Narration

NARRATION writing skill (1)

1. What is narration?

Narration means telling a single story or several related stories. The story can be a means to an end, a way to support a main idea or thesis.

Narration is powerful. Every public speaker, from politician to classroom teacher, knows that stories capture the attention of listeners as nothing else can. We want to know what happened to others, not simply because we're curious, but also because their experiences shed light on our own lives. Narration lends force to opinion, triggers the flow of memory, and evokes places, times, and people in ways that are compelling and affecting.

2. How narration fits your purpose and audience;

Narration can also appear in essays, sometimes as a supplemental pattern of development.

In addition to providing effective support in one section of your paper, narration can also serve as an essay's dominant pattern of development. In fact, we can use a single extended narrative to convey a central point and share with readers your view of what happened.

Although some narratives relate unusual experiences, most tread familiar

ground, telling tales of joy, love, loss, frustration, fear--- all common emotions experienced during life. Narratives can take the ordinary and transmute it into something significant, even extraordinary. As Willa Cather, the American novelist wrote: “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.\" The challenge lies in applying your own vision to tale, thereby making it unique.

3. Prewriting strategies for narration;

•What event evokes strong emotion in you and is likely to have a powerful effect on your readers?

•Does your journal suggest any promising subjects?

•Does anything point to an event worth writing about?

•Will you focus on a personal experience, an incident in someone else's life, or a public event?

•If you write about an event in someone else's life, will you have time to interview the person?

•What is the source of tension in the event: one person's internal dilemma, a conflict between characters, or a struggle between a character and a social institution or natural phenomenon?

•Will the conflict create enough tension to \"hook\" readers and keep them interested?

•What tone is appropriate for recounting the conflict?

4. Strategies for using narration in an essay;

a. Identify the point of the narrative conflict;

•Most narratives center on a conflict.

•When you relate a story, it's up to you to convey the significance or meaning of the event's conflict.

•When recounting your narrative, be sure readers are clear about your narrative point, or thesis.

b. Develop only those details that advance the narrative point;

Nothing is more boring than a storyteller who gets sidetracked and drags out a story with nonessential details. When telling a story, you maintain an effective narrative pace by focusing on your point and eliminating any details that don't support it. A good narrative depends not only on what is included, but also on what has been left out.

•Having a clear sense of your narrative point and knowing your audience are

crucial.

•How do you determine which specifics to omit, which to treat briefly, and which to emphasize?

•You can't lead away from the point so you should leave out some details.

•You also need to keep your audience in mind when selecting narrative details.

•Is this detail or character of conversation essential? Does my audience need this detail to understand the conflict in the situation? Does this detail advance or intensify the narrative action?

•You should feel free to add or reshape details to suit your narrative point.

c. Organize the narrative sequence;

Every narrative begins somewhere, presents a span of time, and ends at a certain point. Frequently, you will want to use a straightforward time order, following the event chronologically from beginning to end.

But sometimes a strict chronological recounting may not be effective -- especially if the high point of the narrative gets lost somewhere in the middle of the time sequence. To avoid that possibility, you may want to disrupt chronology, plunge the reader into the middle of the story, and then return in a flashback to the tale's beginning.

Narratives can also use flashforward -- you give readers a glimpse of the future before the story continues in the present. these techniques shift the story onto several planes and keep it from becoming a step-by-step, predictable account.

Whether or not you choose to include flashbacks or flash-forwards in an essay, remember to limit the time span covered by the narrative. Otherwise, you'll have trouble generating the details needed to give the story depth and meaning. Also regardless of the time sequence you select, organize the tale so it drives toward a strong finish. Be careful that your story doesn't trail off minor, anticlimactic details.

d. Make the narrative easy to follow.

Describing each distinct action in a separate paragraph helps readers grasp the flow of events. Although narrative essays don't always have conventional topic sentences, each narrative paragraph should have a clear focus. Often this focus is indicated by a sentence early in the paragraph that directs attention to the action taking place. Such a sentence functions as a kind of informal topic sentence; the rest of the paragraph then develops that topic sentence. You should also be sure to use time signals when narrating a story.

e. Make the narrative vigorous and immediate;

A compelling narrative provides an abundance of specific details, making readers feel as if they're experiencing the story being told. Readers must be able to

see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the event you're narrating. Vivid sensory description is, therefore, an essential part of an effective native. Not only do specific sensory details make writing a pleasure to read -- we all enjoy learning the particulars about people, places, and things -- but they also give the narrative the stamp of reality. The specifics convince the reader the event being described actually did, or could, occur.

Another way to create narrative immediacy is to use dialogue while telling a story. Our sense of other people comes, in part, from what they say and the way they sound. Conversational exchanges allow the reader to experience characters directly. The challenge in writing dialogue is to make each character's

speech distinctive and convincing.

Another way to enliven narratives is to use varied sentence structure. Sentences that plod along with the same predictable pattern put readers to sleep. Experiment with your sentences by varying their length and type; mix long and short sentences, simple and complex.

Finally, vigorous verbs lend energy to narratives. Use active verb forms rather than passive ones, and try to replace anemic to be verbs with dynamic constructions.

f. Keep your point of view and verb tense consistent;

If you, as narrator, tell a story as you experienced it, the story is written in the first-person point of view. But if you observed the event and want to tell how someone else experienced the incident, you would use the third-person point of view. Each point of view has advantages and limitations. The first person allows you to express ordinarily private thoughts and to re-create an event as you actually experienced it. This point of view is limited, though, in its ability to depict the inner thoughts of other people involved in the event. By way of contrast, the third person makes it easier to provide insight into the thoughts of all the participants. However, its objective, broad perspective may undercut some of the subjective immediacy typical of the \"I was there\" point of view.

Knowing whether to use the past or present tense is important. In most narration, the past tense predominates, enabling the writer to span a considerable period of time. Although more rarely used, the present tense can be powerful for events of short duration. A narrative in the present tense prolongs each moments, intensifying the reader's sense of participation. Be careful, though, unless the event is intense and fast paced, the present tense can seem contrived. Whichever tense you choose, avoid shifting midstream --- starting, let's say, in the past tense and switching to present.

Two readings

The Movie House

It was two blocks from my home; I began to go alone from the age of six. My

mother, so strict about my kissing girls, was strangely indulgent about this. The theatre ran three shows a week, for two days each, and was closed on Sundays. Many weeks I went three times. I remember a summer evening in our yard. Supper is over; the walnut tree throws a heavy shadow. The fireflies are not out yet. My father is off, my mother and her parents are turning the earth in our garden. Some burning sticks and paper on our ash heap fill the damp air with low smoke; I express a wish to go to the movies, expecting to be told no. instead, my mother tells me to go into the house and clean up; I come into the yard again in clean shorts, the shadows slightly heavier, the dew a little wetter; the dime and the penny in my hand. I always ran to the movies. If it was not a movie with Adolphe Menjou, it was a horror picture. People turning into cats—fingers going stubby into paws and hair being blurred in with double exposure—and Egyptian tombs and English houses where doors creak and wind disturbs the curtains and dogs refuse to go into certain rooms because they sense something supersensory. I used to crouch down into the seat and hold my coat in front of my face when I sensed a frightening scene coming, peeking through the buttonhole to find out when it was over. Through the buttonhole Frankenstein’s monster glowered; lightning flashed; sweat poured over the bolts that held his face together. On the way home, I ran again, in terror now. Darkness had come; the first show was from seven to nine, buy nine even the longest summer day was ending. Each porch along the street seemed to be a tomb crammed with shadows; each shrub seemed to shelter a grasping arm. I ran with a frantic high step, trying to keep my ankles away from the reaching hands. The last and worst terror was our own porch; low brick walls on either side concealed possible cat people. Leaping high, I launched myself at the door and, if no one was in the front of the house, fled through

suffocating halls past gaping doorways to the kitchen, where there was always someone working, and a light bulb burning. The icebox. The rickety worn table, oilcloth-covered, where we ate. The windows solid black and fortified by the interior brightness. But even then I kept my legs away from the dark space beneath the table.

Questions:

1 .Is the main idea of the paragraph directly stated? If so, in which sentence(s)? If not, state the main idea in a sentence of your own.

2. What is the point of view in the narrative? Could another point of view be used? Using the first two sentences of the paragraph as an example, explain how you could change the point of view?

3. In what ways is this paragraph subjective? In what ways is it objective?

Learning to Write

Russell Baker

When our class was assigned to Mr. Fleagle for third-year English, I anticipated another grim year in that dreariest of subjects. Mr. Fleagle was notorious among City students for dullness and inability to inspire. He was said to stuffy, dull, and hopelessly out of date. To me he looked to be sixty or seventy and prim to a fault.

He wore primly severe eyeglasses; his wavy hair was primly cut and primly combed. He wore prom vested suits with neckties blocked primly against the collar buttons of his primly starched white shirts. He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a comic antique.

I anticipated a listless, unfruitful year with Mr. Fleagle

And for a long time was not disappointed. We read Mecbeth. Mr. Fleagle loved

Mecbeth and wanted us to love it too, but he lacked the gift of infecting others

with his own passion. He tried to convey the murderous ferocity of Lady Mecbeth one day by reading aloud the passage that concludes

…I have given suck, and know

How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums….

The idea of prim Mr. Fleagle plucking his nipple from boneless gums was too much for the class. We burst into gasps of irrepressible snickering. Mr. Fleagle stopped.

“There is nothing funny, about giving suck to a babe. It is the—the very

essence of motherhood, don’t you see.”

He constantly sprinkled his sentences with “don’t you see.” It wasn’t a question but exclamation of mild surprise at our ignorance. “Your pronoun needs an antecedent, don’t you see,’ he would say, very primly. “The purpose of the Porter’s scene, boys, is to provide comic relief from the horror, don’t you see.”

Later in the year we tackled the informal essay. “The essay, don’t you see, is the…” my mind went numb. Of all forms of writing, none seemed so boring as the essay. Naturally we would have to write informal essays. Mr. Fleagle distributed a homework sheet offering us a choice of topics. None was quite so simpleminded as “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” but most seemed to be almost as dull. I took the list home and dawdled until the night before the essay was due. Sprawled on the sofa, I finally faced up to the grim task, took the list out my notebook, and scanned it. The topic on which my eye stopped was “The Art of Eating Spaghetti.”

This title produced an extraordinary sequence of mental images. Surging up out of the depths of memory came a vivid recollection of a night in Belleville when all of us were seated around the supper table—Uncle Allen, my mother, Uncle Charlie, Doris, Uncle Hal—and Aunt Pat served spaghetti for supper. Spaghetti was an exotic treat in those days. Neither Doris nor I had ever eaten spaghetti, and none of the adults had enough experience to be good at it. All the good humor of Uncle Allen’s house reawoke in my mind as I recalled the laughing arguments we had that night about the socially respectable method for moving spaghetti from

plate to mouth.

Suddenly I wanted to write about that, about the warmth and good feeling of it, but I wanted to put it down simply for my own joy, not for Mr. Fleagle. It was a moment to relive the pleasure of an evening at New Street. To write it as I wanted, however, would violate all the rules of formal composition I’d learned in school, and Mr. Fleagle would surely give it a failing grade. Never mind. I would write something else for Mr. Fleagle after I had written this thing for myself.

When I finished it the night was half gone and there was no time left to compose a proper, respectable essay for Mr. Fleagle. There was no choice next morning but to turn in my private reminiscence of Belleville. Two days padded before Mr. Fleagle returned the graded papers, and he returned everyone’s but mine. I was bracing myself for a command to report to Mr. Fleagle immediately after school for discipline when I saw him lift my paper from his desk and rap for the class’s attention.

“Now, boys,”he said, “I want to read you an essay. This is titled ‘the Art of Eating Spaghetti.’”

And he started to read. My words! He was reading my words out loud to the entire class. What’s more, the entire class was listening. Listening attentively. Then somebody laughed, then the entire class was laughing, and not in contempt and ridicule, but with openhearted enjoyment. Even Mr. Fleagle stopped two or three times to repress a small prime smile.

I did my best to avoid showing pleasure, but what I was feeling was pure ecstasy at this startling demonstration that my words had the power to make people laugh. In the eleventh hour as it were, I had discovered a calling. It was the happiest moment of my entire school career. When Mr. Fleagle finished he put the final seal on my happiness by saying, “Now that, boys, is an essay, don’t you see. It’s –don’t you see—it’s of the very essence of the essay, don’t you see. Congratulations, Mr. Baker.”

Questions:

1. What is the main idea of the essay?

2. What order does the writer use in describing the incidents in his narrative?

3. Is the essay written objectively or subjectively? Cite examples from the essay to help explain your answer?