Once upon a time, a Fictionary blog writer told a story about narrative writing. First came the introduction, then the definition, followed by examples and narrative writing tips. Finally, the authors, who had learned all about narrative writing, lived happily ever after.
Humans are natural storytellers and the way we prefer to tell our stories is in a narrative style. From oral traditions of epic poems to modern written series, narratives fill our lives, teaching us morals and entertaining us. The most basic narrative structure is often how a new author writes their story in the first draft.
What Is a Narrative?
A narrative is the “telling” parts of the story. Often writers are told to “show” versus “tell” and this is because readers become more invested when they experience the actions of the story along with the characters. But not every part of the story can be told in this way, and some stories work better when they are told from a narrator’s perspective rather than a character’s. Though a character can be a narrator.
Narrators can be so annoying when they think they know everything, unlike me.
Definition of Narrative Writing
A narrator tells the reader or audience about the setting, what is happening in the story, and how the characters feel. The narrative includes a related sequence of events, their cause and effect, what meaning the events have, and the decisions the author made in the beginning on how they relate the story.
Confusing, right? Don’t worry, we’ll get there.
Narrative stories can be fiction or nonfiction, personal essays, poems, jokes, fairy tales, fables, blogs, and more. It can also be a song, dance, set of pictures, or any other form of expression.
Is Narrative a Genre?
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a genre, no, it’s narrative. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Genre is one of those tricky words that has several different meanings in the publishing world. But the common conceptions of genre do not include narrative. Narrative is more of a style, tone, or voice for a story.
Narrative structures determine the organization and order of scenes in a story’s composition. And narrative techniques are the building block elements of the story.
Is it made of straw, wood, or brick?
There are multiple narrative structures for a story, including linear, nonlinear, parallel, episodic, descriptive, and more.
- Linear narrative means telling the story’s events in the order they happened, one after the other.
- In a nonlinear narrative, the story events can be told in any order.
- Parallel tells two or more stories concurrently, usually from each person’s point of view, where the stories are related by events, characters, themes, or something else.
- Episodic narratives are usually a group of short stories that are united in some way, telling an overall story to the reader. Coming of age stories and women’s fiction are often episodic.
- Descriptive narratives create vivid images for the reader to experience. Literary novels are often descriptive narratives.
Narrative nonfiction integrates historical accuracy with storytelling techniques to produce compelling biographies, memoirs, and historical accounts.
Narrative writing can also include the many choices an author makes before writing the characters, setting, plot, conflict, theme, and style.
Using the narrator device, the writer can easily skip over the boring parts of a story, transition from one scene to another, or ruminate over the theme of the story. In order to discuss the narrator, we must touch upon one of the earliest and most important decisions an author makes, point of view.
Point of view refers to who is telling the story.
Me! It’s me!
The entire story could be told from one person’s point of view or more than one person can tell different parts of the story.
- First-person narration happens when a character who is directly involved in the story tells what happened from their viewpoint.
- Second-person narration is rarer in storytelling but seats the reader in the driver’s seat as the story is told as if from their point of view.
- Third-person narration is when the character who narrates what is going on in the story is not directly part of the story. Omniscient narrators know what all the characters are thinking and feeling and are usually unknown to the reader.
Each one of these possibilities creates a different reader experience as the information available differs with who is telling the story. Also, each narrator has their own tone and style when conveying their version of the story, which may be the author, or may sound completely different from the author.
Also, consider the Fictionary thirty-eight elements as narrative techniques. Each element helps tell the story from flashbacks to sensory detail using sights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch.
Narrative Writing Examples
Here are some popular, successful examples of narrative writing.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [1818]
Shelley chose to tell this story in a nonlinear fashion from three different points of view, but all scenes are told from first-person. The captain tells his story, then Dr. Frankenstein, then the creature, and then Dr. Frankenstein closes his viewpoint, and finally the captain shares the closing of all the characters’ parts in the story.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain [1884]
Twain chose to tell the story in an episodic narrative where Huck’s adventures are each little mini-stories that teach him lessons as he learns what it means to grow up. This is also first-person with Huck telling the story from his point of view.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald [1925]
Fitzgerald told this story from narrator Nick Carraway’s first-person point of view. The descriptive narrative style is in high swing as he describes the lavish parties and experiences of the Roaring Twenties.
Dune by Frank Herbert [1965]
Herbert told the story in a third person omniscient, revealing characters’ inner thoughts to the reader. The story is told in linear narrative style beginning with Paul being tested by the Bene Gesserit and culminating with him coming to accept and use his powers as the Kwisatz Haderach.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut [1969]
Vonnegut wrote this novel in third-person omniscience with interruptions from a first-person narrator. The story is nonlinear with the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, being an unreliable narrator who is dealing with PTSD and he himself is unsure if he is having flashbacks, living in the present, or time traveling since all the events feel so real to him.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson [2003]
I only put books I’ve personally vetted on this list, except for this one. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve ordered it. I’ll let you know when I read it, but that could be years looking at my TBR list. You’ll probably read it before me.
Larson wrote this nonfiction parallel narrative using two points of view. The stories of Daniel Burnham, the architect for the Chicago 1893 World’s Fair, and the many obstacles he had to overcome to bring the fair to life are intertwined with the story of H. H. Holmes, one of America’s first identified serial killers who used the hype of the fair bringing in people from all over the world to hunt for victims.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows [2008]
This novel is written in a first-person episodic narrative, through letters from some characters to other characters. Each letter is a small story of an event within itself that builds on the reader’s understanding of the story and the protagonist’s journey through self-discovery and love.
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia [2017]
Zappia tells this coming of age story in a first-person episodic narrative. The story also includes pages from Eliza’s webcomic and screenshots of her online forums which attribute to the episodic feel.
The Witch of Delray: Rose Veres & Detroit’s Infamous 1930s Murder Mystery by Karen Dybis [2017]
This true crime novel is the cream of narrative nonfiction with a third-person omniscient viewpoint. Facts, police reports, newspaper clippings, and historical photos are all tied together, creating a clear story about what happened, why it happened, and the effects it had on the people involved and the entire community.
Story Narrative Tips
- Narrative choices and styles can be combined within a single novel. For example, your novel may have chapters that are from first-person point of view and others that are third-person point of view. Or it may be linear narrative with parts that are heavy on descriptive narrative.
- While some genres tend to lean more towards specific narrative styles and structures than others, the narrative style chosen by the author has more to do with what works for the story and the author’s writing style.
- When using a nonlinear narrative style, the author must be careful to not confuse the reader, unless that is the point. Each scene should be anchored in point of view, time, and location. The scenes should then be told in the order that makes the most sense for the story.
- Start writing, editing, or revising your novel by deciding who the protagonist is, what point of view strategy you are going to use, and thinking about your narrative structure. Comprehension and tension are the two biggest factors when making these decisions.
- Narrative structures determine how a story will be experienced, and narrative techniques determine the depth with which the reader will experience it.
- Most older books and classics have a linear narrative structure which creates simplicity and clarity, while modern readers prefer a less clear narrative structure keeping them in the dark.
Now it’s time for you to determine the best narrative choices for your story and stick to them, like price tag stickers. My work here is done. So long, auf wiedersehen, adieu, anyong, aloha (anyone else notice that all of these goodbyes start with “a” except in the English language?), adios amigos!