Writing Lessons
WRITING LESSON 07:
WHAT 'S NARRATIVE AND ACTION?
MOST PEOPLE FIND NARRATIVE STRANGE BECAUSE ITS::
* TELLING AND NOT SHOWING
* THEY DON'T KNOW WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE
* NARRATIVE LOOKS LIKE DESCRIPTION
Well I agree with you. The secret to understanding narrative is that it is indeed telling and not showing! But what! You said and keep saying "Show, Don't Tell!"
That's correct but narrative serves several functions and it is important as a bridge between your full scenes, half scenes. Almost every novel has narrative and short stories too.
Plays and comic books have very little narrative.
BASIC NARRATIVE RULES:
* NARRATIVE IS TELLING AND INDICATES THE PASSAGE OF TIME OR DISTANCE
One major rule is narrative is telling because you don't and cannot show everything in a novel or short story. So narrative passages condense time and action.
If your character takes an airplane from Rome to Mexico and nothing unusual happens on the flight related to the story's plot or characters, use narrative.
Mary boarded the airplane in Rome. The Giraffe had given her the slip again. But she was determined to catch him and now that she had slipped a GPS position sticky tab on the balloon she had in her grasp, she was sure to recover it in Mexico.
Mary step off the airplane and pulled out her GPS watch. The beeping sound began as she looked around for the southern direction. Aha. Over there by the old pyramids thought Mary.
* NARRATIVE EXPLAINS THE PAST
Another rule is use narrative to explain past events, or exposition (flashbacks) of what has happened before the time the story opened. This gives character's a chance to avoid talking about the past in an obvious way. And you can use dialogue to relay information from the past as well.
Whatever you explain from the past in narrative, make sure it is important to the story.
* NARRATIVE MAKES UNNATURAL EVENTS EASY TO REVEAL
A character is thinking about her teacher but she feels uneasy to say these other thoughts to her friend Melinda; they might be unpleasant or unbelievable or in some way distract from the story. So you have this information related through narration.
* NARRATIVE IS A GREAT ECONOMIC WAY TO OPEN A STORY
Fannie Hurst was a super popular writer in 1918-40. She always opened up with narration and it was very good narration.
GOLDEN FLEECE
How saving a dispensation it is that men do not carry in their hearts
perpetual ache at the pain of the world, that the body-thuds of the
drink-crazed, beating out frantic strength against cell doors, cannot
penetrate the beatitude of a mother bending, at that moment, above a crib.
Men can sit in club windows while, even as they sit, are battle-fields
strewn with youth dying, their faces in mud. While men are dining where
there are mahogany and silver and the gloss of women's shoulders, are men
with kick-marks on their shins, ice gluing shut their eyes, and lashed with
gale to some ship-or-other's crow's-nest. Women at the opera, so fragrant
that the senses swim, sit with consciousness partitioned against a
sweating, shuddering woman in some forbidding, forbidden room, hacking open
a wall to conceal something red-stained. One-half of the world does not
know or care how the other half lives or dies.
* NARRATION AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN SCENES
[END SECTION OF A FULL SCENE FROM THE GOLDEN FLEECE]
"See you to-morrow, Josie."
"Ain't you taking the car?"
"No, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, stepping down to cross the street;
"you take it, but not for keeps."
[BEGINS NARRATIVE BRIDGE BETWEEN FULL SCENES]
And so, walking southward on Ninth Street in a sartorial glory that was of
her own making-over from last season, even St. Louis, which at the stroke
of six rushes so for the breeze of its side yards, leaving darkness to
creep into down-town streets that are as deserted as cañons, turned its
feminine head to bear in mind the box-plaited cutaway, the male eye
appraising its approval with bold, even quirking eye.
Through this, and like Diana, who, so aloof from desire, walked in the path
of her own splendor, strode Miss Hassiebrock, straight and forward of eye.
Past the Stag Hotel, in an aisle formed by lounging young bloods and a curb
lined with low, long-snouted motor-cars, the gaze beneath the red sailor
and above the high, horsy stock a bit too rigidly conserved.
Slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like
a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. A youth still wearing a
fraternity pin pretended to lick his downy chops. The son of the president
of the Mound City Oil Company emitted a long, amorous whistle. Willie
Waxter--youngest scion, scalawag, and scorcher of one of the oldest
families--jammed down his motorgoggles from the visor of his cap, making
the feint of pursuing. Mr. Charley Cox, of half a hundred first-page
exploits, did pursue, catching up slightly breathless.
[STARTS A NEW FULL SCENE]
"What's your hurry, honey?"
She spun about, too startled....
* SHORT NARRATIVE PARAGRAPH SPEED UP STORY PACE
If you want to speed up the pacing of your story or novel, then use short narrative paragraphs.
* LONG NARRATIVE PARAGRAPHS SLOW DOWN STORY PACE
If you want to slow down the pacing of your story or novel, then use long narrative paragraphs.
* NARRATIVE SUSTAINS YOUR READER'S INTEREST BETWEEN SCENES
From the example above you see how narrative, used properly prepares the reader for action and the progress into a new scene. Narration can also change the pacing of a story. If the scenes are action packed, fast, narration can serve to give the reader a break from the action, rest stop sort of. Pacing uses blocks of action (full scenes) alternating with blocks of narative. This provides variety and keeps the story interesting.
* NARRATIVE TAKE READERS INTO THE PAST FOR FLASHBACKS & TRANSITIONS
Narrative prepares the reader for a trip back into time (flashback) where you tell them about events affecting the characters before the story opened. Exposition is a type of narrative that provides information from the past that the reader needs in order to understand the characters and the parts they play in the action and outcome of a story.
* NARRATIVE HOOK
Writing narration at the beginning of a story in such a way as to pull the reader into the story and encourage the reader to continue reading because of suspense, curiosity or foreshadowing.
Most fiction today begins with a full scene, but narration still accounts for many story beginnings.
* GOOD NARRATIVE HINGES ON GOOD DESCRIPTION
When reading Fannie Hurst's narrative, did you notice the awesome and detail descriptions of places, sounds, sights, smells, tactile objects, tangible and intangible emotions in the characters?
* GOOD NARRATIVE USES CONCRETE DESCRIPTIONS
Factual descriptions of the way things look, sound, smell, feel, taste, and move. Get into describing internal emotions and external emotional expressions in your characters faces, body and actions.
* GOOD NARRATIVE USES ABSTRACT DESCRIPTIONS
Descriptions through the perceptions of characters as they see a scene through their emotions or their intellect.
* GOOD NARRATIVE USES FIGURATIVE DESCRIPTIONS
Word paint by using figurative descriptions are metaphors, similes and personification and other techniques. These are best used for swift and graphic impressions.
* GOOD NARRATIVE USES IMAGES
Uses good word painting images to energize the narrative
passage.
* GOOD NARRATIVE USES STRONG VERBS AND NOUNS
Word paint through strong verbs and nouns make writing come
alive. Since narration is not action, you don't want to bore your
reader by penning boring narrative.
* GOOD NARRATIVE COMES FROM OBSERVATIONS
Practice observing things, places, actions, people closely. Savor
a piece of fruit you bite into, recording your observations of eating.
The world of details is infinite, and no part of it should be overlooked by the fiction writer. More often than not, the careful details make a full and definite picture that impresses a story on your reader's minds and makes it memorable for them.
The novel/story won't be written unless you finally sit down and type it OR write it OR
speak it out into a tape recorder or computer and transcribe it.
Give enough detail so the reader can immediately gain a vivid impression that will stay with him or her through pages of action. Later reinforce and revive the initial description with additional details or the same details stated in a slightly different way. Continue to drop descriptions into character's thoughts, actions and dialogues -- first and secondary traits and what the character does with his or her physical attributes.
* NARRATIVE IS BASICALLY DESCRIPTION
Yes. Description, even active description, is basically telling narrative.
* NARRATIVE IS BACKGROUND
Visually narrative summary is background and scene is the foreground.
Narrative summary gives the long shot and scenes give the close ups.
Half scene would be mid-ground.
ACTION
* SHOWING NOT TELLING IS ACTION
Seeing the action first for yourself is action. Having a friend tell you what happened at an event is narrative and telling.
* TWO MAJOR FORMS OF ACTION
1) FIXED ACTION
Internal thoughts of character in narrative or interspersed with dialogue internalization (see lesson 06 on dialogue), habitual actions of character or place and mannerism.
Does not physically move characters from one place to another or directly push the story forward.
2) MOVING ACTION
Gives a sense of immediacy from external movement of characters or objects in the scene, dialogue between characters showing the characters in action and pushing the story plot forward..
Does physically move characters from one place to another or directly push the story forward.
BASICS OF ACTION
1) Action gets the reader fully involved by showing what characters say, do, think and feel..
2) Action shows specific details that provide a sense of immediacy.
3) Action should get your story or even the novel going right away. Have the character want something immediately, even if it's a hairbrush or newspaper or map.
4) Action can begin with something outside the character which will eventually envelop the character, like in Gone With The Wind's Civil War.
5)Short stories have a faster pace than the novel.
6) Readers want to see your character struggling with a problem.
7) Action revealing unexpected secrets.
8)Action can be as fast or as slow as you want it to be.
9) Give your characters a time limit to solve their problem or
10) Give your character a few options to solve their problems: A, B, or C. After they have exhausted trying A or B, then the readers know only one option left remains to try!
11)Great action has a major irreversible problem to solve plus a final irreversible complication to solve (the last straw) that brings everything to a climax and a concluding event that relates to and comes out of all the irreversible problems (complications) that resolves the major start up irreversible problem or complication.
12) How to write great action? Get a notepad, computer, laptop and sit down in front of a movie. Write out how characters move and react in each scene you can. You may have to pick and choose. Write one scene. Skip another. Write one scene and stop movie and go back and watch it again filling in what you missed. When you're done, you'll be amazed how exciting those little action snippets read.
13) Another way to write action is to put two characters in a processed event. Cooking. Going to Library. Have these characters talk and show their actions. The scene ends when their goal, for example reaching the library or finishing a pumpkin pie ends.
GO WRITE GREAT NARRATIVE & ACTION IN YOUR STORY!
This page was last updated: August 31, 2009
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