In fiction writing, here’s one way of breaking down narrative modes: There’s description (of characters, of setting or of internal reaction), there’s summary and there’s scene. Of course the lines between the modes can be blurry, and of course a story can be in more than one mode, even in the same sentence. Still. We can help students recognize when they’re in the wrong mode at the wrong time–the most important moments of a story almost certainly need to be in scene–and we can help them think about how much of each mode will be necessary to make their stories work.
