Measure the worth of a contemplated story by the value it would bring your readers. Choose to tell a story only if it passes a "what's in it for them" test, and then articulate why you are telling it. Generally, you will have one of two purposes: To inform your readers about what happened or to persuade them to avoid or follow your story. Decide whether you will explicitly or implicitly express your purpose in your narrative.
A sound narrative leaves its readers with a dominant impression about its characters or events. You could impress and inspire your readers with an "against all odds" narrative that culminates in victory, or focus memorably on an especially resilient character. Make your intended dominant impression your thesis statement, and then develop all narrative elements around it.
As your narrative moves from beginning to end, you must accomplish three things. Introduce your setting and characters in the beginning. Relate a series of conflicting events that come to a climactic head in the middle. Then use your ending to resolve all conflict and reveal your purpose. Unite the three parts with either a time-based or ordered structure. Chronological time applies to most stories, while psychological time applies to narratives that happen in memory. Spice up either one with flashbacks and flash-forwards. For narratives that are not time-bound, such as a description of a person's traits, use classification order.
Drive your story's plot, or sequence of events, on the wheels of dialogue, behavior and description. Dialogue and behavior add realism to your story through what your characters say and do, while richly detailed description makes places, characters and events three-dimensional. You can use one of two methods of description: The summary method, which describes something or someone in two or three sentences, or the "up close and personal," profusely detailed scene method, which you should reserve for your narrative's pivotal moments. Use your thesis to determine which descriptive, dialogue and behavioral details to include or exclude from your narrative.
Decide on your point of view and then write your piece accordingly in first-person or third-person. Describe your narrative elements subjectively and evocatively, or objectively and literally, as appropriate. Use concrete nouns that make your readers "see" your subjects and active verbs that make them "feel" them. Employ sensory language and figures of speech, such as similes and metaphors, to provide rich detail. Also use transitional expressions, such as "above," "beside," "instead" and "next" to facilitate a smooth flow between sentences and paragraphs.