Narration
When we narrate we tell a story. Humans have been doing this for thousands of years, both orally and in writing. When we write a story, there are several important things to keep in mind.
1. A narrative is not just a schedule of events, such as a person might record in an appointment book or on a palm pilot. A story has a point; there is a reason why the narrator is telling the story.
2. We need to decide who the narrator will be. The narrator can be an observer, who is completely absent from the story. An absent narrator tells the story in the third person. A third person narrator is not a character in the story in any way. Such a third person narrator often knows everything–all the characters’ thoughts and motivations, past events leading up to the story. We call this kind of third person narrator an omniscient narrator. A writer can also choose to speak as an "I," that is, as a first person narrator. Both non-fiction and fiction can be written by either first or third person narrators.
Non-fiction: A journalist writing a newspaper article writes as a third person narrator. The journalist never uses "I" in the article. When you write a true narrative account of an experience that you had, in which you were a participant, you use "I" and you are a first person narrator.
Fiction: A writer telling a made-up story has several choices to make. The writer can recount the story as the omniscient third person narrator. Or the writer can have an "I" tell the story. Or, for a long, complicated story, several "I" narrators can each tell part of the story. This use of several "I" narrators can make the story very suspenseful; the readers don’t get the whole story until they have read all the narrators’ accounts and put them all together.
3. The next thing that as writers we have to think about is the time order of events. We might start with what happened first and proceed from there. Or we might start from how things are at the present and then go back to narrate the events that led up to the current situation. No matter how we decide to structure the story, we need to think about time and the order of events.
4. Once we have decided on the narrator and the time order of events, we can start telling what happened.
5. In writing, it’s a good idea to have the characters reveal what kind of people they are through their actions. A beginning writer should write about characters who are active. And it’s good to let the characters speak in their own voices. This means that the writer has to learn how to write dialogue. The results are well worth the effort.
In the following paragraph, writer Ron Kovic tells how he celebrated his birthday when he was a child.
When the Fourth of July came, there were fireworks going off all over the neighborhood. It was the most exciting time of year for me next to Christmas. Being born on the exact same day as my country I thought was really great. I was really proud. And every Fourth of July, I had a birthday party and all my friends would come over with birthday presents and we’d put on silly hats and blow these horns my dad brought home from the A&P. We’d eat lots of ice cream and watermelon and I’d open up all the presents and blow out the candles on the big red, white, and blue birthday cake and then we’d all sing "Happy Birthday" and "I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy." At night everyone would pile into Bobby’s mother’s old car and we’d go down to the drive-in, where we’d watch the fireworks display. Before the movie started, we’d all get out and sit up on the roof of the car with our blankets wrapped around us watching the rockets and Roman candles going up and exploding into fountains of rainbow colors, and later after Mrs. Zimmer dropped me off, I’d lie on my bed feeling a little sad that it all had to end so soon. As I closed my eyes I could still hear strings of firecrackers and cherry bombs going off all over the neighborhood.
Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July in Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Writing First: Practice in Context with Readings. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2003, p.53+
Assignment #1: Choose a movie and tell the story of what happens in the movie. You can choose either a movie that you think would be familiar to many of us, or a movie that you think we have not seen, perhaps an "indie" (a movie made outside the big commercial studios.) Make sure in either case that you narrate with enough details to make the story easy to understand for someone who has not seen the movie. If you want to, you can include your own opinion of the movie at the end of your writing.