Setting it up

You can either choose a narrative-writing task from the essaypop lesson library or you can create your own task by using our lesson-creation wizard.

Lesson Library

Lesson-Creation Wizard

How students will write their stories

Once the writer has an idea for his or her story and has established a basic plot or story structure, she can begin laying out the narrative in what we call sections. Sections are laid out from left to right in the header of the essaypop writing frame area, The structure can be chronological, but, of course, it does not have to be.

Some writers might structure stories using the basic elements of plot (section one = exposition – section two is the first part of rising action, etc…) Others will organize their narratives by chapter. Still, others might section their stories into acts and/ or sub-acts. The specific, narrative organization is totally dependent on the writer.

Once the basic story structure is laid out (and this structure can easily and quickly be modified), the writer then begins composing the narrative in vertical frames just like essays, just as they would compose an essay in essaypop. These frames are selected by the writer as needed and include general text, characterization, setting, dialogue, narrative action, transition.

Here's what it looks like in the app.

Notice that students have easy access to explanations and models in the side bar, and that they can dial up narrative elements quickly. Writers can also arrange and rearrange elements simply by dragging and dropping frames into new positions. By doing so, they will discover the types of tonal changes they can achieve when, for example, leading with setting instead of characterization or treating the reader with dialogue before the narrative action begins.

Instant conversion and feedback

And, as always, the frames are converted into an MLA-formatted document in real-time. And students receive real-time feedback from the teacher and their peers in the Hive.

The advantages of writing stories with essaypop

• Writers may easily insert narrative elements in between each frame, making revision elaboration and story-building simple.

• All elements are color-coded, making identification of of narrative elements easy for writers, teachers, classmates and guests in the Hive.

• Writers can easily jump back and forth between elements and sections.

• When finished, writer’s instantly export their stories to the document format of their choice.

Have fun!