Retelling: Beginning, Middle and End

Do you want to learn to retell a story using story elements? Learn about story retelling strategies and elements of a story through our video, activities and story retelling worksheets!

Story Elements – Definition

To make the story interesting and structured, authors use story elements. The key elements of a story are characters, plot, setting, theme and conflict.

Characters are people, animals or other creatures in a story. There are main and secondary characters. Main characters play the most important role in the story, while secondary characters do not have a lot of influence on the plot.

The plot is a series of events that happen in a story. The key parts of the plot are beginning, middle and end.

The setting is where and when a story takes place. Settings include places (city, country, area) and the time (present, future or past).

The theme is the lesson or a message of a story. A story can have more than one theme supported by different ideas.

Conflict is the main problem that the characters are trying to solve in a story. Conflicts can be external (between two people) and internal (when a person has a conflict with themselves and doesn’t know what decision to make).

Story Elements – Beginning, Middle and End

Oftentimes we want to tell someone about a book, a film or a show that we enjoyed. To do this, we use retelling.

What is retelling of a story?

Re- means again and telling is when you talk about something. So, retelling means to tell or talk about something again.

When retelling a story, we don’t need to remember all the details. We only need to talk about important parts, otherwise our description becomes too long.

We can use retelling strategies to improve comprehension and to make our retelling more structured. For example, BME strategy is a way of retelling a story using such plot elements as beginning, middle and end.

When retelling using the BME strategy, we integrate the story elements into our tale.

The first part of every story is the beginning. When describing the beginning, we can mention the characters, setting and important events that happen in the first part of a story. We can use words like in the beginning or * it all started when*.

The middle is what happens after the beginning of a story. When describing the middle, we introduce a conflict that happens in a story. We can use phrases like in the middle or after that.

The end is the final part of a story, where the main conflict gets resolved. We use words like in the end or finally to talk about the ending of a story.

Using Story Elements in Retelling

Let’s take a look at one of the story retelling examples. It uses a BME strategy to retell a famous fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood”.

The first sentence describes the beginning and mentioned the characters (Little Red Riding Hood and her grandma) and the setting (the woods). The next sentence describes the middle and addresses the conflict (wolf eating the girl’s grandma). At the end, we describe how the conflict gets resolved (the huntsman rescues the girl and her grandma).

Story Elements – Summary

Let’s review what we learned about elements of a story.

There are five main story elements: characters, plot, setting, theme and conflict.

• Characters are people, animals or other creatures in a story.

• The plot is a series of events that happen in a story.

• The setting is where and when a story takes place.

• The theme is the lesson or a message of a story.

• Conflict is the main problem that the characters are trying to solve in a story.

Retelling means talking or telling about something again. When retelling a story, we can use the BME retelling strategy to help us. First, we describe the beginning of a story and introduce characters and setting. Then, we describe the middle which usually includes a story’s main problem. Finally, we talk about the end of a story and describe how the problem was solved.

We can use the following phrases to retell a story using beginning, middle and end:

Now you can identify the story elements, define retelling and use the BME strategy to retell a story! For more practice, check out our video, exercises, and download a retelling a story worksheet!

Frequently Asked Questions about Retelling