Table of Contents |
In composition, a narrative is a piece of writing driven by a story. For the most part, the terms "narrative" and "story" can be used interchangeably.
While there are other kinds of narratives, including fiction, the type you are most likely to encounter in the realm of academia is the personal narrative. A personal narrative is a composition that relies on the writer's personal experiences and memories.
We write personal narratives for many reasons. Chief among them is reflection—simply taking the time to collect and present one's thoughts and memories—as well as education, or wanting to teach readers something.
We also write to record memories, or to share meaning or insight that our experiences have given us. What these purposes have in common is that the writer has a story and wants to tell it.
There are several different types of personal narratives:
The difference between the two is that a memoir isn't necessarily the story of the writer's life, but a story in general. Thus, a writer can have more than one memoir, such as one about childhood and another about the death of the writer's mother to cancer. Writing a second autobiography, however, would be redundant.
Life writing is a more general term—similar to memoir, but not necessarily focused on the writer's life.
EXAMPLE
If a close personal friend to a recently deceased rock star wrote a book about that star's later years, it wouldn't be a memoir, and it wouldn't quite be an autobiography, but it would count as life writing.Creative nonfiction is an even broader term encompassing all three categories and more. Technically, the only requirement for creative nonfiction is that it be true, in some sense of the word. Essays are creative nonfiction, as are just about anything besides poetry or fiction that you're likely to find in a composition course.
Modern creative nonfiction also makes use of the stylistic elements of fiction, often incorporating narrators and nonlinear narratives, metaphor, and hyperbole. It's a broad term because the nature of nonfiction is broad, and many writers are constantly working to stretch the term.
Let's look at two different kinds of personal narratives. The first selection is a short passage from the autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant.
What do you think Grant's primary purpose is here? You already know that this is an autobiography, or the telling of one's life story, but is there another purpose? Does Grant seem to have been trying to teach us anything or share any insight or meaning? Perhaps not, at least not in this section. His primary goal seems to be to record the facts of his life and perhaps to reflect on them.
As a form of contrast, consider this short paragraph taken from an essay titled "Of Experience" by Michel de Montaigne, a 16th-century statesman and writer who has often been credited as being one of the first, if not the first, essayist. The language itself can be a bit difficult, so read carefully to get a real sense of what Montaigne is trying to say and do with this excerpt.
Compared to Grant, Montaigne seems much more interested in conveying his thoughts and insights. Though the material can be hard to penetrate, it should be fairly clear that Montaigne is trying to reflect not only on what he's done, but why, and what that means in the broader world.
Unlike Grant, who seems most interested in simply telling the story of what happened to him, Montaigne seems to be thinking on the page, musing, perhaps ironically, about his tendency to muse too much when he's writing. Both selections exemplify the range of material that personal narratives can work with.
Despite the huge variety in types and purposes of personal narratives, one thing they all have in common is a narrative arc of some kind.
An arc, in the context of writing, is a structure or sequence of events, and all narratives have one. Multiple events occurred, and multiple events are told, though there are different strategies employed by different writers to achieve different effects.
It's important to note the different parts of a narrative arc. Keep in mind that not all arcs will include each aspect, and not always in this order, but a standard chronological narrative arc would be presented as follows:
Besides the language, it seems pretty straightforward, right? One event causes another, which causes another, leading us, we can only assume, to another later event.
This is the general format most personal narratives will take, but you should also be prepared for nonlinear narrative structures, which have become more commonplace in the ever-changing genre of creative nonfiction. In fact, some narratives work in reverse by starting with the most recent event and cycling backward in time from there.
There are four main elements of narrative, used in both personal and fictional narrative writing. Let's look at each in a little more detail.
Voice is the unique way in which writers express their writing style. It is something that enables readers to recognize a work as having been written by their favorite writer the moment they begin to read it. Even experienced writers can only partially control voice; beginning writers must work to discover it.
In the following passage from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Thoreau writes about his relationship to nature. You'll get a strong sense of the style in which he writes—his voice—even if you haven't read his work before now.
The point of view in a personal narrative is that of the writer. However, even though a writer of a personal narrative is limited to her point of view (unlike a writer of a fictional narrative), she can make use of retrospection and reflection.
To understand how this can be accomplished, read this excerpt from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written by Frederick Douglass. Look for the ways in which Douglass uses his perspective as an older man to recall and reflect on his youth.
Even though the "I" in a personal narrative refers to the writer, that writer can tell the story from other points of view. The young Douglass and the old Douglass are not the same person in this account (even though, in other ways, they are). They observe, feel, and interpret experiences and events in different ways.
Characterization refers to the people within a narrative. Characters must be portrayed in sufficient detail so that readers will feel as if they are reading about people they know (even though they almost certainly don't know them).
The following passage describes how a group of children respond to a strong, handsome boy named Pierre, and his classmate, Antoine.
After reading the preceding paragraph, you should have some idea of what it is like to be Antoine. Consider that, just a page or two later, readers are informed (in grim detail) how Antoine murders Pierre. Would your reaction to Pierre's murder be different if you hadn't been given a humanizing glimpse into Antoine's lonely childhood?
Relevant detail is included in a narrative to gain the focused attention of readers. Focused attention is achieved when writers include the events or things that readers must know in order for the narrative to make sense to them. In other words, relevant details are those which aren't just relevant, but are necessary to the narrative.
Read the following excerpt from the introduction of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
In this paragraph, Franklin writes to his children about the early history of their family. He describes how they had to conceal their religious practices from the authorities in the years before the family emigrated to America. It conveys a sense of his love for his country, and the zeal with which he would defend it.
Now, read this passage, which occurs a page or so earlier in Franklin's Autobiography (i.e., before the previous passage about the Bible). Do you notice any differences?
Even without reading the later chapters of the Autobiography, it should be clear which of these two passages contain details that readers must know. It's likely that readers don't need to know that Franklin's Uncle John was a dyer (probably of wool).
Source: THIS TUTORIAL WAS AUTHORED BY SOPHIA LEARNING. PLEASE SEE OUR TERMS OF USE.