Writing the opening of 'Whale Rider'

The purpose of a narrative opening is to introduce the characters and to describe the setting to the reader. Using a range of sentence types (simple, compound and complex) improves text flow for the reader. A fronted adverbial of time, place or manner adds extra detail to the main clause that follows it. This narrative version of ‘Whale Rider’ is written in the past tense. Oral rehearsal before writing helps to structure grammatically correct sentences and check for sense.