell. They consider questions about character and plot events:
Should I tell the story in the order that the events happen?
Should I use a flashback at the beginning to create mystery and suspense?
Who are my characters and how will they grow or change?
What is the conflict (or problem) of the plot?
What will be the most exciting moment of my story?
How will my story end?
Writers often use signal words to hint at the organizational text structure:
Time order: first, next, then, finally, before, after, now, soon, at last
Cause-effect: because, so, therefore, as a result
Compare-contrast: like, also to compare; unlike, but to contrast Order of importance: mainly, most
important, to begin with, first
Even though a story is usually told in time order, writers may organize individual paragraphs by using a
second narrative text structure. For example, when a plot event leads to serious consequences for a
character, the writer may use cause-and-effect text structure in a paragraph. Despite these paragraph
shifts in text structure, the overall text structure for the story is still time order.

Model:
The writer of the student model understood from her prewriting that she would be telling her story in
chronological order by giving events in time order–from beginning to end. In this excerpt from the first
paragraph of the model, the writer makes the organizational structure clear. The narrator is telling the
events in the workshop in the order they happened. However, by using the past tense (e.g., toiled, rang,
swung, spoke) in the description, the narrator is telling the events to the reader sometime after they
happened.
Clang, clang, clang! Fifty apprentices toiled away in the infernally hot smithy. Their hammers rang out
as they pounded red disks of metal into the things needed by the Community—horseshoes, armor,
and nails. Fifty young people, their faces taut with concentration, swung their hammers relentlessly.
No one spoke because no one could hear a puny human voice over the clamor of the workshop.
In the second paragraph, the writer provides some background about the main character, Theo.
Therefore, the narrator uses flashback to go back in time to just before the beginning of the story. Notice
how the writer changes from using the past tense to the past perfect verb tense (“the day Theo had turned
thirteen, the Authorities removed him from the nursery pod”) to indicate that an event happened in the
past (“the day Theo had turned thirteen”) before another event happened (“the Authorities removed him
from the nursery pod”), as well as clue words and phrases— newly, and his first twelve years—to let
readers in on the time shift:
Theo was a newly apprenticed blacksmith. The Authorities had only recently assigned him to the
smithy. As with all the children in the Community, the day Theo had turned thirteen, the Authorities
removed him from the nursery pod where he had spent his first twelve years cared for by the Nanny.
The Nanny said nothing as he was taken away.
After “flashing back” in paragraphs 2-3, to fill in Theo’s personal history, the writer returns in paragraph 4
to the smithy, the setting of the story, and to where he left off in paragraph 1. The writer uses time-order
words and phrases in paragraph 4—later, still, after,even yet— to help readers keep up.
That had been the Authorities’ intention, as Neema, a fellow apprentice, told Theo later. She was two
months older than he and was still adjusting to her Assignment. She was surprisingly chatty after a
day of swinging a hammer and even yet had the energy to speak with others during a meal in the
crowded Community Room.
 In order to organize the order in which she would tell her events, the writer used an Organize Narrative
Writing Timeline. She listed the events and then numbered them in the order in which she first thought that
she wanted them to appear in her story.

Event #2: The blacksmiths are working in the smithy.

Event #1: Theo gets taken from the Pod and given his Assignment.
Event #3: Neema explains what the Authorities are doing.
Event #4: Theo makes a resolution.
Event #5: Theo defies the Authorities by singing in the smithy.
Event #6: Theo gets taken to the Decider and punished.
Event #8: The authorities realize they can’t control the rebellion and change their ways.
Event #7: Neema and the other blacksmiths continue to rebel by singing.